By: Susan O’Malley IFBPWC UN Representative  

What’s Happening at the UN? 

The following article will briefly outline what is happening at the UN in September and October 2024. Feel free to email me with your questions:

susanomalley4@gmail.com. Do take a look at UN TV. (Google it!) Many UN sessions are broadcast on UN TV. And apologies for the language of the UN which can be boring and flat. 

The 79th session of the United Nations General  Assembly (UNGA) will take place  from Tuesday, September 10, 2024, to Tuesday, September 24, 2024, in New York City.  The session will open at 3 PM local time. The general debate will take place from 

Tuesday, September 24 to Saturday, September 28, and on Monday, September 30. The theme for the 2024 General  Assembly is "Leaving no one behind: acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human  dignity for present and future generations". The IFBPW usually gets 2 tickets to the events. Leaders of many countries  attend the opening meetings and speak. 

The Summit of the Future will take place on September 22-23 at the UN in New York City before the General  Assembly 

The Sustainable Development Goals are badly off track. The aim of the Summit is twofold:  

• accelerate efforts to meet our existing international commitments, and  

• take concrete steps to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. 

This will be achieved through an action-oriented outcome document called the Pact for the Future which will be  negotiated and endorsed by countries in the lead-up to and during the Summit in September 2024. The result  will be a world – and an international system – that is better prepared to manage the challenges we face now and  in the future, for the sake of all humanity and for future generations. The Summit of the Future will create the  conditions in which implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development can more readily be  achieved. It will do so by building on the outcome of the 2023 SDG Summit The Sustainable Development Goals.  Note that this is an implementation document, not a policy statement. The UN has always been better at  negotiating policy but not implementing it.