These Working Groups bring together groups and individual members to work together on key areas. There are no set structures or required outcomes. They mostly meet online and might want to develop campaigns, awareness-raising materials, presentations, resolutions or reports. If there is a topic you would like to research and take forward in consultation with other interested members, do contact us about starting a new UNA Working Group.
Digital & Emerging Technologies
In December, the UN created the Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, to support the newly adopted Global Digital Compact (GDC). The GDC is a framework that supports an open, sustainable, fair, safe and secure digital future for everyone. The GDC will seek to address governance, inclusion, and access across technology and AI. This new Working Group will investigate and decide in which areas of the GDC we can lend support, and develop plans and actions to advance its objectives. All are all welcome to join. People with experience in governance, community-led technology groups, open source software and experience in emerging technologies (eg blockchain, AI, BioTech, IoT) are encouraged to contact us. We expect to meet remotely every other month, with planned in-person gatherings occasionally. As we focus on particular topics, meetings may occur more regularly. Please contact Cameron McAnsh for more information and to join the group.
Local Implementation of the SDGs
Several LASER UNA groups, working with their local Councils on local implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, have created this Working Group to support and learn from each other. Some UNA Groups have several years’ experience of this work and have established effective local SDG committees; others are just starting. Groups usually work with other local civil society groups: to consider how best Councils can develop their infrastructure to meet local needs; to persuade their Councils to adopt the SDGs into their strategic planning; and to encourage their Councils to submit their Voluntary National Reviews to the United Nations. Please contact Co-Chair of UNA Tunbridge Wells and Wealden, Marguerita Morton, if you would like to join this Working Group.
SDG Guidance and Use Cases
Since September 2024 this Working Group has been meeting every 8 weeks to exchange experience and collaborate to promote the adoption and implementation of the SDGs by UNA groups. One of the group’s members is a UK representative at the ISO/UNDP PAS 53002:2024, Guidelines for contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The ISO/UNDP guidelines address: setting SDG impact objectives and targets; engaging with stakeholders; collecting data on impacts; generating options; making risk-based decisions; and understanding trade-offs to increase positive impact. We intend to generate an overview resource from this standard for the benefit of other UNA groups. We shall also discuss specific SDG adoption, research and use cases by various groups, including SDG initiatives on SDG2 (hunger) and SDG 13 (climate impact) in UNA Enfield and the Barnets. Please contact Ali Hessami for further information.
Achieving Peace in Europe
The group, launched on 21st May, aims to develop a resolution on Defending Europe Responsibly for submission to the 2026 UNA LASER Policy Conference, to be accepted by LASER and then presented to the UK Foreign Secretary and other European leaders. The background information to the formation of the working group can be found here, with further information here in the paper How does Europe defend itself responsibly? by Suheil Sharyar. To join the group, please register here.
Tyranny, Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction – Interrogating the Draft Second United Nations Charter
The Group aims to assess how well this Second UN Charter (written by an international consensus on UN reform) will strengthen International Law through a series of discussions each starting with an attempt to ‘diagnose’ the root causes of our unpeaceful world, which in its present course, is predicted to make itself extinct. It will then try to find, in each case, a ‘cure’ for this ‘disease’, working from our own experiences and our findings in the ‘Second Charter’. Finally, in each case, and later in summary, it will attempt to expedite these ‘cures’ through the ‘force of law’ – as expressed in all the various forms of International Law. The group will be chaired by LASER Head of Policy, Peter Webster, and will convene by zoom. For more information and to join the group, please contact Greta Vipond. Even if you do not want to join the group, Greta Vipond would be very interested to receive your responses to the following 3 questions, as this would add greatly to the work of the group:
- What are the basic requirements for effective, and dynamic World Governance at this moment in time?
- What are the core principles you would like to see as the basis of a Second UN Charter?
- Which core principles should we retain that are embedded in the present UN Charter?
Imagining a UN Fit for the 21st Century
The classical and inflexible governance of the UN, built around classical institutional models of post war era, renders it unfit for a dynamic and new multipolar world order. The UN governance can and should be re-engineered for the brave new world. This Working Group is adopting a novel research method creatively to explore the drivers and opportunities for a reformed structure and governance, leading to a UN that will be agile, inclusive, representative, transparent, accountable and fair to the needs, rights and values of the international community in this century of exponential change and shifting power dynamics. It is intended to produce a consensus-based, ideal structure/governance/regulatory model and associated brief narrative for the UN in the 21st century. The groups has agreed that the aim of the creative study is UN Reforms through Diverse, Representative and Agile Coalitions. For more information and to join, please contact Ali Hessami.
Systemic Transformation Network
This Working Group will be launched at the UNA Groups’ Meeting on 16th September by Professor Barrie Oxtoby of UNA Shropshire. Barrie has many years of experience working with the UN, including with Kofi Annan, on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Barrie and Suheil Shahryar (UNA Harpenden) are planning to develop systemic transformation frameworks to deliver the SDGs. They are currently clarifying their methodologies. They would be keen to hear from others with experience on systemic transformations. For information, see here.
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