The Second World Summit on Social Development (WSSD)

Doha, QATAR 04–06 November 2025

WHAT HAPPENED AT DOHA?

The Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD), organised by the United Nations General Assembly, was hosted by Qatar from November 4-6, 2025. The summit marked 30 years since the original World Summit in Copenhagen. The latter was celebrated for its vision but has been criticised for a lack of follow-through actions by national governments. The 2025 Doha Summit was explicitly designed to rectify this shortfall between stated intent and tangible action.

On the face of it, much good work took place. The UN said the Summit attracted more than 40 Heads of State and Government, 230 ministers and senior officials, and nearly 14,000 other attendees. Beyond formal plenaries and roundtables, there were more than 250 other “solution sessions”. These identified practical ways to advance universal rights to food; housing; decent work; social protection and social security; education; health; care systems and other public services; international labour standards; and the fight against poverty and inequality. However…

WHAT ARE THE KEY ISSUES?

Patchy progress across the world on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since the first World Summit in Copenhagen in 1995 has led the UN (through its World Social Report) to declare a “global social crisis”, marked by inequality, insecurity, and diminishing trust.

Key issues include:

• widening hunger and poverty: nearly 700 million people still live in extreme poverty, over 670 million with hunger; and massive inequality: the richest 1% of the global population own nearly half of global wealth.

• almost four billion people lack access to any form of social protection;

• intensifying climate-driven instability, which was cited as the single largest obstacle to social development.

The flagship Doha Summit outcome was the adoption of the Doha Political Declaration, a high-level resolution described as an “action-oriented political

declaration”, reaffirming global commitments and renewing the pledges made at the 1995 Copenhagen Summit. The Doha Political Declaration calls specifically for:

• the treatment of poverty eradication, decent work and social inclusion as interconnected priorities;

• an expansion of universal, gender-responsive social protection, and equitable access to health and education for all;

• the promotion of safe, inclusive digital transformation while countering disinformation and hate speech; and

• a “people-first approach” which ensures the full inclusion and participation of youth, older persons, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples and other marginalised groups in the shaping of policies which affect their lives.

BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DOHA POLITICAL DECLARATION

The relative lack of success in achieving the social development goals set since the 1995 Copenhagen Summit has at source a fundamental lack of political and financial will. A major barrier to the success of the new Doha Declaration is a fundamental lack of concrete, binding indicators and enforcement mechanisms to underpin with tangible, mandatory action the good intent within the Declaration.

Progress will depend instead on the “goodwill of nations,” a mechanism which has proven ineffective in delivering past climate and development goals. UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock highlighted this frustration, noting that often, “we have the solution, [but] we are either unable or unwilling to do what needs to be done”. Juan Somavia, who chaired the original 1995 summit, spoke in similar vein, saying that participants were, “very good at being ambitious, less so at how to implement.”

A further major shortfall within The Doha Declaration is an absence of agreed, fixed and agreed means to finance its own ambition. There is no binding, agreed means to address and reform the current global structures which protect concentrated wealth over social stability within individual countries, across regions and globally. The ultimate success of the Doha Summit will hinge on fundamentally shifting mindsets, to change social development from a voluntary pledge to mandatory requirements.

PROSPECTS FOR SUCCESS FOR THE DOHA POLITICAL DECLARATION

The 2025 World Social Summit in Doha was designed to be a new turning point after decades of unfulfilled promises since the 1995 Copenhagen Summit. Yet, despite its strong moral vision and appeals for justice, it risks becoming another aspirational gathering for want of tangible commitments and an internationally agreed means of enforcing these. In sum, the Declaration’s failure to establish binding obligations, financing mechanisms, or measurable accountability frameworks leaves its noble goals vulnerable to the same inertia that doomed its predecessor. Only a shift from pledge to practice, from fine words to tangible action, might enable the vision of the 2025 Doha Summit to become a feasible framework for inclusive, durable global development to be achieved.

Speaking at the closing press conference, President of the UN General Assembly Annalena Baerbock said the Summit marked a “deliberate shift” from identifying gaps to acting on proven solutions. “Copenhagen taught us 30 years ago that social development and inclusion are essential for strong societies,” she said. “We promised to leave no one behind. Social development is not a ‘nice to have’ nor an act of charity. It is in the self-interest of every country.” She further warned that hunger and poverty today are not caused by scarcity, but by conflict, inequality and political failures: “One of the biggest problems is not money as such. It is rather how it is invested.”

Current geopolitics suggest there is a real danger of Doha becoming largely empty words. The rise of nationalism and growing levels of animus towards refugees show the world is far from the age of global philanthropy needed to address global social development, poverty and inequality. Trump’s US is the standard bearer for formerly liberal Western nations turning in on themselves to the exclusion of all others. Across the Developed World, there has been a major shift away from funding of International Development generally. It is good that Doha took place. But it is hard to imagine the optional ‘goodwill’ from nations best placed to address social inequality being forthcoming either now or in the foreseeable future. The glass is, at best, half full. And at a time where both our global climate and geopolitics are heating up, the glass must obey the laws of nature. So, as it heats up, as of now this particular Social Development glass appears more likely to go from half full towards empty.