Monthly Archive: February 2017

Blog

2030 Spotlight on “Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world”

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development represents a compromise among 193 governments and is the first time in an intergovernmental document, it acknowledges the “enormous disparities of opportunity, wealth and power” as immense challenges to sustainable development. Furthermore, it aims to address adequately the structural flaws of the global economic and financial systems, the imperative of ecological sustainability and the responsibilities of the global North. Read more…

Briefings

The UN development system: Can it catch up to the 2030 Agenda?

By Barbara Adams and Gretchen Luchsinger

The current model of UN development assistance—operating country by country, and issue by issue, with priorities heavily driven by individual donors and their interests—is no longer fit for its intended purpose. The ambitious vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development challenges the UN development system to fully respond to the inextricable links across countries and among social, economic and environmental concerns. This is not just an issue of greater efficiency and effectiveness within existing arrangements. It is a question of how the UN development system can meet the high demands of new commitments aimed at transforming the course of development so that it is equitable, sustainable and aligned with human rights, and remains within planetary boundaries. Read more…

Follow:

“The world is off-track in terms of achieving sustainable development and fundamental policy changes are necessary to unleash the transformative potential of the SDGs.” This is the main message of the Spotlight Report 2018, the most comprehensive independent assessment of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The report is launched on the opening day of the High Level Political Forum at the United Nations in New York by a global coalition of civil society organizations and trade unions.

Findings from the report will be discussed during a HLPF side-event on Thursday, July 12th, 6:15pm at Church Center. See more on this event here.

The United Nations and system organizations should engage with donors in a dialogue at the strategic level for the adoption of donor reporting templates and accommodating the common information needs, demands and requirements of donors and the regulatory frameworks and capacities of the organizations.

This is one of the main recommendations highlighted in a new report by the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), an independent external oversight body of the United Nations system, reviewing donor reporting requirements across the UN system.

The JIU review focused on the United Nations system organizations that have the highest number of donor reports and on the 16 major donors to the United Nations system, including the European Commission. Read More.

The UN News website (https://news.un.org/en/) has been retooled to include the option to subscribe to news based on selected topics of interest. In addition, subscribers have the ability to sign-up to receive UN News in Kiswahili and Portuguese languages, as well as in six official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). Subscriptions by topic will also include direct links to the webcasts of events pertaining to each topic.

The UN News also updated their mobile phone application.