World Science Day for Peace and Development 2025; November 10th.

FORUM: "Trust, Transformation, and Tomorrow: The Science We Need for 2050." World Science Day for Peace and Development 2025. Join us live from the 43rd session of the UNESCO General Conference as we celebrate the day with a forward-looking conversation on the future of science. This event invites participants to reflect on what kind of science—and what kind of relationship between science and society—will be needed to meet the demands of the coming decades. Together, experts and policymakers will envision the scientific and societal landscape of 2050 and discuss how science can shape a more just, sustainable, and peaceful future. The General Conference is UNESCO’s highest decision-making body, gathering delegates from all 194 Member States every two years to set the Organization’s global priorities and guide its actions for peace, inclusion, and sustainable development. Through this dialogue, UNESCO reaffirms its leadership as the foundation of global scientific cooperation and the driving force behind the Science Decade for Action. To join the global conversation on the science we need for 2050; Follow the conversations with the hashtags: #Science4Policy, #sciencematters, #ScienceDay, #10November, #sustainableDevelopment, #WorldScienceDayforPeaceandDevelopment.

EVENT: On November 10th; 2025 from 1:15 pm - 2:50 pm, at the Room IX - Delegates Meeting Room #3 in Uzbekistan will celebrate the World Science Day for Peace and Development 2025 during the 43rd session of the UNESCO General Conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Organized under the umbrella of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2024–2033), this event celebrates World Science Day for Peace and Development by fostering forward-looking dialogue on the evolution of science and its role in shaping a just, sustainable, and peaceful future.The Participants will be invited to envision the scientific and societal landscape of 2050 and reflect on, and make informed forecasts about, the evolving role of science in shaping a more just, sustainable, and peaceful future. Participants will consider how feasible this may be and what changes are required to achieve it. It will explore the foundations of a renewed social contract with science, one anchored in public trust, diversified funding sources, a transformed scientific paradigm, open science practices, ethical responsibility, and inclusive engagement.

Key discussion themes

• Disruptive technologies and the future of research: How artificial intelligence and emerging innovations are redefining the scientific paradigm.
• A renewed social contract with science: Building trust through transparency, ethics, open science, and inclusive participation.
• Envisioning science in 2050: Science as a driver of sustainability and peace.

Register to participate!

Agenda Programme

13:15 – 13:20 Opening remarks
Ms Lidia Brito, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences of UNESCO

13:20 – 13:35 Keynote speech
A renewed social contract with science
Ms Dilfuza Egamberdieva, Head of the Department of Biological Research and Food Safety at the Institute of Fundamental and Applied Research, National Research University, Uzbekistan
13:35 – 13:50 International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development
H.E. Ms Monique van Daalen, Co-Chair of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development and Ambassador of the Netherlands to UNESCO

13:50 – 14:40 Panel discussion

• The evolving role of science in shaping the future and a renewed social contract with science
• International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2024-2033)
• Engagement and trust in science
• Scientific paradigm transformation with applications of AI and other disruptive technologies
• The gender gap in science
• The role of the private sector in science

Q & A 
14:40 – 14:50  Closing remarks
H.E. Mr Samir Addahre, Chair of the Science Commission and Ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco to UNESCO 

Message from Ms Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of World Science Day for Peace and Development, 10 November 2025.

Science offers concrete solutions to the greatest challenges of our time: climate disruption, pandemics, resource scarcity and growing inequalities. It is a common good, a universal language, capable of bringing us together beyond borders and differences, linking knowledge to the pursuit of the collective good. Yet, in a world faced with widespread misinformation and distrust, we must come together to ensure that science is not reduced to a mere commodity or a political instrument. Science must instead be guided by ethics and solidarity, serving the common good. It is in this spirit that we celebrate World Science Day for Peace and Development under the theme “Trust, Transformation and Tomorrow: The Science We Need for 2050”. Trust cannot be demanded or decreed – it must be built. It grows through open and sustained dialogue between researchers, policymakers, private actors and citizens alike. Rebuilding trust in science lies at the heart of UNESCO’s 2021 Recommendation on Open Science, which calls for a global commitment to transparency, participation and accessibility. Through this recommendation, we can renew trust in science and ensure that it benefits all. But to produce the science of tomorrow, we must unlearn certain habits: we must move beyond silos – refusing to privilege certain forms of knowledge over others, or to confuse innovation with accumulation. Instead, we must relearn how to diversify, share, collaborate and listen. This means listening to researchers, but also to local and Indigenous peoples, whose insights and traditions enrich the collective understanding of our world. Only through active public participation can science truly serve everyone. To mark this year’s World Science Day, UNESCO is proud to publish a landmark anthology tracing 80 years of science at UNESCO, bringing together 46 essays by Nobel laureates, written for UNESCO between 1948 and today. It retraces the evolution of international scientific cooperation and diplomacy, the creation of leading institutions such as CERN and SESAME, the establishment of the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme, and the development of global ethical frameworks on bioethics, artificial intelligence and neurotechnology. As part of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2024-2033), UNESCO is deepening this commitment by breaking down barriers in research, stimulating international cooperation and strengthening academic networks, and ensuring that science informs public policy at every level. On this World Science Day for Peace and Development, UNESCO reaffirms its conviction that open, inclusive, and ethical science – designed for the collective good – is the cornerstone of lasting peace.

UNESCO Director-General.