Sustainable Development & Human Rights - Archive

In a new blog entry for rightingfinance, Aldo Caliari takes a deeper look into the human rights implications of the MDGs, MDG 8 to be more specific: "How much did MDG 8 respond to human rights imperatives and how far did its implementation go in promoting human rights? What historical and legal trends were the backdrop to MDG 8 and what hope can we bear for the future as the international community evaluates a potentially new generation of development goals?" [...]

The United Nations' Sixth High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) that took place in New York in early October shows a deep rift between developing and developed countries. This dialogue was mandated to look at the FfD Agenda's status of implementation and the tasks ahead. While the EU thinks it contributed at least its fair share, developing countries pointed to the major failures in implementation of aid, debt or trade commitments. The future of the FfD process remains unclear [...]

Harris Gleckman has published an article titled ‘ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture’. The article written for iisd surrounds the extensive reforms made to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). After the latest reform resolution, four distinct new elements to ECOSOC have appeared following the governments agreement on new operating rules for the council.

The Working Group on "Financing for sustainable development" of the socalled UN System Task Team (UNTT) has issued four background papers for the Intergovernmental Expert Committee on Sustainable Development Financing and its deliberations surrounding the post-2015 UN development agenda. Paper #1 reviews investment requirement estimates that have been published over the last decade for nine sectors; paper #2 takes stock of national, regional and international public sources for sustainable development finance; paper #3 examines the challenges in raising private sector [...]

The Women’s Major Group (WMG) responds to the Special Event convened by the President of the UN's General Assembly to review progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, and to chart the way forward. In acknowledging the achievements the Women's Major Group is nevertheless greatly concerned that without a transformative shift in the way that gender equality and women’s human rights and justice concerns are articulated, a truly sustainable post-2015 Development agenda will not be achieved.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty urges States to recognize and value unpaid care work, and ensure it is better supported and more equitably shared between women and men. The UN expert states that the unequal distribution of unpaid care work, fueled by damaging gender stereotypes, is a major human rights issue. Therefore it was put on the Agenda of UN meeting in Geneva on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is currently reviewing the rules to report donors’ loans as Official Development Assistance (ODA). This discussion is taking place against a backdrop of aid cuts across Europe and raises concerns about the intentions of DAC donors. There are risks that the poor will be short-changed if the new rules make it easier for donors to inflate their aid figures further without making fresh money available and that debt sustainability will be undermined if loans [...]

Construction of a mega-steel plant in Odisha in Eastern India should be halted immediately, United Nations independent human rights experts have urged, citing serious human rights concerns. The project reportedly threatens to displace over 22,000 people in the Jagatsinghpur District, and disrupt the livelihoods of many thousands more in the surrounding area.

Although the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) welcomes the report and joins to the general call towards a life of dignity for all by the UN's Secretary General it mentions shortcomings and deficits in a newly announced comment. Amongst others ANND is concerned with the lack of interlinkages between development and trade on the one hand and Human Rights and trade on the other and calls to implement the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

UN-NGLS has launched a report on the post-2015 development agenda which entailes a four-month consultation with 120 regional civil society networks (and includes statements from GPF). Together the networks have come up with four objectives surrounding justice, human rights, the equal distribution of resources and accountability/transparency. The report adds a more critical perspective to the recommendations by the SG's High Level Panel, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Global Compact.

Asia Development Alliance (ADA) composed of development CSO/NGO platforms in Asia comment on the 2nd Regional Consultation on Post-2015 development agenda on UN level. In their newest statement ADA welcomes the way taken and formulates demands such as a need to give priority to least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small island developing countries as well as fragile and conflict-affected countries in the Post-2015 development agenda.

The long awaited work of an experts committee on sustainable development financing, a key outcome of the Rio+20 United Nations conference, has finally started. The Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing held its first session on 28-30 August at the UN headquarters in New York. However, contrary to most multilateral discussions and intergovernmental processes in the UN, the session was closed to not only external stakeholders but also the Member States that are not part of the Committee [...]

Women's Major Group, representing 500 women's organizations form all around the world, today addressed UN Secretary-general Ban Ki Moon with regard to his report to the 68th General Assembly on the progress towards the MDGs and the UN's development agenda beyond 2015. In the letter, which is supported more than 50 civil society groups (including GPF), the coalition calls for a stronger recognition of women's rights in the debated post 2015 development agenda as well as for a meaningful approach [...]

The First session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean took place in Montevideo, 12-15 August 2013 with great attendance of women’s rights activists from the region. In this context AWID (Association in Women’s Rights in Development) identifies universal access to health, sexual and reproductive rights, and gender equality as key elements for the Post-2015 agenda on sustainable development.

The Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) has issued a statement regarding their perspective of the current developments in Egypt. ANND describes the efforts they have made in achieving public democracy, social justice and stability during the unrest being faced in the Arab community. The network stresses the importance of ending all violence from conflicting sides to provide a safe basis to encourage economic and political development in Egypt. They recognize that the media has been adding to the cause [...]

The European Commission’s recent accountability report and communication on financing for development highlights the importance of domestic resource mobilisation, tackling illicit financial flows and meeting aid promises. But it contains no substantive new commitments, ducks issues of wider systemic reform and adopts an alarmingly one-sided endorsement of stepping up the use of public money to leverage private finance. These are the conclusions of an article written by Jesse Griffiths, Øygunn Sundsbø Brynildsen, Jeroen Kwakkenbos, María José Romero and Bodo Ellmers [...]

In a report commissioned by UN DESA/DSD Major Groups Programme in response to the Rio+20 outcome document, Barbara Adams and Lou Pingeot (Policy Advisors at GPF but acting in their personal capacities) take stock of the reviews of the history of Major Groups' engagement with the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) and highlight examples of best practices that were deemed successful and efficient and those that did not work. Furthermore, they identify lessons learned from the experience and concerns raised [...]

Alliance Sud, a coalition of Swiss development NGOs, criticizes industrialized countries for not living up to the promises made at the Cancún climate conference in 2010. While rich countries had pledged additional funding to support developing countries, they have resorted to cosmetic tactics instead. Thus, Alliance Sud points out that Switzerland is trying to declare private financing as public contributions. Yet, more innovative public finance mechanisms would be needed instead. This process could endanger a global climate change agreement.

In an open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon, a coalition of women's rights groups DAWN, IWHC and Resurj urge Ban to reassert the importance of women's rights within the post-2015 development agenda. They call on the Secretary-General to put on emphasis on women's reproductive health, sexual education for both girls and boys and the promotion of women's leadership. The groups see an emerging consensus in the High-Level Panel's report, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network's report and the Global Compact's [...]

Pacific women advocates as part of the Women’s Major Group have issued a statement for the Pacific Small Island Developing States Preparatory Meeting in Nadi, Fiji. The statement calls for recognizing the central role of women for sustainable development in the Pacific area in the outcome document of the Preparatory Meeting that took place in June 2013. The Meeting is part of preparations for Third International Confenrence on SIDS (Small Island Developing States) that will be held in 2014.

“The worst thing about living in extreme poverty is the contempt - that they treat you like you are worthless, that they look at you with disgust and fear and that they even treat you like an enemy.”

“We experience the violence of being discriminated against, of not existing, not being part of the same world, not being treated like other human beings.”

Time and again, poverty is associated with violence against the people that suffer it. Poverty is frequently [...]

The debates on an agenda for international co-operation and development beyond 2015 offer the opportunity to (re-)address in a holistic manner well-being and justice in societies. Given the economic, social and ecological challenges in the world, this is urgently needed.

The present framework of international development goals centering on the MDGs and the related strategies do not provide adequate answers to the global problems, be they accelerated global warming, the growing gap between rich and poor, the financialization of the [...]

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)Beyond 2014 took place from July 7-10. As a product of the conference, participants developed The Hague Civil Society Call to Action on Human Rights and ICPD Beyond 2014. If you would like to support the conference's work on the themes of women’s autonomy and reproductive rights, sexual health and well-being and human rights and gender-based discrimination and violence, please sign the petition.

Growing inequalities and unregulated finances are expropriating people everywhere from their fair share in the benefits of global prosperity. The Social Watch Report 2012 concentrates on the effects of present mismangements and false recepies on the rights and well-being of future generations. “The ‘right to a future’ is the most urgent task of the present,” writes Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, member of the Reflection Group and editor-in-chief of the study. “It is about nature, yes, but it is [...]

The world faces an unprecedented coincidence of global crises. They testify to the failure of the dominant model of development and economic progress that is oriented on a technocratic modernisation path, is blind to human rights and the ecological limits of the global ecosystem, confuses growth of Gross Domestic Product with progress in society, and regards poverty as a primarily technical challenge in which categories of inequality and social justice are neglected.

The Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development [...]