Monthly Archive: April 2018

Briefings

The Ups and Downs of Tiers: Measuring SDG Progress

By Barbara Adams and Karen Judd
After two years of measuring for SDG implementation the emphasis has shifted from the pressure to develop a global indicator framework to the need for capacity development. This has generated a significant increase in interest in national statistical offices (NSOs) for data disaggregation, not only by income, gender and population group but also by municipal and neighborhood levels in an effort to ’leave no one behind’. The shift to implementation and capacity-building has also spawned a host of initiatives and partnerships, designed primarily to enable NSOs to integrate data from non-traditional sources, such as satellite imagery, mobile phones, and social media and scanning data.
Member States at the 49th session of the UN Statistical Commission addressed the work of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDGs Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) and the High Level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for Statistics for the 2030 Agenda (HLG-PCCB), along with a large number of other reports, ranging from household surveys and systems of national accounts to gender statistics, open data and big data for official statistics. Read more…

Briefings

SDG indicators: The forest is missing

By Roberto Bissio
Almost three years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda at the highest level of the United Nations, the indicators to assess its progress are still being debated. The set of indicators around which there is agreed methodology and available data (known as Tier I in the insiders’ jargon) shows a great degree of overlap with the existing indicators for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and misses most aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that make them transformative or represent a paradigm change.
There are 93 indicators in Tier I of the SDGs, of which 42 are either identical to or an elaboration of the already existing MDG indicators. And some important MDG indicators, particularly those related to implementation, have been lost. Read more…

Events

Looking forward: How can the FfD Follow-up live up to its full potential?

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) has defined the follow-up process for the Financing for Development process as well as the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This includes assessing progress, obstacles, challenges as well as new and emerging topics of relevance, and “provide policy recommendations for action by the international community” (para. 131). At a side-event during the 2018 ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development Follo-up, participants are invited to provide their insights into their assessment of previous FfD Fora, their link with other international processes, and discuss with participants about opportunities and challenges, also with view to the upcoming High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development of the General Assembly in 2019. The format of the side event will be highly interactive. After a short framing presentation, the moderator will facilitate active dialogue with a small panel of respondents and the audience. Read more…

Follow:

As of 1 January 2019, the name of the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) has changed and is now Department of Global Communications. The new name anticipates the new ways of working underscoring the interactivity and co-operation in information management between the United Nations and its stakeholders. Due to the expansion of activities of our Unit, NGO Relations (DPI NGO) is changing its name to become Civil Society Unit. The Liaison functions of the former Non-governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) are a new addition to the Unit which will allow for a well-rounded coordination of the civil society engagement in the United Nations activities. https://outreach.un.org/ngorelations/

UN General Assembly Adopts 1st Resolution on Sexual Harassment

The resolution, passed by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee, urges states to take effective action to prevent and eliminate sexual harassment against women and girls, to address structural and underlying causes and risk factors, and to protect victims of all forms of violence, including sexual harassment.  It calls on states to take necessary measures to ensure that employers in all sectors are held accountable when they fail to abide by laws and regulations addressing sexual harassment. 

The text calls on states to encourage digital technology companies, including internet service providers and digital platforms, to strengthen or adopt positive measures with a view to eliminating violence and sexual harassment in digital contexts.  It also urges states to ensure the promotion and protection of the human rights of all women and their sexual and reproductive health, and reproductive rights.  As the committee debated, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres emphasized in his remarks commemorating the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women that violence against women and girls was a “global pandemic”. “Not until the half of our population represented by women and girls can live free from fear, violence and everyday insecurity, can we truly say we live in a fair and equal world.”

SDG 3: The Need to Strengthen Public Funding for the WHO

A strong and dynamic World Health Organisation (WHO) is critical for the achievement of the SDGs, especially SDG 3 on health and well-being. The WHO constitution mandates the organization “to act as the directing and co-ordinating authority on international health work”. However, its ability to fulfill this mandate is circumscribed by the nature of its financial resources. WHO’s biennial budget for 2018-2019 is US$ 4.42 billion, 2 just over a quarter of the total sales of the top-selling medicine Humira (Adalimumab) in 2016 (US$ 16.08 billion).

In part this is because many of the organization’s donors share the view that WHO may not need a huge budget to carry out its constitutional mandate, which mainly consists of setting norms and standards in the area of public health. However, a large part of the organization’s spending in 2016-2017 went to activities related to service delivery rather than to norms and standard setting. For example, US$ 1.16 billion (25.67%) was spent on its polio eradication programme. Read more at https://www.2030spotlight.org/en/book/1730/chapter/sdg-3-need-strengthen-public-funding-who

SPOTLIGHT Enfoques sobre Desarrollo Sostenible

El informe de este año consta de tres partes: La primera parte engloba dos artículos que resumen las principales conclusiones de las contribuciones a este informe y los mensajes de los informes nacionales de la sociedad civil. La segunda parte se centra en cinco capítulos sobre áreas transversales de reforma política que demuestran las interrelaciones entre varios ODS, la necesidad de “des-compartimentar” los enfoques políticos actuales y de promover políticas que sean verdaderamente coherentes en aras del desarrollo sostenible, los derechos humanos y la justicia de género. La tercera parte incluye 17 enfoques breves sobre los ODS que destacan una selección de ejemplos de buenas o malas políticas en función de objetivos específicos.

El informe cuenta con el apoyo de una amplia gama de organizaciones de la sociedad civil y sindicatos, enumerados como socios. También se basa en las experiencias y los informes de grupos y coaliciones nacionales y regionales de todas partes del mundo. Las contribuciones cubren muchos aspectos de la Agenda 2030 y de los ODS (y más), y reflejan la rica diversidad geográfica y cultural de sus autores. Pero lo que todas las contribuciones tienen en común es la convicción de que el mundo todavía está lejos de alcanzar el desarrollo sostenible y que son necesarios —y posibles— cambios fundamentales en las políticas y enfoques para desplegar el potencial transformador de los ODS.

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.