The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, will try to persuade world leaders to extend their horizons beyond current wars by adopting a pact that he hopes will set a path for a new system of global governance that can prevent crises in the future.

Guterres had outlined an ambitious agenda covering artificial intelligence, groundbreaking UN security council reform, outer space, peace operations, climate change and financing development, but critics say that outline has not so much shrunk as become ever-less specific.

A so-called negotiated ‘Pact for the future’ is set to be adopted with the aim to ‘make the UN fit for purpose in the 21st century’.

Agencies