SDGs the Way Forward
2015 will be here very soon We have come a long way from the meeting in Solo in July, 2011 when Paula Caballero Gomez from Colombia floated the idea of Sustainable Development Goals as the replacement for the MDGs in 2015 with the support of the governments of Guatemala and Peru. For those who have been part of the discussion, the last 3 and half years shows how difficult it can be to develop policy at the intergovernmental level. It also has been one of the most open and transparent processes that I have seen while working at this level for 25 years. The first few months saw the UN DPI NGO Conference in September 2011 put forward the first suggestions of goals and targets. This was followed by the government retreat in Colombia in November 2011. This was the first time the governments discussed the idea and it was interesting to see the initial opposition from a number of the development Ministries’ donor countries to the idea of anything other than an MDG+ agenda. One fe...