By Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven.
Last month, the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) were launched at the UN in New York. This is the outcome of two years of consultations, lobbying, and debate about what the “post-2015” agenda should look like. This agenda is likely to have far-reaching implications both for development finance and for the promotion of social and economic rights. However, why adopt goals at all? Any systematic effort to answer this seemingly elementary conceptual question has been disturbingly absent. What’s more, not only has this basic question not been answered, what is most striking is that it has hardly been asked. Read more…
The Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) has published a booklet titled ‘Rethinking the development paradigm: Reflections from civil society in the region on Post2015 and Financing for Development’. Some of the central topics are the role the private sector has been given in the Post2015 development agenda and the diminished support for civil society organizations in the region. This shift in stakeholder roles comes before the adoption of “business-binding human rights standards.” In the global partnership for development the focus has shifted towards private sector involvement while minimizing the goals for fair trade, debt relief and neglecting the regulation and control of capital movement.
As part of the involvement of civil society in the arab track of sustainable development goals ANND has organized forums parallel to the arab economic and social summit, in which proposals and recommendations for the summit were made. The documents in this booklet include analysis of most prominent arab development challenges and tackle on some of the elements of the alternative development model. Read more…
On the eve of the (virtual) United Nations 75th anniversary event and the Global Goals Week, authors presented this year’s global civil society report Spotlight on Sustainable Development. With this virtual launching event that took place on 18 September 2020, we presented key findings of the report.
Climate change impacts are now undermining and will pose significant constraints on meeting sustainable development and poverty eradication in many developing countries due to the loss and damage that they bring to critical economic and human infrastructure but also to the long-term shifts in economic production that they will entail.
Income inequality and enduring poverty exacerbates the impact of climate change on the poor, particularly those in developing countries. These make the extremely poor, virtually all of whom live in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, much more vulnerable to the losses and damage that climate change results in. The lower levels of financing, technology, physical infrastructure and disaster preparedness and resilience that most developing countries experience due to their development circumstances pose greater challenges to climate change adaptation and long-term development resilience for these countries.
The COVID-19 crisis and the worldwide measures to tackle it have deeply affected communities, societies and economies around the globe. COVID-19 is a global wake-up call for enhanced international cooperation and solidarity.
But calls for “building back better” by just pushing the reset button will not change the game. We need structural changes in societies and economies that ensure the primacy of human rights, gender justice and sustainability.
Multilateral solidarity is gaining traction as the slogan for mobilizing support for international cooperation and for the UN. Is it replacing or merely renaming cross-border obligations – many of which have been enshrined over decades in UN treaties, conventions and agreements, and the principle of common but differentiated responsibility in their implementation?
Why do we seek another name at this time? It seems that reaffirmation is less attractive than invention in this time of innovation, short term thinking and results measurement and messaging via social media and 280 characters. How should it be reinvented?
Solidarity assumes trust and common responsibilities. Reinventing multilateral solidarity must start with bending the arc of governance back again – from viewing people as shareholders – to stakeholders – to rights holders.
