The UN Summit of the Future was billed as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ‘forge a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future’, a recommitment to the Sustainable Development Goals; at the Summit, States adopted the Pact for the Future.

To many in civil society the Pact felt like a letdown, stopping short of the deep shifts needed to address our broken social contract and change how we approach our economies, societies, our planet. Particularly as feminists, witnessing the struggle to keep even existing commitments on gender inequality in the Pact is a depressing reminder of how much work lies ahead on the path to a just future.

We urgently need a transformative shift towards economies and societies that centre care and wellbeing of people and planet, that invest in care services and infrastructure, to ensure the universal right to care, decent work and green industries, rather than increasing wealth for a few. But how can we shift the inertia of economies wedded to ever-increasing profits and GDP growth? 

The day before the Summit for the Future, Oxfam and partners convened a discussion on this, co-chaired by Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and Alexandra Haas of Oxfam México, with experts Bisrat K Dessalegn from Akina Mama wa Afrika, Verónica Montúfar of Public Services International, Chidi King of the International Labour Organization, and Raquel Coello of UN Women. What follows is based on their input during the panel.