Women cooperative in Merzouga, Morocco. Credit: Forus/Both Nomads

By Mavalow Christelle Kalhoule
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Oct 30 2025 (IPS)

Thirty years ago, world leaders gathered in Copenhagen and made a promise: people would be at the center of development. This November, Heads of State and Government will meet again in Doha, Qatar, for the Second World Summit for Social Development or WSSD2.

For civil society, the Second World Summit for Social Development is a call to action to reshape social contracts, rebuild trust, and mobilise for implementation and accountability so that “leave no one behind” becomes more than a slogan. And civil society can help make that happen, not as bystanders, but as solution providers and accountability partners.

At the same time, governments also expect the private sector to share and take up responsibilities, not only by creating jobs, but by driving social development more rapidly and on a larger scale

“Solutions” are already here, in the form of community-rooted “fixes” and strategies.

Civil society and movements are working hard: from expanding social protection for informal workers, to youth alliances linking skills training with decent, safe jobs. Investments in the care economy are creating fair work, easing the burden on women, and improving childhood and support for older people. Civic groups are making local budgets transparent, while digital inclusion programs are designed with persons with disabilities and rural communities.

These ideas have been adopted and funded. What they need now is political will, stable support, and true collaboration between governments, civil society, and communities.

From slogans to systems: a practical agenda for Doha and beyond

To move from aspiration to action, we propose five concrete steps that governments, United Nations agencies, and civil society can take together starting in Doha.

1) Set up a national platform for social development in every country by mid-2026.
Give it a public mandate, a diverse membership, and a simple job: translate the declaration’s three pillars into a country plan with milestones, budget linkages, and annual public reviews. Include unions, employers, women’s rights groups, youth networks and Older People’s Associations, organisations of persons with disabilities, faith groups, and local authorities. Build in independent monitoring and a public dashboard so people can see progress and gaps.

2) Protect and expand social protection with a focus on those most often left out.
Adopt or update a national social protection strategy that commits to at least a two-percentage-point annual increase in coverage until universal floors are reached, as the declaration encourages. Prioritise universal child benefits, disability-inclusive schemes, and lifecycle guarantees for older persons. Publish grievance mechanisms and coverage maps down to district level.

3) Link promises to money.
Ask finance and planning ministries to table, within 12 months, a “social spending compact” that identifies protected budget lines for health, education, and social protection, lays out debt management measures that shield social spending, and commits to transparent tax reforms to broaden fiscal space fairly. Invite multilateral banks to align country frameworks and provide concessional windows for social policy, as the declaration urges.

4) Close the digital divide as a social policy priority, not a tech afterthought.
Treat access to affordable internet, digital assistive technologies, and digital public infrastructures and assistance as an enabler of social rights. Co-design digital inclusion targets with communities and invest in last-mile connectivity, inclusive ID systems, and digital literacy, while safeguarding rights and privacy.

5) Build accountability into the calendar.
Use the UN Commission for Social Development in early 2026 as the first checkpoint: each government should present its national platform’s workplan, spending compact outline, and coverage targets. Regionally, UN commissions can convene mid-year stock-takes. Civil society will publish parallel reports that track delivery, spotlight gaps, and lift up solutions that can be scaled.

The promise — and the gaps — of Doha

The already agreed Doha Political Declaration restates the three pillars of social development and links them explicitly to human rights and non-discrimination. It nods to today’s realities: deepening inequalities; demographic shifts; and the digital divide that keeps billions offline.

There is progress to welcome. For the first time, the text recognises the rights of older persons. It commits to universal social protection, including “social protection floors” that guarantee basic income security and essential services throughout the life course.

But the text is cautious where courage is needed. Financing is the missing bridge. The declaration references recent global financing discussions (including the Seville outcomes under the Financing for Development track), yet stops short of specifying how countries will protect social spending while tackling debt, or how multilateral banks will resource social policy at scale.

It says little about crisis settings: places where conflict, disasters, or displacement make social development both hardest and most urgent.

Universal health coverage appears, but without the strength advocates for sexual and reproductive health and rights or for non-communicable diseases hoped for.

And while the declaration acknowledges digital transformation, it does not spell out practical steps to close the divides that map so closely onto poverty, geography, gender, and disability.

None of that should deter us. As Essi Lindstedt of Fingo in Finland, reminds us “This is not only the time for declarations, it’s the time for delivery”.

The negotiation window may be closed, but the implementation window is wide open. The real work begins in capitals, municipalities, and communities, channeling the urgency and hope of citizens for dignity and wellbeing. “Poverty should not be seen as natural. Social policy can end poverty. Therefore, social policy should be managed as a global investment that enables every person, community and country to chart their own course to thriving.”

“We must go to the grassroots. Since Copenhagen, in the Sahel and particularly in Chad, our communities continue to struggle for access to water, to the land, healthcare, education, food, and essential infrastructure. We are facing security challenges, the simple fact of living together. All of these challenges are deeply interconnected and addressing them means putting human dignity at the center of development. Across the whole chain of actors — economic, social, and political — we must never lose sight of the most vulnerable,” says Jacques Ngarassal, of CILONG, the civil society network in Tchad.

“We need to ensure social cohesion”.

From closed negotiations to open implementation

That is where civil society comes in. National coalitions and grassroots organisations are already demonstrating that social progress is possible when communities lead.

The declaration invites this by calling for “multi-stakeholder engagement” and stronger national coordination to avoid policy silos. We should take that invitation literally, insisting on inclusion while modeling it: intergenerational, gender-responsive, disability-inclusive, locally led.

The next stage must therefore shift the focus from consultation to co-creation. Governments cannot deliver on the declaration alone. When it comes to financing what matters – civil society can connect those dots domestically.

As Carlos Arana of the Asociación Nacional de Centros (ANC) in Peru noted, many countries face “policy incoherence”: ambitious social plans undermined by debt pressures and austerity. Others are excluded from concessional finance because they have crossed an arbitrary income threshold, even where inequalities remain deep.

“We see two realities today. On one hand, our societies have moved toward greater equality; yet on the other, deep inequalities persist. We can say we have made some progress, but at this moment, what matters most is not to go backward. Around the world, there is growing concern about the weakening of democracies as conservative forces regain strength. This rollback is most visible in social policies and in the shrinking spaces for participation that many of our countries opened decades ago,” adds Josefina Huamán, Executive Secretary of ANC which is also the secretary of la Mesa de Articulación de Asociaciones Nacionales y Redes de ONGs de América Latina y el Caribe.

“In my own country, for example, spaces created 20 years ago to build consensus between the State, civil society, and political parties have eroded. They have weakened because a ruling class, empowered elites who perhaps never truly disappeared, have reclaimed hegemony. What is vanishing is that participatory spirit — the affirmation of men and women of all ages and backgrounds as active subjects in democracy. This conservative, or even neoconservative, resurgence is something we are witnessing clearly in Latin America — in Bolivia, in Argentina, in Peru — and it should deeply concern us all.”

The solution is to rethink how we measure and resource progress. Moving “beyond GDP” means judging success by well-being, equity, and sustainability. It also means linking Doha’s commitments to the broader Financing for Development agenda and to reforms of the international financial architecture.

Civil society is already leading: generating citizen data, advocating tax justice, and pressing for transparency in public spending. Governments and donors must now back these efforts with coherent policy and long-term, flexible funding.

The Doha Declaration closes one chapter and opens another. Civil society is ready. Open the door, and we will help carry this agenda from the conference hall to the places where it matters most: the neighborhoods, villages, and city blocks where trust is rebuilt and futures are made.

As Zia ur Rehman, Executive Director of the Pakistan Development Alliance and Chair of the Asia Development Alliance, reminds us:

“The true legacy of the Second World Summit for Social Development will not be the text agreed in Doha, but the accountability and hope we build afterwards. Civil society has shown we are ready. The question now is whether leaders are willing to meet us halfway.”

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Mavalow Christelle Kalhoule is Forus Chair