Author: sada

by Kate Donald, Director, Human Rights in Economic and Social Policy, Center for Economic and Social Rights
The 2019 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development—the global platform for reviewing progress on the SDGs—took place last week at the UN in New York, and in general terms, it was more of the same. Admirable rhetoric, but not much evidence of serious efforts at comprehensive implementation, and a host of major flaws and limitations to contend with. As CESR has observed at previous HLPFs (see 2017 and 2018), the space given to civil society is far too limited, most of the Voluntary National Reviews feel very disconnected from reality, and one leaves with the feeling that most governments are at best timidly tinkering around the edges, making minor adjustments to business-as-usual while the planet burns. Read more…

UNHQ, 31 October 2018 — Perceiving this growing crisis for multilateralism, the presidents of the UN Charter bodies hosted a high-level dialogue with Member States: “Reviewing the Commitment to Multilateralism”, convened by the Permanent Missions of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, in association with the Center on International Cooperation. The President of the General Assembly (PGA), Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés emphasized that UN Member States should focus on a synergistic approach to the work of the UN, especially for those issues “which cannot be addressed except through multilateral cooperation”, such as “protracted humanitarian crises, climate change, human trafficking, sustainable development, large scale human rights abuses, and threats to peace and security”.