The Civil Society Financing for Development Group has formulated comments on the zero draft of an outcome document for the upcoming ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development Follow-up. The Group, a very broad platform of civil society organizations, networks and federations from around the world, that followed closely the Financing for Development since its origins, has facilitated civil society’s contribution to the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, and continues to provide a facilitation mechanism for the collective expression of civil society in the FfD Follow-up process. While the group is diverse and positions might differ on specific issues, this document expresses the elements of common concern. Read more…

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres challenged participants at the 61st Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 61) in March 2017: “Do not let us at the UN off the hook. Keep our feet to the fire.” Many civil society organizations (CSOs) are doing just that – calling for more from the CSW. Read more…

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is driving discussions on reforming UN working methods. Consultations are being held at the UN headquarters, which aim to enhance synergies and coherence, and to reduce overlap between the agendas of the UN General Assembly (GA) and the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), including in the high-level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF). Read more…

Last week the UN Committee of Experts on International Tax (UNTC) met at the United Nations HQ in New York, a few metres from the Security Council meetings on Syria, followed by a special session on tax of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The undercurrent of the detailed technical discussions during the week has been a crisis of global tax governance. While, for example, the grand-sounding Addis Tax Initiative included a commitment to double the aid for tax issues to developing countries, very little has come to the UNTC. Funds are needed especially to facilitate the work of subcommittees, which are essential to work through technical details. Lacking travel funds, it is difficult for developing country members to attend, and the shortage of staff makes it hard to provide secretarial support. At several points during the meeting of the Committee there was frustration that an issue was being raised which had received no or insufficient attention in a subcommittee, and some work was not completed as a result. Read more…

Over the past eight years, the G20 has emerged as one of the most prominent political fora for international cooperation. For transnational corporations and their national and international associations and lobby groups, the G20 process provides important opportunities to engage with the world’s most powerful governments, shape their discourse, and influence their decisions. For this purpose, business actors have created a broad network of alliances and fora around the G20, with the Business20 (B20) as the most visible symbol of corporate engagement. A new working paper published by GPF and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung maps out the key business players and associations from the different sectors and branches involved in the work of the G20, and analyzes their core messages and policy recommendations. Read more…

By Dr. Alexander Dill

Suppose you had ten teams of high class scientists assessing the same 141 countries each by its own criteria without knowing each other. One team is assessing ‘enabling environment’, others estimate ‘competitiveness’, ‘human development’, ‘social progress’, ‘prosperity’, ‘giving’, ‘ecological footprint’ and ‘peace’. Team no. 10 is assessing the progress of countries in meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) approved at the UN.

After their assessment they publish their country ranking from 1 to 141. If two of these indexes rank the same countries in the same order, a statistician will say they are “redundant”, which means that somehow they ended up measuring the same thing even if under different names or through different proxies. If one index ranks a country as number 1 and the other as 141, the statistician will observe that this country has the maximum possible “standard deviation” (which in this case is 70). If we have ten independent teams measuring ten different things we can expect some of the results to be redundant (for example, better education for girls correlates with lower infant and maternal mortality), while others show deviation: low income equality, for example, can be found both in very rich and very poor countries. Read more…

The 48th session of the UN Statistical Commission takes place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 7-10 March 2017. Thus far, there are 36 reports for the Commission to consider, 85 side events, an exhibition planned to celebrate the 70 years of work of the Commission, with presentations from the UN World Data Forum. Read more…

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…

Civil society organisations (CSOs) are using United Nation’s processes to hold governments accountable for their commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including processes such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, and the Climate Change agenda. The annual High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) is the main forum by which CSOs can hold governments and others accountable at the global level. It brings together global, regional, national and thematic reviews. Read more…

President of the General Assembly (PGA) Peter Thomson, announced the 2017 High-Level United Nations Conference to Support the Implementation of SDG 14 at the 22nd Conference of Parties (COP22) for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), saying “we must ensure we have a global plan for the successful implementation of SDG 14”. Read more…