By: Ben Lough, Professor and Dean at the School of Social Work and Director of Social Innovation at the Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
This November, leaders from around the world will gather in Doha for the Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2). It has been thirty years since the first summit in Copenhagen set out an ambitious agenda for eradicating poverty, promoting decent work, and building inclusive societies. Much has changed since then, but the core challenge remains. How can we ensure that development is people-centered and just?
To address this challenge, four professional organizations are stepping forward with a united voice. The International Consortium for Social Development (ICSD), the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW), the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW), and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) are collaborating to participate in the Summit. This is the first time all four organizations have joined forces in this way to speak with one voice on the world stage.
This partnership exemplifies the principle of social integration that WSSD2 seeks to advance. Each organization brings a distinct perspective, focused respectively on research, education, policy, and practice. Together they convene diverse stakeholders from academia, practitioners, policy advocates, and development experts to work in concert. By aligning their agendas, the organizations send a powerful message: the challenges of our time demand unified, multidimensional responses. While their missions differ, they converge on a shared goal of advancing social development and ensuring that no one is left behind.
The significance of this collaboration is visible in the sessions the organizations will collectively co-sponsor in Doha. These events form a narrative arc beginning with the importance of voice, moving through the value of relationships and systems, and culminating in the affirmation of universal rights. Each partner reinforces the others: academic knowledge informing practice, practice realities informing policy, policy frameworks upholding rights, and all informed by a shared commitment to development that is inclusive, just, sustainable, and human centered. Together, they represent a holistic perspective of the contributions of social work and social policy to social development.
Complementary Sessions at WSSD2: Relationships, Systems, and Rights
Intergenerational Solidarity
The first side event, led by IFSW (in partnership with ICSD, IASSW, ICSD), will focus on intergenerational solidarity as a driver of social integration. This session highlights how fostering connection and mutual support between generations can counter social fragmentation and build more inclusive communities.
Today’s demographic shifts and rapid social changes make intergenerational approaches urgent and a promising method for social integration. By bringing youth, older persons, policymakers, practitioners, and academics into dialogue, the session will showcase innovative practices such as mentorship programs, youth–elder exchange initiatives, and family-centered community development models. These examples demonstrate how societies can strengthen cohesion and belonging through intergenerational ties, while also encouraging mutual learning where each generation passes on knowledge, skills, and cultural traditions to the other. Just as importantly, the session will highlight opportunities for policy innovation that intentionally embeds intergenerational perspectives into national and local strategies.
Relationships, whether between young and old, or across cultural and social divides, are presented as an antidote to the isolation and exclusion that plague many communities. Social integration is built on solidarity. When generations and communities are connected in meaningful ways, societies are capable of collective action — and through that action, they become more cohesive and resilient.
Transforming Systems for Social Development
The next part of the narrative arc shifts to systems, the institutional structures that shape opportunities, protections for people, and resources needed for such protections. If participation and solidarity create the conditions for inclusion, systems determine whether these aspirations can endure.
This session is led by ICSW in collaboration with the other three organizations. ICSW has long been a champion of comprehensive social protection and evidence-based policy. The discussion will ask how national welfare and development systems can be redesigned to ensure that no one falls through the cracks. It asks how integrated approaches across healthcare, education, employment, and housing might better advance the Summit’s core goals of eradicating poverty, promoting decent work, and fostering social inclusion.
Using examples such as the Social Protection Floor (a globally endorsed guarantee of basic income security and access to essential services) this session will illustrate how rights-based frameworks can anchor systems change. At the same time, it also looks at community-driven reforms, including ways local governments can co-design services with residents or integrate delivery across sectors to address interlinked needs.
This system-focused session underscores that inclusive development must be embedded into laws, policies, and institutional practices. It asserts that good intentions or isolated projects are not enough. Sustainable progress depends on frameworks that actively aim to reduce inequality and protect the most vulnerable. Through this lens, the four organizations demonstrate the strength of combining policy advocacy with practice and research. It is a reminder that structural reforms that connect the grassroots to the institutional are essential if social development is to move from an aspiration to reality.
Championing Rights and Dignity for All
The final strand of the arc centers on human rights. These rights are the bedrock principles that underlie all social development efforts. We are united in affirming that human rights and human dignity are non-negotiable foundations for justice. This session, led by IASSW, focuses on universalism: asserts that access to food, housing, education, healthcare, income security, and decent work are not merely policy preferences, they are fundamental rights.
IASSW’s commitment to embedding rights in social work education, IFSW’s consistent advocacy for ethical practice, ICSW’s long-standing vision of protecting the rights of marginalized groups, and ICSD’s focus on linking research to the practice of advancing human rights in social development all converge in this session. The dialogue will illustrate how adopting a rights-based approach transforms policy. For example, understanding poverty eradication as the fulfillment of the right to an adequate standard of living, or treating universal healthcare and education as obligations of the state. These are foundational guarantees that define the baseline of a just and inclusive society.
The session also acknowledges the stark gaps that persist. Millions of people lack access to basic social protection. Many are excluded from essential services based on sex, gender, disability, or other aspects of identity. For many people, discrimination is a tragic reality of daily life. These realities reveal how far we remain from realizing the promise of universal rights and the original intentions of the Copenhagen Declaration.
Addressing these gaps requires more than rhetoric. Together, these sessions assert that rights can only be realized when action takes place across all levels: at the micro level, through micro/mezzo solidarity that strengthens relationships and community ties; and at the macro level, through institutional reforms that embed rights in laws, policies, and systems. This final session underscores that social development advances human rights most effectively when these dimensions are each connected — guaranteeing that every person can live with dignity, free from want, fear, and exclusion.
ICSD’s Role: Partnership, Perspective, and Principle
For ICSD, joining this organizational alliance at WSSD2 is a strategic opportunity and a distinct honor. As a newer entrant to the UN consultative arena, having obtained ECOSOC Special Consultative Status only in mid-2025, we stand alongside peer organizations with long-established histories at the United Nations. Our posture is one of collegial partnership, with a focus on contributing our unique strengths.
Our distinct contribution lies in our interdisciplinary perspective and our global network of scholars and practitioners committed to social development. For decades, ICSD has convened international conferences and published research (often through our peer-reviewed journal Social Development Issues). ICSD will be sponsoring a special issue of the SDI journal covering the WSSD2 and its outcomes. This tradition of connecting research with practice is central to what we bring to the partnership: a focus on ensuring that evidence informs on-the-ground action. We bring grassroots experiences to shape academic inquiry. With our new consultative status, ICSD can integrate this perspective directly into UN processes.
We recognize our role within the coalition as one voice among four, harmonizing with our partners to create collective impact. ICSD’s contribution lies in our interdisciplinary scholarship and global research network, which bring evidence-based perspectives into dialogue with practice and policy. In planning the Summit sessions, we draw on our broad social development outlook while working to amplify perspectives from the Global South and from community-level initiatives that often remain overlooked. At the same time, we gladly defer to our partners in their areas of strength: IASSW in advancing education, ICSW in shaping global policy advocacy, and IFSW in mobilizing practitioners.
Looking Ahead: Shared Vision, Shared Commitment
As WSSD2 approaches, the alignment of our professional organizations sends a hopeful signal. In a world marked by widening inequality and deepening social fragmentation, we are demonstrating the strength of unity and shared purpose. Our collective message to global leaders in Doha is that lasting social progress requires an integrated approach that empowers people, heals divides, reforms structures, and upholds human dignity.
This collaboration is also laying a foundation for partnerships that extend beyond the Summit. By working together on these sessions, we are strengthening ties with one another and discovering how effective our advocacy becomes when we combine scholarship, education, policy expertise, and practice experience.
Looking forward, we envision carrying this “one voice” approach into other global platforms, whether by advancing the outcomes of WSSD2, contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals, or addressing new professional challenges. The issues highlighted at WSSD2 like poverty, exclusion, and climate disruption, will not be solved quickly. They will only be solved through sustained, collaborative leadership. By joining forces, we can advance the solidarity, multilateralism, and shared responsibility that the Summit envisions.
A central truth of social development is that we are stronger together. In Doha, whether we speak on panels or intervene from the floor, it will be with a shared voice that carries the aspirations of social workers, educators, scholars, and diverse communities. Our collective voice asserts that social development remains at the center of the global agenda.
As a longstanding member of ICSD, I’m proud that our organization is part of this chorus. WSSD2 marks an important milestone but it’s far from the destination. With the Copenhagen Declaration still in the background, with many of its promises unfulfilled, we remain midway on the journey. ICSD and its sister organizations will continue to press for a world where social development is inclusive and just: a world where no voice goes unheard, no relationship is undervalued, and no human right is denied.