Stocktaking the first Post 2015 meeting
There is less than 250 days left for governments to
agree to what Heads of State will agree to at the end of September. This has
been a long road from the time that Colombia, Guatemala and Peru raised the
idea of the SDGs in July 2011 to where we find ourselves today.
STOCKTAKING
SESSION
The first session of the Post 2015 process – the
Stocktaking Session - with the two Co-Facilitators of
the negotiations, Ambassador David
Donoghue, Permanent Representative of
Ireland to the
UN, and Ambassador
Macharia Kamau, Permanent
Representative of Kenya - was held from 19-21st of
January 2015.
In December the UNGA agreed to the timetable to
remind us what this is all about:
- Declaration (17-20 February)
- Sustainable Development Goals (23-27 March)
- Means of Implementation and Global Partnership for Development (20-24th of April)
- Follow Up and Review (18th to 22nd May)
After that starting in June (22nd) are three negotiating sessions.
The Stocktaking session was also organized around
the four substantive areas.
On the Declaration any one interested in influencing this should
be sharing suggested paras with governments now and during the next few weeks
as governments will already be coming to an initial view on what should be in the
Declaration and what should not be there.
During the discussions at the Stocktaking
session there were quiet wide views on what it could be like. The
Europeans and US wanted a shorter document while many G77 saw it as a space to
take a broader look at the world and would be suggesting within it elements not
reflected in the SDGs.
The co-facilitators will circulate in the next few
weeks an ‘elements paper’ on the Declaration which will also help
stakeholders in their preparation. My recommendation is to look at the
Millennium Declaration as a model; regarding the issues of peace and
security, the World Summit 2005 outcome document would be of greater help those
stakeholders interested in that area. Other documents worth looking at are the
Rio Declaration (1992) and the MDG+10 (2010) outcomes. There was some support for the idea that the document might be structured around the UN Secretary Generals six elements (dignity, people, prosperity, planet, justice and partnership).
On the Sustainable Development Goals and
targets it was clear that there was little support among member states for
reopening what was agreed at the SDG OWG. The UK was one of the countries that
had advocated a smaller number of goals, but has now been told to stop doing
that by the UK parliament, and at least in public is doing what they were told
to do.
The UN Task Team has started carrying out a ‘technical
proofing’ of the targets. This prompted a few key G-77 governments to
push back at them doing this. In fact they should have been doing some of this already
during the OWG, but this clearly had not happened. The concern now is that the UN is basically
interfering with what governments have already agreed to. The issue revolves
around if they try and suggest that some of the targets instead might be
indicators.
Linked to this is the indicators issue the process will be under the
Statistical Commission . Here you can find the
draft decision for the March Statistical Commission plus in Annex 1 what would
be done on indicators through the establishment of an inter-agency committee
(see point 36).
Means
of Implementation was the least negotiated section of
the SDG OWG. The two Ambassadors that are facilitating the Finance for
Development process addressed the Stocktaking meeting – at this point the
process is on two parallel tracks and the FfD process is not engaged enough in
the sustainable development finance ideas. Clearly there will be a major
challenge to link the two processes.
Follow-up
and review
This is a new area that governments will need to begin
develop their thinking about. this will include issues such as
- the HLPF and ECOSOC;
- National follow-up mechanisms including National Councils and Parliaments;
- Role of regional Institutions;
- What role partnerships will play
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As usually excellent commentary and summary. I only wonder about the statement that "There was some support for the idea that the document might be structured around the UN Secretary Generals six elements (dignity, people, prosperity, planet, justice and partnership)." I guess "some" is pretty vague and not inconsistent with a general coolness on the UNSG's report by most States that I understood.
ReplyDeletevagueness was what i was aiming for :-)
ReplyDelete