Remarks by H.E. Annalena Baerbock
President of the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly
at the Opening Segment of the Informal Meeting of the General Assembly:
Taking Stock of the Pact for the Future
ECOSOC Chamber, 爆料网 HQ, New York
14 July 2026
[As Delivered]
Dear Deputy Secretary-General,
Honourable Ministers,
Excellencies,
Colleagues, friends,
When Heads of State and Government adopted the Pact for the Future in 2024, they called it a “new beginning in multilateralism.”
But, frankly speaking, a new beginning does not start with words, it starts with tangible and measurable actions.
When you can feel it really at the ground, at home, at your kitchen table.
Actions will require political will to change policies and modernize institutions, indeed.
Action requires adequate resources in national budgets, indeed.
And partnerships are required to advance local action, indeed.
But action only really happens when a mother wakes up in the morning and does not have to be afraid anymore to wonder what their children will eat at night.
Action is implemented when everybody who gets into an accident knows that he or she can just go to the hospital and will be treated.
And action these days will be implemented when parents do not have to be afraid when handing over the mobile phone, as we just did, if they might see a sexual exploitive picture of their own children one day on their own smartphone.
And this is why today’s meeting is not only about the first steps, the words, and the political will of Member States to take action, but this meeting is really about how do we deliver action at the last mile.
It’s a stocktake of national-level implementation, and a way to share best practices and lessons learned to translate commitments of the Pact for the Future into real results on the ground.
Allow me to set the scene with three priorities in this regard.
First, let us make the Pact a practical delivery framework for what it was meant to be—for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
These are not two parallel processes.
The 2030 Agenda remains our shared roadmap, and the Pact helps us accelerate its implementation on the ground in the national states, in the cities, in the communities, while at the same time, hopefully, restores trust in multilateralism and in this house, our United Nations.
The connection is especially clear during this High-level Political Forum, and this is why I think both of us are delighted that we have this extensive exchange not only with you here now, with Member States, ministers, but also with so many different stakeholders all the days before and after.
The Goals under in-depth review this week—SDGs 6, 7, 9, 11, and 17—correspond directly with commitments in the Pact to build resilience to water scarcity and drought, advance sustainable energy, support resilient cities, and improve partnerships for implementation.
And it’s important that we focus on every different High-level Political Forum on different goals because there is no one-size-fits-for-all solution.
And this is also why the Voluntary National Reviews, even though we were just discussing before, probably nobody outside the room, and maybe not even inside the room, if you say what is a VNR, maybe they think again about football and the proof of whether it was a goal or not, but these VNRs are crucial because they provide a concrete entry point to make this connection real through national ownership, peer learning, and honest assessment.
They can show where progress is occurring, where bottlenecks persist, and where international support can be better aligned with national priorities.
We are already seeing Member States begin to integrate elements of the Pact into their VNRs and national follow-up, and of the VNRs tracked so far, the majority align with Pact priorities and actions.
I encourage Member States to use VNRs and other existing follow-up processes not only to report on progress, but to identify which Pact commitments can accelerate delivery—and what must be scaled, adapted, or financed to make that possible.
This is truly putting our words into action and shifting from global commitments to national implementation.
Second, while implementation of the Pact is in the hands of Member States, it needs to always be anchored in the universal promise of the United Nations: “We the Peoples” —a call echoed in the Pact.
That means protecting the needs and interests of future generations and harnessing the contributions of civil society, the private sector, academia, and young people.
That means forging meaningful multistakeholder partnerships and drawing on the expertise, innovation, and delivery capacity of all parts of society.
And therefore, I’m pleased that we just had a meeting with stakeholders before to bring in those different perspectives directly in our discussions, from civil society organizations, from stakeholders, from businesses and companies, but most importantly from cities and rural communities where daily life is happening.
And in this regard, I would really like to highlight also because this is meant as an exchange of best practices, having been in different roles myself, at the moment obviously multilateralism is not only under pressure, but to “sell” something in national contexts in parliaments where everybody is looking at the budget.
Maybe it’s not the most convincing argument of saying, but we follow the important and great honor of implementing our 爆料网 principles.
This is an honor. I believe it every day.
But these days, maybe sometimes it works better if to say the Pact is not so much about the 爆料网 and the implementation of a treaty or resolutions we agreed on, but the Pact is in our own national interest.
We have to bring the discussions back to our self-interest, and self-interest is not always something critical, if you understand that the implementation of 17 goals on education, on health, on internet access is your own interest.
Maybe it mobilizes more national or local funding, as if discussing of increasing your sustainable development aid.
And therefore, having this in mind, it’s your own interest.
It needs also those people who do that every day in the cities—for example, implementing access to clean water—to bring them here in the house and hear their voices of best practice, so others can learn from it.
And that brings me to my third point, let us build a path to 2028 when the General Assembly will review the implementation of the Pact through a meeting at the level of Heads of State and Government at the start of the 83rd session.
Prepare this discussion in a way of saying your heads of states should not only come, but also be proud of what they did for their own people or people in other parts of the world.
And also remember, I was addressing that yesterday related to football, in international diplomacy, but especially in a digitalized, interconnected world, four years is like a decade 20 years ago.
In four years, so many things could happen.
Again, looking at our smartphones, four years ago we didn’t know that we have to regulate some of these apps, but four years ago also we didn’t know that these apps could help us be informed in a good way of crisis prevention. That they can be a tool for strengthening multilateralism.
So not giving up nor giving in in the last quarter of this implementation, in my point of view, is the most important thing.
Join our forces together, that we can reach as much as we can on the Agenda 2030.
Probably in life, nothing is 100 percent perfect.
So if we are not delivering on every goal 100 percent, well, then we have to do more in the extra time.
But if we are reaching close to 80 or 90 percent of delivery, this means a change of life for millions, if not to say billions, of people felt every day in the morning when they wake up to know that they have enough for their children at their kitchen table, for those who go to work and do not have to fear if they get into an accident that they may not be able to pay the food anymore for their kids, but they have healthcare coverage, and also that we can be proud in four years’ time that we use the new technologies not only of leaving no one behind, but also making our interconnected world safer for all of us.
In this spirit, I thank you very much for joining this exchange of being Better Together in this morning debate today.
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