millennium development goals

• Towards a Just and Transformative Post- 2015 Development Agenda

  On January 22, 2013, IBON International, WALHI, INDIES, PCFS and APRN are inviting peoples organizations, social movements and NGOs from across Indonesia to a workshop titled “Towards a Just and Transformative Post-2015 Development Agenda”
  The workshop’s objectives are:

  1. To discuss the challenge of sustainable development in the global and Indonesian context
  2. To provide a background on the United Nation’s roadmap towards a post-2015 development framework
  3. To present the Campaign on Peoples Goals for Sustainable Development (CPGSD)
  4. To strategize how Indonesian social movements and civil society can campaign for a truly just, equitable and transformative development agenda for the post-2015 period

  The Campaign for People’s Goals for Sustainable Development is a global campaign of grassroots organizations, labor unions, social movements and non-governmental organizations and other institutions committed to promoting new pathways to the future we want. Join the campaign at here.

  Read more at Asia- Pacific Research Network

• UK International Development Committee Concerned about Post- 2015 Process

  The ongoing process to craft a post-2015 global development agenda should be more transparent – otherwise, world leaders may not want to sign on, a panel of British parliamentarians worries in a report published Tuesday that also identified job creation as the most important goal for the coming years.
   
  It’s the first time since a high-level panel tasked by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with crafting a followup set to the Millennium Development Goals began its work, belatedly, at the end of last year. And it foreshadows the intense debate that is sure to heat up further as the deadline for reaching those anti-poverty targets draws closer.

  
  The U.K. lawmakers, who are part of the House of Commons’ International Development Committee, are urging Prime Minister David Cameron to use all power at his disposal to engage his peers in the process of crafting measurable targets to guide international cooperation. Cameron co-chairs the high-level panel which is now crafting an agenda to succeed the MDGs, which expire in two years. The panel is expected to share its recommendations with the United Nations later this year.

  
  Read more at The Development Newswire

• UN Women and Post- 2015 Development Agenda

  Based on lessons learnt from MDGs as well as based on evidence gathered through work of the UN system, the OECD, and the World Bank, achieving progress towards various development targets very much depends on enhancements of women’s empowerment and gender equality.  Gender inequalities are often reinforced by combination of inequalities in income, unequal access to paid work, lack of property and ownership rights, difficult access to basic services, on ethnicity or disability.  They are detrimental to women and men, girls and boys, families, communities and for society as a whole. The obligation to address and tackle (gender) inequalities is born out of international human rights standards against which policies, including macro-economic policies should be held accountable. 
   
  A post 2015 development agenda should therefore pay attention not only to inequalities (including those gender based), but make their causes explicit, aiming at formulating realistic goals and targets (in various areas, including in economic, social and political spheres) which will lead to reduction of inequalities and more sustainable progress in inclusion.

  Read more at UN Turkey

• UN’s Post- 2015 Development Agenda Under Discussion

  On 30 January, EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs will take part in the second UN panel on post-2015 development agenda.

  
  Mr Piebalgs commented, “the Millennium Development Goals have been instrumental in mobilising the international community towards key targets to fight poverty. As the 2015 deadline is fast approaching, we need to propose a new vision for the world to address key challenges ahead such as poverty, inequality or sustainable development.

  The EU will remain at the forefront of this process and I hope to see post-2015 agenda more comprehensive and inclusive. This has to be an agenda that focuses on providing decent life for all people by 2030, irrespective of where they live.”  Moreover, Commissioner Piebalgs added, “I trust that this new framework will pave the way to empowering people so that they can lift themselves out of poverty once and for all.”

  Read more at New Europe

• UNAIDS Launches e- Consultation to Ensure AIDS remains Central in the post- 2015 agenda

  UNAIDS is hosting an online consultation from January 21 through February 3 on the UN and Civil Society joint platform, "The World We Want," to determine a roadmap for global development after the 2015 Millennium Development Goals' target date. The publicly accessible forum is gathering diverse opinions on how to incorporate AIDS and health into post-2015 development plans, with a focus on the following three related topics: How the HIV epidemic will be relevant to the post-2015 agenda; how principles and practices from the AIDS response can inform equitable and sustainable health and development; and how decision-making, monitoring, evaluation, and accountability can be reformed in efforts to end the HIV epidemic.

  Read more at The Body

   

• UNCTAD to lead post- 2015 e- discussion on development- led globalisation

  Consultations on growth and employment are being coordinated by an advisory group consisting of staff from the United Nations Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, UNCTAD, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and UN Women, as well as representatives of other international and civil society organizations.

  
  The thematic e-discussion on development-led globalization will be led by UNCTAD from 25 January to 22 February 2013, and will be moderated by Ralf Peters and Amelia Santos-Paulino (from UNCTAD) and Jayati Ghosh (from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi).

  
  The e-discussion has been launched on the World We Want 2015 website, as part of the Global Consultation on Growth and Employment for the post-2015 development agenda.

  The e-discussion aims at advancing thinking in four areas:

  
  Read more at United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

• UNICEF, UN Women Update Members States on Inequalities Consultation

  The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and UN Women, co-leaders of the Global Consultation on Inequalities in the post-2015 development agenda, provided a briefing for UN Member States and Observers at UN Headquarters in New York, US, on 4 February 2013.

  
  Carsten Staur, Permanent Representative of Denmark, highlighted that the High-level Leadership Meeting on Addressing Inequalities, to be held on 18-19 February 2013, in Copenhagen, Denmark, will be the first of a series of Leadership Meetings being organized by the 11 Global Thematic Consultations. He added that the thematic consultations supplement the national consultation process, and will feed into the reports of the UN High-level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) and UN Secretary-General. He said the Draft Report on the Global Thematic Consultation on Inequalities, already made available for comments, is now being finalized and will be discussed during the Leadership Meeting. The final report is expected to be launched by 10 February 2013.

  Read more at Sustainable Development Policy & Practice

• Universal health coverage and the Post- 2015 Development Agenda

  Worldwide, about 150 million people a year face catastrophic healthcare costs because of direct payments such as user fees, while 100 million are driven below the poverty line. To the extent that people are covered by a risk pooling mechanism, their out-of-pocket expenditure will not cause financial hardship. Out-of-pocket expenditure for health also illuminates inequities in that richer countries—and richer populations within those countries—tend to have lower out-of-pocket expenditure.3 Additional indicators of access are needed for coverage, and experts at WHO are leading a working group on this challenging issue.
   
  Read more at Rockerfeller Foundation

• What kind of world do we want after 2015

  Sometimes it can feel difficult to make our voices heard on this big planet. But I just found out about a new website created by the United Nations with civil society groups to collect ideas for solving global poverty problems [including water and sanitation] after 2015. It’s called The World We Want 2015. Like the internet and the United Nations, it’s not perfect. Themes aren’t inclusive, not everyone have access to a computer, and allocated time is too short. But if you’re interested in global conversations regarding “development” after Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015, this is a chance to hear and speak about such issues from January 15th to February 15th.

  Read more at Water for the Ages

• WHO Executive Board Considers Health in Post- 2015 Agenda

  The Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) met to consider a report outlining the framework for developing a health-related component of the UN's post-2015 development agenda. The Secretariat report proposes two interrelated components for a health-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG): universal health coverage and healthy life expectancy.

  
  The report notes that even though progress towards health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been impressive in many countries, the post-2015 agenda needs to: ensure continuing progress towards these goals; sustain political and financial support; and maintain investment in tracking results and resources. It further states that SDGs should take into account the changing global health agenda, including through: increasing recognition of the social and economic impacts of noncommunicable diseases; a shift towards focusing on means that support health outcomes, such as health as human right, health equity, equal opportunity and addressing determinants of health; and increasing recognition of the mutually beneficial linkages between health and other sustainable development policies.

   

  Read more at Sustainable Development Policy & Practice  

   

   

• Who’s Talking About the Post- 2015 Agenda?

  There are two sessions on the future of the Millennium Development Goals after 2015 at Davos this year - that’s the same number of sessions given to meditation and art walks.  The word ‘growth’ features in 11 of the agenda’s session headings, ‘human’ in 4 and ‘poverty’ gets no airtime at all.  Yet if the World Economic Forum is ‘committed to improving the state of the world’ this critical debate should be front and centre of everything we are talking about.
  We have made huge strides in delivering on the MDGs: the World Bank estimates that the number of extremely poor people in developing countries will fall from 29% in 1990 to 12% in 2015; the number of children dying before their fifth birthday of preventable causes across the world almost halved from 12 million to 6.9 million in a decade.

  
  But the world has changed since the MDGs were first agreed: six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries are African and once developing countries like China, Brazil and India have become major figures on the world stage, while historically powerful economies now face cuts and financial uncertainty.

  
  Save the Children recently published our report on our aspirations for this new framework, aiming at (stretch-but-doable) zero targets for absolute poverty reduction, hunger, preventable child and maternal deaths and a zero target for those without safe drinking water and sanitation.  This is all possible, so to aim for any less is unconscionable.

  Read more at Save the Children

• Youths adopt Post- 2015 Development Vision

  Youths from different organizations and communities have adopted a powerful post -2015 development vision in a two-day consultation workshopheld in Freetown.The workshop was organized by Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) in collaboration with Restless Development (RD) and Ipasas leading organizations from Sierra Leone to feed into the post Millennium Development Goal (MDG) agenda.

  
  Outcomes from the consultation, according to the organizers, will be contributed to the framework that will be guiding future government policies not only in developing countries but also globally, on the ideas to ensure that any future development would recognize the role that young people play as assets and problem solvers.

  
  One of the facilitators, Moses Johnson from YMCA said that the workshop was for youth to identify the issues and challenges in the MDG and see what gaps and how they could be addressed in the next development framework, which could be set after 2015.

  
  He said young people will look at the MDG’s to see how far they can suggest alternatives that will replace them after 2015, adding that this workshop is among series of processes that various international organizations are undertaking to add youngpeople’s voice to the next development framework.

  Read more at Awoko Business