Taking Stock of 2023 and Looking Ahead to 2024: How to Combine Realism with Hope?

Moreover, the United Nations (UN) will host the “Summit of the Future” in September 2024, offering an opportunity to assess the future needs of the multilateral system in the years and decades ahead. [...] Challenges in the shadows: spotlight on “forgotten conflicts” The effects of the Ukraine invasion and now the conflict in the Middle East have distracted international attention away from other conflicts. [...] “Conflict risks will continue to shift in nature, away from national civil wars to the more local and the more global.” → This has indeed materialized, with a notable increase in internationalized conflicts, including the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine, the horizontal escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the evolving patterns of international involvement in the Sahel and Yemen. [...] The UN witnessed the emergence of a vibrant and highly contested debate surrounding the overarching development model, including the significance of industrial policy, sustainable consumption and production, as well as the approach to gender, inclusion, and human rights. [...] Most notably, we failed to thoroughly assess the inherent unsustainability of the situation in the OPT, and we overlooked the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) as a significant issue in 2023.