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Belgrade Takeaways:

Reimagining Futures of Programming

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Belgrade Takeaways:

Reimagining Futures of Programming

The Futures Lab held 6 to 8 December 2023 in Belgrade, Serbia, was organized by UNFPA and UNESCO

• Anchor programming efforts into foundational values and ethics frameworks that evolve with societal norms, cultural shifts, and technological advancements, requiring continuous reflection and adaptation to remain relevant

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• Requires continuous review and adaptation to algorithm biases, privacy concerns, equitable access to technology, bioethics and genetic editing, and AI in healthcare and education, with effective monitoring mechanisms for adherence

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• Mindset: Principle-focused Programming calls us to demonstrate curiosity, adaptability, care and deep commitment to ethical leadership

Principle-focused Programming

Principle-focused Programming reflects the societal evolution in values and ethics, while mediating the human-machine relations, responding to a world of digitization, automation and surveillance. The focus here is more on defining, monitoring, reviewing and guarding the guiding principles than providing direct services.

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• Reflects a highly interdependent future where actions in one part of the world deeply influence all parts, moving beyond nation-states to emphasize flexible collaboration across borders, cultures, and sectors

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• Adopts systems thinking while using improvisation, adaptation, creativity, and collaboration as key characteristics - mirroring jazz's call-and-response tradition to navigate shifting realities with knowledge, intuition, and responsiveness

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• Uses traditional, blended, and innovative mechanisms to enhance partnerships across levels, enabling intentional collaboration between policymakers, stakeholders, and communities to achieve system-wide impact and recover from disruptions

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• Mindset: skilled, knowledgeable, practicing active listening, adaptable, responsive, creative and collaborative.

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Jazz Programming

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Jazz Programming embraces an interconnected, interdependent future where improvisation, adaptation and collaboration are essential. It blends diverse priorities, methods and resources seeking harmonious solutions that respond to complexity and change. It prioritizes creative adaptability, blending traditional and innovative approaches while fostering partnerships of all sorts to maximize impact. Unlike ad hoc

approaches, Jazz Programming focuses on intentionality and co-creation, turning disruptions into opportunities for systems transformation.

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• The problems don’t fit into known boxes or systems — they are unfamiliar or unconventional

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• Looks ahead to futures where challenges are so new that old solutions don’t work, and where policymakers must start by recognizing what they don’t know in order to create real change

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• Builds the ability to unlearn and relearn by observing new trends, using different ways of thinking, trying out new methods, and learning together to create fresh knowledge

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• Creates safe spaces to test new ideas—focused on inclusion and different perspectives—where challenges are seen as chances to learn and understand better

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• Engages everyone affected—from planning to action—to share knowledge and help shape new ways of thinking about peace, conflict, vulnerability, and rights

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• Mindset: mindset shift from “we already know” to “we’re ready to explore.

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Learning / Novelty Programming

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Learning / Novelty Programming responds to a future where today’s categories and meanings have collapsed or radically altered, requiring a fundamental shift in mindset. The focus of programming here is to detect novelty by engaging with emergent properties of various complex systems. New approaches to learning, research and a decolonizing attitude towards past knowledge regimes have prevailed. Adopting an experimentation and piloting perspective, it seeks to make sense of and respond to new and arising conceptions of peace, conflict, violence, vulnerability, rights, learning and protecting – ultimately nurturing inclusive leadership for a changing world.

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• Addresses highly volatile futures with unprecedented change, high fragmentation, and climate crisis, focusing on flexibility and agility to provide tailored responses where multilateralism is in deep crisis

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• Prioritizes decentralized approaches that leverage local insights and deliver culturally sensitive responses to new dynamics, conflicts, and emerging vulnerable groups

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• Enables real-time programme adjustments through dynamic anticipatory approaches that continuously adjust frameworks, collaboration schemes, and funding mechanisms to align with evolving local realities

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• Fosters dialogue between local realities and global goals, encouraging diverse partnerships and shared ownership to restore multilateralism while aligning immediate responses with long-term sustainability

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• Mindset: adaptability, vigilance and flexibility

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Chameleonic Programming

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Chameleonic Programming emerged from a future where the pace of change is unprecedented. Attention is given to the flexibility and agility of programming in terms of adapting to the context specificities and particularities, as there is an increased polarization and the multilateralism is in deep crisis. The focus is on providing locally resonant responses in light of new realities, by adopting an anticipatory approach and continually tailoring policy frameworks, collaboration models, funding mechanisms, and monitoring and evaluation systems.

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• Responds to widespread distrust and disconnection driven by technological advancements, seeking to rebuild trust and nurture empathy among humans, machines, and living beings

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• Establishes social contracts promoting emotional intelligence and "justice as fairness" with equal rights for all actors including machines and living beings in adapting relationships

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• Emphasizes enhanced self-awareness, empathy, and social skills while encouraging multiple perspectives and highlighting mutuality, solidarity, and restorative action

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• Strikes new balance between conflicting rights and needs, addressing deeper issues like relative deprivation while fostering reflective, collaborative approaches to new ways of relating

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• Mindset: calls us to nurture emotional intelligence and solidarity, embracing justice as fairness not just among citizens, but also between humans, machines and all living beings.

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Empathy and Trust Programming

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Empathy and Trust Programming responds to a future of distrust and social disconnection driven by technological advancements. It focuses on nurturing trust, empathy and solidarity across humans, machines, and other species. It seeks to navigate new, complex relationships by responding to questions of new rights, ways of relating, emerging mental health issues, modes of regulation and governance. It calls for a new social contract based on mutuality, respect, equity and dignity fostering emotional intelligence, and collaboration.

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Thank You