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At a time of geopolitical upheaval, shifting alignments, and growing uncertainty around the future of global and regional institutions, trust remains the essential foundation that enables cooperation between states, societies, and other stakeholders. New kinds of leadership, reinvigorated institutions, and renewed respect for international norms, policies, and laws are needed to reverse the ongoing breakdown of trust within and between countries, which is undermining efforts to build a more secure and just world — or “just security.”
This fourth edition of the Future of International Cooperation Report (FIC’26) critically examines growing trust deficits across the spheres of global and regional politics (including diplomacy and mediation), economics (including business and technology), and security and justice (including people and preventing violent extremism) — even in cases where national interests overlap and the benefits of coordinated action are unclear.
With a fresh reconceptualization of trust in this second quarter of the 21st century and the attendant multiplier effect of social capital investments, FIC’26 charts a positive reform and accountability agenda to leverage the confluence of a new United Nations Secretary-General (from January 1, 2027) with World Social Summit and Summit of the Future follow-through, alongside initial steps toward a Post-2030 Development Agenda in the lead-up to the September 2027 SDG Summit in New York.
Executive Summary
“Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world’s existential problems.”
Under the banner of “Diplomacy, Dialogue, and Diversity,” the Doha Forum has promoted for more than two decades a spirited and open interchange of ideas to innovate and improve international policy-making that drives action-oriented networks. Through this Future of International Cooperation Report 2026
With a thematic focus on “Redefining Global Trust,” this year’s report gives special attention to how global and regional governance can best restore and expand trust in global and regional politics (including diplomacy and mediation), economics (including business and technology), and security and justice (including protecting people and preventing violent extremism). Societies function best when there is trust among their members, which is slowly earned over time. Like any social arrangement, trust is the glue that keeps cooperative relationships together and reliable, whether within a country, a region, or globally . But both mistrust and distrust at the global level have impacts at all levels of governance, eroding a sense of community, impeding the sharing of accurate information, lowering respect for international law, and undermining belief in the value of global public goods.
Clear, foundational principles are essential for countering trust deficits through effective global and regional governance. Applied to efforts to reform political institutions, fill economic and technological gaps, and advance security and justice in global governance, these principles include transparency, legitimacy, effectiveness, integrity cooperation, collaboration, accountability, reciprocity
With the goal of redefining and reinvigorating trust through more effective, networked, and inclusive global and regional governance, the report’s chief recommendations include:
Redefining Global Trust
Establishing a Multilateral Information Integrity Council
International cooperation is under growing strain as the information environment deteriorates through the spread of technology-facilitated dis- and misinformation, undermining public trust and collective efforts to address global challenges such as health, the environment, and cybersecurity. Despite growing recognition of these risks, the UN and other international fora have yet to establish a dedicated institution or platform to advance information integrity. Building on the recently agreed Global Digital Compact at the Summit of the Future, the UN should establish a Multilateral Information Integrity Councilas a system-wide scientific and coordinating body composed of technical experts to assess information environment degradation, develop shared standards and recommendations, and coordinate international responses to threats to information integrity. The Council would provide a unified multilateral framework for advancing information integrity across the UN Secretariat, UNESCO, UNDP, ITU, World Bank, and other relevant bodies.
Building a Global AI Hub and Shared Computing Infrastructure
Ensuring that artificial intelligence contributes to inclusive development, underpinned by strong bonds of trust, requires closing widening disparities in access to — and the growing costs of — the computing power, digital infrastructure, data, and technical expertise needed to develop and deploy large-scale AI systems. Countries with greater financial and technological resources are better positioned to benefit from the AI transformation, while developing countries face persistent constraints on AI readiness. A Global AI Hub could translate AI and broader technology related international commitments (e.g., from the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Global Digital Compact) into shared computing infrastructure and technical resources accessible to developing countries, alongside mechanisms for improved knowledge-sharing, research collaboration, and capacity-building. This would help to ensure that access to advanced AI capabilities is not determined primarily by national income and that technological transformation contributes to more broad-based, socioeconomic development worldwide.
Streamlining and Reforming UN Counter-Terrorism Efforts
The UN’s approach to countering terrorism (CT) and preventing violent extremism (PVE) has become imbalanced, as emphasis on security operations to combat terrorism sometimes overshadows safeguards for human rights and the rule of law, weakening UN legitimacy and creating opportunities for governments to misuse counter-extremism measures to suppress political opposition and restrict fundamental freedoms. Reforms to strengthen the UN’s approach could include consolidating overlapping counter-terrorism and preventing violent extremism functions, clarifying mandates and institutional responsibilities, strengthening coordination across UN entities and with regional organizations, establishing common human rights and rule-of-law safeguards for CT/PVE programming, and developing stronger monitoring and accountability mechanisms to ensure that counter-terrorism measures do not enable the suppression of political opposition or fundamental freedoms. These steps would improve the trust and legitimacy of UN CT/PVE efforts, while strengthening Member States’ capacity to address terrorism in accordance with international law.
Redefining Regional Trust
Building an Inter-Regional Early Warning and Preventive Diplomacy Network
Regional conflict prevention mechanisms often engage only after political crises have escalated into violence, constitutional breakdown, or widespread instability, missing an opportunity to prevent conflict and restore basic levels of trust before tensions deepen. An Inter-Regional Early Warning and Preventive Diplomacy Network would institutionalize continuous monitoring, early dialogue among stakeholders, and timely engagement before the initial outbreak or recurrence of deadly conflict. Coordinated with UN preventive diplomacy efforts, the network’s individual hubs (embedded within existing regional organization) would strengthen regional ownership, while advancing shared global peace and security goals. Employing distinct political and cultural sensitivities, their primary function would be to monitor early warning indicators of political erosion, including constitutional crises and growing social unrest, and, where needed, activate preventive diplomacy measures to avert a crisis.
Expanding and Deepening Regional and Inter-regional Trade Agreements
Despite continued global trade growth, geopolitical tensions, protectionism, surging energy costs, and shifting supply chains are creating unpredictable market access and volatile investment flows globally that disproportionately affect the poorest and most vulnerable countries. Meanwhile, fragmented regional trade rules, customs procedures, and compliance requirements further constrain their ability to benefit from economic integration. Stronger regional and inter-regional trade cooperation can sustain economic collaboration, ecological interdependence, and rebuild trust by improving trade and investment conditions through technical assistance, investment facilitation, environmental protection regulations, and capacity-building, while enabling regional economic communities, businesses, and other stakeholders to adapt production networks to unpredictable global supply chain dynamics.
Embedding Enforcement Mechanisms into Regional Security Arrangements to Improve Trust
Ensuring compliance remains a critical challenge to the credibility and effectiveness of regional security arrangements, which often lack binding legal obligations, trustworthy enforcement mechanisms, and effective dispute-resolution procedures. To design better security arrangements that meet the needs of a region’s countries and cities, clearer compliance and accountability mechanisms are needed that strengthen regional trust, deterrence, and collective commitments, including by establishing independent monitoring bodies, requiring transparent reporting on regional security agreement implementation, and creating predictable procedures for dispute resolution and corrective action.
From the Summit of the Future to the Post-2030 Development Agenda: Restoring Trust in a Fractured World
The report concludes by exploring the multiple, potential “win-win” implementation linkages between the Political Declaration adopted at the World Social Summit(2025), the Sevilla Commitment of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (2025), and the Pact for the Future endorsed at the Summit of the Future (2024). Progress in redefining trust, in all its dimensions, depends on the respective success of the follow-throughs to each of these global diplomatic gatherings, in identifying and pursuing the rooted and varied connections between them.
Several of the innovations for restoring and expanding trust through global and regional governance introduced in this report offer novel entry points for deepening the multiple, mutually reinforcing action agendas of these recent successive summits, which are now poised to shape an ambitious new generation of development goals (for the period 2030 until 2045 and the UN’s centenary) in the run-up to next year’s (September 2027) SDG Summit in New York. Reducing distrust, injustice, lawlessness , and the too casual abrogation of accepted norms and customs requires political and moral courage, alongside a robust vision of just security, as central to the Post-2030 Development Agenda — not only from national governments and international organizations, but from their partners across civil society and in the business community. Integral to this transformation is a renewed commitment to international cooperation grounded in diplomacy dialogue diversity
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