Interesting issues infront of the 70th UN General Assembly

The UN and stakeholders are considering how they should change to take up the 2030 agenda. There has been an interesting discussion with a panel of stakeholders on how Committee 2 and 3 of the UN GA should be reformed. For those that are less geeky on UN GA Committees than me there are six main UNGA Committees:

1. Disarmament and International Security Committee (First Committee)
2. Economic and Financial Committee (Second Committee)
3. Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (Third Committee)
4. Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee)
5. Administrative and Budgetary Committee (Fifth Committee)
6. Legal Committee (Sixth Committee)

If you want to see what is on each Committees agenda then go here. Most stakeholders do not follow these committees as they do not allow stakeholder engagement in them 'formally'. I have actually spoken in 1996 to Committee 2 but they went to an informal session to enable me to suggest the introduction of mult-stakeholder dialogues for Rio+5 based on the experience stakeholders had had in Habitat II. There is increased recognition that the involvement of stakeholders in the UNGA is a good idea and the UN Security Council has adopted a more positive approach inviting stakeholders to discus certain issues with it. Most recently on October 13th when a number of statements were made on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security at the UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security.

This years UNGA has a number of resolutions that are important for the follow up to the 2030 Agenda.

• International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, 2017 - here
• Culture and sustainable development - here
• International financial system and development - here
• Women in development - here
• Triennial United Nations conferences on oceans and seas - here

Jeffrey Huffines the NGO Major Group Organizing Partner and CIVICUS UN Representative (NY) has been hosting a weekly meeting for those interested in Committee 2 activities which you can join from outside New York as well. The latest report from this can be found here.

We still waiting for what is known as the Agenda 21 resolution, Habitat III (this includes modalities for stakeholder engagement) and the Financing for Development resolution so do go to the UNGA resolutions every day to see what is being proposed.