Sustainable Development & Human Rights - Archive

For the first time, the international development agenda, through the FfD3 and post-2015 processes, is considered universal, applying to every country. Current deliberations, however, reveal different understandings of what universality means. To some, the concept overshadows the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR), agreed in the Rio Declaration and reaffirmed by subsequent global and international documents—a concern voiced by the Indian delegate among others during Financing for Development talks.

Civil society organizations and social movements around the world struggling against corporate abuse achieved a first victory in June last year when the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 26/9, establishing an Intergovernmental Working Group whose the mandate shall be to elaborate an international legally-binding instrument to regulate the activities of business enterprises. However, there remain important challenges to ensure that a robust treaty ensuring genuine corporate accountability and access to justice will be drafted in a participatory and transparent [...]

New Discussion paper for the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives I March 2015

The Post-2015 Agenda with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as one of its key components is intended to be truly universal and global. This requires a fair sharing of costs, responsibilities and opportunities among and within countries. The principle of »common but differentiated responsibilities« (CBDR) must be applied. Coupled with the human rights principle of equal rights for all and the need to respect [...]

CESR has long argued that embedding meaningful accountability into the post-2015 agenda will be critical to ensure it stands any chance of achieving its goals and creating real, empowering change on the ground. As the Secretary-General has said, a new paradigm of accountability is in fact “the real test of people-centred, planet-sensitive development.” In May 2015, one week of the intergovernmental negotiations will be dedicated to discussing what this new paradigm will look like, but already there are signs that [...]

Responding to widespread anger about corporate tax avoidance, the impacts of such avoidance on inequality and poverty, and concerns that current tax reform processes are inadequate, a new nonpartisan body, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), has been established to propose reforms from the perspective of the public interest. ICRICT was initiated by a broad coalition that includes Action Aid, Alliance-Sud, CCFD-Terre Solidaire, Christian Aid, the Council for Global Unions, the Global Alliance for Tax [...]

The new working paper by Christian Aid and the Center for Economic and Social Rights responds to the list of preliminary indicators that the the United Nations Statistical Commission is considering. Their analysis and concrete proposals are based on the premise that a human rights-aligned fiscal data revolution is essential to expose the hidden injustices buried in the way resource-related policies are conducted, and who truly benefits from them.

On January 28-30, 2015, members of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) attended the First Drafting Session for the outcome document of the third International Conference on Financing forDevelopment (FfD3) at the United Nations Headquarters. As a result, a policy paper by Nicole Bidegain reviews the main elements of the FfD process in order to set current debates in context, identify conflict areas between the different blocks of countries, and introduce some of the recommendations DAWN has [...]

The event aims at exploring the question of how women’s organizations and feminist movements can influence governmental decision-making. What strategies have proven to be effective to ensure policy agendas and laws reflect women’s interests? What are the factors and conditions under which non-state actors can effectively trigger and influence policy change?

Speakers:

Elisa Vega Sillo, Office for Depatriarchalization of the Vice-Ministry of Decolonization, Bolivia
Nitya Rao, University of East Anglia, Great Britain
Anne-Marie Goetz, New York University, United States
Rob [...]

At this event, we will discuss whether the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be able to avoid the shortcomings of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), on which the UN development agenda was based so far. This question was also the subject of a study we recently published.

Speakers:

Dagmar Enkelmann, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Germany
Gathoni Blessol, The Rules und Bunge La Wamama Mashinani, Kenya
Barbara Adams, Global Policy Forum, United States
Yiping Cai, Development Alternatives with Women for a New [...]

The_A_Word In a new article released by Future United Nations Development System (FUNDS) , Roberto Bissio gives his take on the post-2015 process and suggests what must be done to ensure the promises made will be fulfilled. Twenty-two independent UN human rights rapporteurs wrote to the Rio+20 Summit that “real risk exists that commitments made in Rio will remain empty promises without effective monitoring and accountability.” This danger also exists for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The absence of specific [...]

Despite snowstorm warnings and ice-cold temperatures in New York, the Financing for Development (FfD) negotiations managed to pick up speed when governments convened for the first drafting session at the end of January. They are currently negotiating the outcome of the upcoming Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development, which will take place on July 13-16 this year, and is planned as a key milestone ahead of the Post-2015 Summit and the UNFCCC Climate Conference later this year. Tove Maria [...]

In a Joint Statement released by OHCHR, the Chairpersons of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies give their opinion on the post-2015 development agenda and call for accountability to be strengthened. Their call was issued as UN Member States started discussions to finalize the draft set of 17 sustainable development goals which will be put forward for adoption by heads of state at a UN summit in New York in September 2015. The statement also highlights the important role [...]

You are cordially invited to a side-event by the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the UN, CIDSE and Social Watch on Thursday, January 29, 2015 in the UN Conference Building, New York. Dealing with responsibilities in a financing sustainable development context, this event seeks to generate discussion on conceptual challenges such as an evenhanded approach to the three pillars of sustainable development, adapting a framework like the Financing for Development process to the universal agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals [...]

In September 2015, the heads of state and government of the United Nations (UN) Member States are scheduled to decide on the Post-2015 agenda. This is to include not only a list of universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also a mechanism for monitoring and review. What would the review mechanism have to look like to contribute to the implementation of sustainable development? Marianne Beisheim, researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) examines the debate taking [...]

n a new report released by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office, Barbara Adams and Kathryn Tobin give their take on the post-2015 process and suggest how various actors can intervene to shape proposed new goals. The Sustainable Development Goals will determine the global development agenda for years to come. They will affect not only the UN’s Secretariat, funds and programmes but each member state as well as non-governmental organizations and the private sector around the world. If processes converge to [...]

The second MenEngage Global Symposium was held in New Delhi, India, from November 10-13, 2014 and brought together more than 1200 activists and professionals coming from 94 countries. The outcome of the Symposium was the creation of the Delhi Declaration and Call to Action. This document presents the shared concerns of all participants regarding the gaps in the progress of the gender justice movement and, against this background, affirms the commitment of all parties to the continuous engagement of boys [...]

Following the release of the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program on December 9, 2014, two former UN Assistant Secretaries-General and UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq, Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, initiated a petition to start a judicial process against the violators of the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. The petition, which has now become global through the campaigning of the Brussels Tribunal, an activist think tank and peace organization [...]

The economic valuation of nature has now been debated for several years, having already been implicit in the Kyoto Protocol that set targets for greenhouse gas emissions and provided the framework for trading CO2 equivalents. The role of nature in models to measure prosperity and of market-based instruments in nature conservation was discussed at a conference organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Global Policy Forum and terre des hommes in Bonn, Germany, in November. Presentations and discussions at the conference [...]

The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) is considered one of the key achievements of the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Twenty years later, this principle has become a focal point of current negotiations on climate change and the post-2015 agenda. The developing countries that make up the Group of 77 want to preserve the principle unchanged. However, the US, EU and other industrialized countries want to do away with it in [...]

In a recent blog post, the Center for Economic and Social Rights takes a look behind the data ‘revolution’ and finds that high quality, accessible data – combined with important shifts in how we collect and use it – could certainly play a role in improving human rights enjoyment, empowerment and accountability. Indeed, CESR states that data can illuminate human rights problems and help to identify potential policy solutions. Not only does it provide and aggregate information about people, it [...]

2015 will be a landmark year for the global fight against poverty and for equitable and sustainable development, with three crucial summits in just six months. A central issue for all three summits is concrete proposals for reforms to international financial and trade systems so that they support the achievement of global sustainable development goals. Such reforms should be based on the right to development for all countries and ensuring economic and social rights for all. There are sufficient funds [...]

On September 19 2014, Global Policy Forum, in collaboration with MISEREOR, hosted an expert panel discussion that raised many strategic questions on the topic of financing the post-2015 sustainable development agenda and the sustainable development goals. Many of the answers to these questions depend on the outcomes of negotiations in the run up to the UN Financing for Development Conference in July and the expected UN Summit to pass a post-2015 agenda in September 2015. In the meantime, however, the [...]

"The debates on the Post 2015 Agenda offer the opportunity to reconsider development in light of the new realities and to overcome the old and often still paternalistic approaches of development policy. Therefore, a truly universal Post 2015 Agenda must not just become an updated set of MDGs. It should contain universal sustainability goals and a program for structural transformation which defines the necessary financial, regulatory and institutional means of implementation in all countries of the world, and this in [...]

The German NGO Forum on Environment and Development has sent an open letter to the Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on Post-2015 Development Planning, Amina Mohammed. The letter addresses the Secretary General’s synthesis report, which will constitute a major step in the elaboration of this new agenda and will reflect on the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals' report, published in July. The NGO Forum welcomes that the OWG report addresses a series of important issues such as inequality [...]

The German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, in cooperation with various other German civil society actors, has published a position paper outlining eight key aspects that need to be further built on by the post-2015 Global Development and Sustainability Agenda. Key elements include: a decent life for all; human rights; gender; generational and distributive justice and respect of planetary boundaries; the complete eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; and the safeguarding of natural resources and ecosystems – elements for [...]