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. The groups can lead to further research, campaigning or other action.
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.
CURRENT WORKING GROUPS
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 is being led by Barrie Oxtoby of UNA Shropshire and Suheil Shahryar of UNA Harpenden. Following the release of UNA-UK Strategy 2026-30, Barrie and Suheil are offering their systemic transformation approach to UNA groups and partners to align their objectives and operational plans with the UNA-UK strategy. They would be keen to hear from interested UNA group leaders. For information, see here.
PREVIOUS WORKING GROUPS
Working Group on the Security Council Veto
The Group was convened by UNA Luton on 15 November 2024. Its outline proposal for an Accountable Veto Resolution Initiative (AVRI) was supported by the UNA-LASER Policy Conference on 15 March 2025 and the full proposal was launched at the UNA-UK National Conference on 12 April 2025.
AVRI asserts the primacy of the rules-based global order by strengthening the role of the 10 elected members of the Security Council. Whenever a Veto is deployed and a debate is held as required under Resolution 76/262, the elected members would test its compliance with the UN Charter. If they conclude that it was not compliant and that disunity among the permanent members had prevented the Security Council from exercising its responsibilities, they may recommend under Resolution 377A that the General Assembly calls for collective action, including armed force if necessary. The Group also supports the complementary initiative of Professor Jennifer Trahan of New York University for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal limits of the Veto.
The priority is now implementation. The Group is engaged at ministerial level with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It works with the ImPact Coalition on Strengthening International Judicial Institutions, the World Federalist Movement–Institute for Global Policy and the Veto Campaign of the Amnesty International Activist-led UN Network.
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