2024 Year in Review
During 2024, Project Starling engaged senior diplomats, Global South thought leaders, civil society, and the media across a wide variety of geographies, proving itself uniquely able to foster dialogue and action that preserve and expand effective multilateral cooperation at a crucial juncture.
Our Impact
Launched in 2023, Project Starling dedicated the bulk of its work in 2024 toward making the September Summit of the Future – a gathering which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described as vital in bringing “multilateralism back from the brink” – a success. In addition, toward year end, we were increasingly focused on support for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development to be held in Spain in June-July 2025.
Project Starling’s plan for the 2024 Summit of the Future was built upon patient, deliberate work to build trust and foster collaboration. Despite an international environment rife with geopolitical tensions, our approach – bringing together the right people at the right time in carefully curated settings across an array of geographies – proved particularly valuable.
Project Starling’s work around the Summit focused on four key areas:
Building trust among diplomats. By identifying potential constellations of like-minded actors and creating spaces for candid dialogue between these key negotiators and decision-makers we were able to help maintain momentum toward an agreement.
Shaping positive narratives. In a year when negative headlines were the norm, we helped shift the conversation around multilateral reform from critique to constructive engagement.
Amplifying Global South perspectives. A significant achievement was our work in creating spaces for Global South thought leaders to shape the multilateral reform agenda. A retreat in Bogotá, Colombia in April 2024, co-hosted with Southern Voice and CEPEI, demonstrated the strong appetite among Global South experts and activists for proactive engagement in global governance discussions while reinforcing for negotiators that effectively incorporating Global South perspectives can help drive agreements forward.
Setting expectations for reform in the Pact of the Future. At a moment when north-south tensions could have derailed progress, Project Starling helped set realistic yet ambitious expectations for the Summit. Through our convenings and thought leadership, we emphasized accountability for outcomes and seeing the Summit not as a one-time event but as the continuation of a longer process of global governance reform.
Major Convenings & Media
Much of our work during the year was accomplished by bringing key actors with different perspectives together in more informal settings to brainstorm, collaborate, and – where necessary – work through their differences. Some of these sessions included hosting senior UN diplomats from multilateralist-minded Member States at the Pocantico Center in New York, the a Global South thought leaders’ retreat in Colombia, a series of Track 1.5 roundtables in the build-up to the Summit of the Future, a side event during the United Nations Summit of the Future Action Days in New York City to help explore how best to deliver on existing commitments, and an engaging panel conversation at Instituto Cervantes in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in partnership with New America, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and the International Crisis Group.
In addition, Project Starling and the International Peace Institute co-hosted several gatherings of Least Developed Countries representatives to discuss strategy for the Financing for Development Conference.
Project Starling staff and analysis were increasingly featured in international media during 2024. From being cited in the Washington Post and Politico, to interviews with Al Jazeera and UN Dispatch, to commentary published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Project Starling is an increasingly important source of insights for journalists covering the United Nations and multilateralism more broadly.
Looking Ahead to 2025
The year 2025 is shaping up to be a turbulent one for multilateralism while also presenting important moments for potential progress. Project Starling is committed to build upon the networks and relationships it has established to preserve and expand effective multilateral cooperation. We want to create spaces to co-design a vision for the multilateralism of the future, with particular attention to perspectives from the Global South and Least Developed Countries in an international system that works for all.
The Conference on Financing for Development offers one such crucial opportunity. Building on our successful work with Least Developed Countries in 2024, we will continue to shape strategic dialogue and coalition-building that advance meaningful reform pathways for the international financial architecture. Following the intense relationship-building and convening work of 2024, we are deepening our analytical capacity to support long-term reform efforts. This research agenda will focus on understanding the role of NGO-Small State Coalitions in a new global order, and on the diplomatic capacity at the UN across countries and groupings.
More broadly, we will continue to make the case for international cooperation and the enduring benefits of multilateralism.
