39th ACUNS Annual Meeting

We are excited to announce that registration for the Annual Meeting is open now! The registration deadline is 11:59 PM EST, Monday, 30th March 2026 for presenters.

Description

The 2026 ACUNS Annual Meeting will examine how multilateral governance can be maintained despite challenges from major and emerging powers, continuing armed conflicts, humanitarian emergencies, overheated planet, and other crises. In September 2024, the Summit of the Future galvanized attention worldwide on rebuilding trust and gaps in global governance; reaffirming the UN Charter, 2030 Agenda, and other existing commitments; and renewing the multilateral system to prepare for over-the-horizon challenges and opportunities. Responding to unilateral funding cuts by the world body’s largest donor, the Secretary-General’s UN80 Initiative, in 2025, is intended to streamline and consolidate the UN system, while building momentum for delivery of the Pact for the Future – the 2024 Summit’s chief outcome – in the run-up to its 2028 high-level review. Together, the Pact and UN80 aspire to re-commit Member States  to multilateral cooperation and international law and to reform global institutions toward resilience, equity, innovation, and intergenerational justice. The current international climate calls into question some aspects of these hopeful scenarios.

The Annual Meeting will critically assess the UN system’s capacity to facilitate multilateral cooperation and reflect on its performance since the last comprehensive UN system-wide reform effort, the UN60 World Summit in 2005. We invited panels and papers that examine challenges to multilateralism in current or previous times, how they have been and can be overcome, and what opportunities they provide. We also welcomed contributions that focus on the tension between power and norms, between political declarations and actions/implementation in various fields.

Submissions were invited under one of the following broad thematic categories:

• Civil society, youth, local communities
• The Pact for the Future, UN80 Initiative, UN Charter reform, and UN financial crisis
• Challenges to reforming multilateral institutions and possible solutions/opportunities
• Regional organizations as building blocks for global governance innovation
• International law and international courts
• Peace, security, and conflict prevention
• Global economic governance and financing for development, poverty and inequality reduction
• Human rights, refugees, and humanitarian assistance
• Climate change and the environment
• Science, technology, and digital governance

The call for submissions has been closed.
Prospective applicants should contact admin@acuns.org with any questions.

Selected participants will be notified in February 2026.

Richard Ponzio
Senior Fellow & Director
Stimson Center

Vesselin Popovski
Professor and Vice-Dean
Jindal Global Law School

Julia Seixas
Professor
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

Adriana Abdenur
Co-President
Global Fund for a New Economy

2026 ACUNS Lecture in Honor of Kofi Annan

Jean-Pierre Lacroix
Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations
United Nations

2026 ACUNS Lecture in Honor of John Holmes

Kitty van der Heijden
Assistant Secretary-General & Deputy-Executive Director
UNICEF