Civil Society articulates common demands at the United Nations

Photo: NGLS.

Over 1,000 representatives from civil society, governments and the United Nations gathered on 22 September at UN Headquarters in New York for an open dialogue on critical regional issues and policy recommendations looking forward to the next global development agenda. “Advancing Regional Recommendations on the Post-2015 Development Agenda,” organized by the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) in partnership with the Post-2015 Development Planning Team of the Executive Office of the Secretary-General (EOSG), launched the  report of the UN-NGLS regional civil society consultations carried out from May through August 2013. The event convened the largest single gathering of civil society in the post-2015 process to date.

This dialogue included opening remarks from President of the 68th Session of the General Assembly John Ashe, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, and ministers from Ireland and South Africa, the co-chairs of the General Assembly Special Event on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and UN-NGLS. Through two panels, speakers who participated in the UN-NGLS regional consultations shared recommendations and analysis emerging from the consultation report, which covered all regions: Africa; Arab States; Asia and the Pacific; Europe and North America; and Latin America and the Caribbean. The event concluded with remarks from ASG Amina J. Mohammed, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Post-2015 Development Planning; Permanent Representative of Hungary to the United Nations and co-chair of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, Csaba Kőrösi; and Debapriya Bhattacharya of the Centre for Policy Dialogue. The  outcome report of this event, along with the  consultation report, was  presented to the General Assembly Special Event on Millennium Development Goals, on 25 September 2013.

Roberto Bissio of  Social Watch participated in the Panel Discussion I: Regional Recommendations and Convergences. Mr. Bissio noted that thanks to an active policy of progressive taxation and redistribution, Latin America and the Caribbean is the only region in the world that reduced inequalities in the last decade, while inequalities are increasing all over the world in developing countries and in advanced economies. Further progress in this area, however, faces obstacles in obligations derived from the international trade and investment system that frequently contradict human rights-based policies. Mr. Bissio illustrated that “Free trade agreements, where signed, have not delivered on their promise of prosperity and the Caribbean region, for example, is heavily burdened by debt as a result.” An imbalance of power towards corporations in combination with international financial volatility, “derived from the inability of the advanced economies to properly regulate their financial markets, is negatively affecting the development prospects of the Latin American and Caribbean region and needs to be addressed,” he asserted.

Mr. Bissio cited the recent  Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development  adopted through a process of consultation and consensus-building led by ECLAC, approved by 38 countries, and strongly welcomed by civil society, in particular women’s organizations. “This kind of rights-based approach and its capacity to build intergovernmental consensus and civil society support is precisely what we expect from the post-2015 debate,” Mr. Bissio stressed.

Source: NGLS