Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 227 - August 7, 2015

After over eight months of intergovernmental negotiations in New York and numerous iterations of an outcome document, consensus was reached on the United Nations' post-2015 development agenda, titled "Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda", on the evening of Sunday 2 August.
The talks were scheduled for 20 to 31 July and with continuing differences over several key issues, almost non- stop closed-door negotiations stretched into the weekend. The finalized text will be formally adopted at a Summit on 25-27 September during this year's UN General Assembly session.
The post-2015 agenda's outcome document consists, at its centre, the Sustainable Development Goals (which are built on 17 goals and 169 targets produced by the UN Open Working Group in 2013-2014), as well as a political declaration, a chapter on means of implementation, and a chapter on conclusion on follow-up and review.
Together, this agenda is to serve as a foundation for international development cooperation for a period of 15 years, coming into effect on September 2015 and expiring in September 2030.
The framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda is the first of its kind to be characterized by universality, where all countries both developing and developed take on actions and steps toward sustainable development. This distinguishes the SDGs from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were essentially a donor-recipient model. Read more

 

After more than two years of intense negotiations, the U.N.’s 193 member states have unanimously agreed on a new Sustainable Development Agenda (SDA) with 17 goals — including the elimination of extreme poverty and hunger — to be reached by 2030. The new goals, which will be part of the U.N.’s post-2015 development agenda and to be approved at a summit meeting of world leaders Sep. 25-27, cover a wide range of political and socio-economic issues, including inequality, poverty, hunger, gender equality, industrialisation, sustainable development, full employment, human rights, quality education, climate change and sustainable energy for all. However, the Agenda is far less ambitious when it comes to the means of implementation, warns GPF's Jens Martens: “The implementation of the SDGs will require fundamental changes in fiscal policy, regulation and global governance. But what we find in the new Agenda is vague and by far not sufficient to trigger the proclaimed transformational change. But goals without sufficient means are meaningless.” Read more

As the financial goalposts for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be agreed at the UN’s September summit, were established a few weeks ago at the Financing for Development conference, the elephant in the room remains the role of the private sector in education delivery. It seems that the World Bank and UN have increasingly different visions of how the education goal and children’s right to education should be met.
By increasingly focusing on low-fee education providers to fill this funding gap, the Bank has provoked criticis from the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh. Singh has spoken out about the negative impact that low-fee private schools, promoted by the Bank, have on children’s right to free education: “Promoting for-profit education, the IFC [International Finance Corporation, the Bank’s private sector arm] considers laws as financial hurdles and provides guidance to private providers of education to be ‘very profitable and flourishing enterprises.’ Read more