Unleashing the Transformative Potential of the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference on the Summit of the Future

By  Sahana Chatopadhyay  and Youssef Mahmoud

An article on this week’s UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi offers insight into the spirit that can be expected to underpin the gathering. Youssef Mahmoud is  a Senior Adviser at the International Peace institute who was formerly a UN Under-Secretary-General.   Sahana Chatopadhyay is a writer and thinker who focuses on imagining new pathways towards emergent futures and interbeing. Together they offer a vision of the the Nairobi Conference as “a unique opportunity for civil society to assert its right to co-author the multilateralism we need in the face of unprecedented global changes heralding momentous paradigm shifts. “We the peoples” as enshrined in the UN Charter is not a mere phrase but holds the aspirations, visions, and co-creative imaginations of billions on whose behalf multilateral decisions are taken.

The representatives in the conference are, therefore, not only the vision-holders but are a microcosm of civil society exercising their fullest imaginative potentials to be harbingers of different possible futures in these epochal times.”

The Cycle of Conferences Visualization initiative is currently supporting the Nairobi Conference.

The Commentary is available at the Stimson Centre website.