post 2015 news and events

• Will we see real progress in addressing violence against women and girls at the 57th Commission on The Status of Women?

  Member states, women’s rights advocates and organisations, trade unions, religious institutions and organizations and human rights organisations will once again gather in New York for the annual two-week long meeting to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and women's empowerment worldwide.  Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a recurring theme for the CSW and yet it is not abating. In fact, in some cases VAWG is increasing in both number of attacks and brutality and we continue to see new forms arising.  So what is being done and what are the some challenges in combatting VAWG and how does it relate the post-2015 development agenda currently being debated?

  
  Read more at Association for Women’s Rights in Development

• Within Reach- Global Development Goals

  In her guest blog about the launch of Bread for the World’s 2013 Hunger Report, Asma Lateff argues that the MDGs have been remarkably successful in focusing the world’s attention on hunger and poverty.  Now it’s time for a strong push to meet the MDG targets by 2015.

  Read the full blog

• Women Deliver 2013: Lessons learned for Indonesia

  The Women Deliver 2013 Global Conference in Kuala Lumpur concluded with a united call for continued investment in girls and women at a time when the world critically needs to prioritize girls and women in the lead up to the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) deadline and beyond.

  All speakers and panelists at the conference, billed as the biggest in the decade, addressed the importance of placing girls and women at the center of the next development agenda, discussing advocacy strategies to keep girls’ and women’s needs in focus by prioritizing gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women to make their own decisions on the lives they lead.

  
  Read more at The Jakarta Post

• Women deliver conference’s final goal: push abortion at the United Nations

  One of the final announcements at Women Deliver, the global conference on family planning, was the launch of a social network campaign to demand countries include reproductive and sexual health and rights in the UN’s new development goals.

  
  These new development goals will take over when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015. UN agencies, countries, non-governmental groups and suppliers are busy now working to ensure their top issue or product is included.

  
  Read more at LifeNews.com

• Work on the Post- 2015 Development Agenda Continues…

  In 2000, the international community approved the most ambitious consolidated development agenda in history in the form of the Millennium Development Goals. Huge uncertainty remained, however, about whether it would be possible to accomplish the goals by the time they would expire in 2015. Now, as we approach the deadline, the picture has become clearer. On some of the goals, progress has exceeded expectations and the targets have been met. On others however, the international community has failed to achieve the targets outlined in 2000.

  As previously mentioned in the RESULTS Blog, the UN is currently in the process of consulting stakeholders around the world to see what should be included in the next set of development goals for 2015.

  Read more at RESULTS

• World needs 31M jobs per year from 2015- 2030- LI senior economist

  The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that a total of 470 million new jobs, or about 32 million jobs per year, will be needed to provide employment to the world’s working age population in the 15 years from 2015 to 2030.
  ILO senior economist, Aurelio Parisotto, cited the first results of the United Nations (UN)’s ‘My World’ global survey, which asked people in 190 countries for their priorities for a post-2015 development agenda, and which showed that “jobs are a high priority everywhere.”

  
  Parisotto said that the current employment scenario is already bleak.

  
  “One in every three workers in the world is living with their families below the US$2 poverty line,” he said. “They work as paid employees, own-account workers or unpaid family labour, but remain trapped in poverty.”

  
  The world’s youth are particularly affected by unemployment. Parisotto said that of the over 200 million unemployed people worldwide, almost 73 million of whom are young people.

  
  Read more at Asian Journal

• World: Engage a Plan for Women Post- 2015

  As online consultations move forward regarding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) post-2015 framework, civil society, academia, governments and the UN continue to grapple with what priorities to set for an agenda that will be a no-holds-barred assault on poverty. Resoundingly, the peoples of the world that have been consulted are calling for an agenda that permanently disrupts the status quo and provides the foundation for many of the stakeholders involved in the talks.

  There is one major consideration to the viability of our future; priorities for the post-2015 agenda need to interweave solutions to specific challenges women face. The facet of challenges women face worldwide come with entrenched cultural nuances that must be reflected throughout individual aims that each government should commit to reach. Whereas a universal framework for aims are important for achieving continuity in global standards, the greatest collaboration between civil society (nonprofits and similar entities) and lay persons must be an open process for all ages to engage with.

  Read more at The Huff Post

• WSIS Forum focuses on post- 2015 development agenda

  This year's forum of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), has been described as a unique opportunity to develop multi-stakeholder consensus on what is needed for the WSIS process in the future to ensure that the bottom-up approach of the process is preserved.  Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure of the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, also noted that the decisions concerning modalities also respect the real requirements of the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for socio-economic development, while ensuring growth in the ICT ecosystem itself."

  
  In the coming week, the WSIS Forum will focus on the future of information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly as an engine of growth in a post-2015 development environment.

  
  Read more at United Nations Radio

• Young People and Inequalities: Recommendation for the Post- 2015 Development Agenda

  Leading up to the year 2015, the United Nations and Civil Society are organizing a series of consultations to help shape the post-2015 development agenda. Part of this process is aGlobal Online Conversation, which provides a platform for people all over the world to share their visions for building a just and sustainable world free from poverty.  The following contribution was made by IWHC to the online thematic consultation on Inequalities, specifically within the sub-discussion on “Inequalities faced by girls”.

  Young people all over the world face a range of unique challenges to exercising their rights.  Barriers to age-appropriate health services, meaningful education, and viable livelihoods opportunities are among the most pressing impediments to youth empowerment.

  Read more at Akimbo

• 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