For 13 years international development policy has rested on a set of goals written in "relative casualness". So casual was the manner of the small team working out of a basement office of the UN in New York that they initially "forgot" to include an environment goal – what became millennium development goal (MDG) seven on environmental sustainability.

Those targeted by the MDGs, and from 2015 by their successor when the MDGs expire, do not forget the importance of the environment. More than 100 million people could die by 2030 from the impact of climate change without an immediate shift in our consumption and production. According to a report commissioned by 20 governments, 90% of those deaths would be in developing countries.

Read more at Poverty Matters Blog

The United Nations and its partners today called on the international community to prioritize ensuring access to water and sanitation to vulnerable populations in the ‘post-2015’ development agenda, stressing this would help combat inequality and promote human rights and sustainability.

“The future development agenda must aim at tackling the most persistent of all challenges: inequalities in access to essential services to realize people’s rights,” the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, the Government of Finland and Water Aid, said in a joint press release.
“Crucially, among these essential services, it must aim for every person to have equal access to water, sanitation and hygiene. Special attention should be given to women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by the lack of these services.”

The group stated that countries must build on the lessons learned working towards the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are set to expire in 2015. The eight MDGs set specific targets on poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental stability, HIV/AIDS reduction, and a ‘Global Partnership for Development.’

Read more at UN News Centre

We have made great strides in reducing poverty and enabling human development. Ever since poverty trends began to be monitored, the number of people living in extreme poverty and poverty rates declined in every developing region, including in sub-Saharan Africa. The global poverty rate at $1.25 a day declined in 2010 by less than half the 1990 rate. The first target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—halving the extreme poverty rate to its 1990 level—will have been achieved at the global level well before 2015.

Yet, while overall poverty has been reduced, we face considerable challenges in human development today, largely shaped by growing inequalities within countries.2 Bad governance, poor health, low quality in education, the impact of climate change and environmental degradation continue to be the catalysts for universal poverty. As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated: “Poverty is not simply the lack of material goods and opportunities such as employment, ownership of productive assets and savings. It is also the lack of intangible assets and social goods, such as legal identity, good health, physical integrity, freedom from fear and violence, organizational capacity, the ability to exert political influence, and the ability to claim rights and live in respect and dignity.”

Read more at UN Chronicle

What are the key obstacles in financing education? Who should be held accountable for ensuring that children receive a good quality education? These questions are at the heart of the debate going on in the post-2015 development agenda’s Global Consultation on Education, which is wrapping up this week. With a massive financing gap of $16 billion per year needed to achieve education for all by 2015, it is clear that more funding is needed. But increased financing is only one part of the equation: more effective and equitable aid is the other. Ensuring more effective aid isn’t a question of a public or private financing, but of working smarter and more collaboratively to bring the lessons of what works and what doesn't in both the public and private systems to the poorest of the poor, to places where neither government nor market approaches on their own are solving the education crisis.

Read more at Brookings

As the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals approaches, different United Nations agencies are beginning to discuss what the post-2015 Development Agenda will encompass.

The United Nations (U.N.) entity for women, U.N. Women, has been tasked along with the United Nations Children's Fund(UNICEF) to lead consultations on the topic of inequalities, which can be based on anything from gender and sexual orientation to race or socioeconomic status. Written submissions, e-discussions and an advisory group helped inform these discussions.

The consultations discussed gender equality and gender-based violence, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI), persons with disabilities, economic inequalities, indigenous peoples, young people, urban inequalities and minorities.

IPS correspondent Mathieu Vaas spoke with Saraswathi Menon, a senior manager at U.N. Women, about the post-2015 Development Agenda and what possibilities it may offer to fight inequality around the world.

Read more at Independent European Daily Express

1a.       About CIVICUS

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation has worked for nearly two decades to strengthen citizen action and civil society throughout the world, especially in areas where participatory democracy and citizens' freedom of association are threatened. CIVICUS has a vision of a global community of active, engaged citizens committed to the creation of a more just and equitable world.

1b.      About CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness CPDE

Following civil society’s participation to the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Republic of Korea, and key role in shaping the multi-stakeholder outcome agreement, the two global CSO processes involved in aid effectiveness have mobilized to better respond to the emerging post-Busan development agenda.

Over the past year, BetterAid and Open Forum facilitated CSO consultations worldwide regarding the mandate and structure of a new and unified global platform for civil society development effectiveness work. This consultation process has come to a conclusion this December 2012, when the Global Council of the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) met in Nairobi, Kenya, to finalize the new civil society strategy and working arrangements in the post-Busan reality.

The CPDE will act as the collective successor of BetterAid and Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness, and will unite CSOs from around the world on the issue of development effectiveness, particularly in the context of the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (BPd) and the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC).

1a.       About CIVICUS

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation has worked for nearly two decades to strengthen citizen action and civil society throughout the world, especially in areas where participatory democracy and citizens' freedom of association are threatened. CIVICUS has a vision of a global community of active, engaged citizens committed to the creation of a more just and equitable world.

1b.      About CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness CPDE

Following civil society’s participation to the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Republic of Korea, and key role in shaping the multi-stakeholder outcome agreement, the two global CSO processes involved in aid effectiveness have mobilized to better respond to the emerging post-Busan development agenda.

Over the past year, BetterAid and Open Forum facilitated CSO consultations worldwide regarding the mandate and structure of a new and unified global platform for civil society development effectiveness work. This consultation process has come to a conclusion this December 2012, when the Global Council of the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) met in Nairobi, Kenya, to finalize the new civil society strategy and working arrangements in the post-Busan reality.

The CPDE will act as the collective successor of BetterAid and Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness, and will unite CSOs from around the world on the issue of development effectiveness, particularly in the context of the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (BPd) and the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC).

The global burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is one of the biggest threats to international health and development, confirms a major new Series in the Lancet today. These diseases – cancer, cardiovascular disease, and chronic respiratory disease and diabetes – are the most common cause of death and disability, accounting for 54% of all disability and 65% of deaths worldwide. Rising fastest in low- and middle-income countries and impacting disproportionately on disadvantaged communities; NCDs are threatening human and economic development.

Produced by some of the world’s most eminent scientists and academics, including from within the NCD Alliance civil society network, the Series provides the evidence for NCDs as a development issue and proposes cost-effective interventions to accelerate progress and avert millions of deaths worldwide. The Series highlights the urgent need to include NCDs in the post-2015 development agenda and the new development goals being devised over the next 2 years by governments and the United Nations (UN).

Read more at The NCD Alliance

The unachieved goals include poverty alleviation, improving literacy rate and ratio of girls in schools, bringing down infant and maternal mortality ratios, improving access to water and sanitation and funding of social sector programmes. The government has projected 16 targets and 33 indicators for achieving the MDGs latest by 2015.
These disclosures came from the UNDP draft report on key messages. The report will be submitted to the UN Development Group by March 30, 2013, which will then become part of inter-government processes for consultation in June-July 2013 before presenting it in General Assembly in September.

Read more at DAWN.com

Preliminary results from a global survey asking people to choose the most important issues for a better world reveals education is at the very top of the list. While the survey’s online response to date has been dominated by respondents from high Human Development Index (HDI) countries, people from over 183 countries – including both low and medium HDI countries – ranked “a good education” as the highest priority, above other issues such as better healthcare, access to clean water and sanitation or better job opportunities. A summary of the findings was presented to the U.N. secretary-general’s High Level Panel last month during their meeting in Monrovia, Liberia. This global My World survey is ongoing, and a second summary of the results will be presented at the next High Level Panel meeting in Bali at the end of March. Ultimately the results will be shared with world leaders in setting the next global development agenda.

But does this global prioritization among citizens guarantee a strong focus on education within the post-2015 development agenda? Not necessarily, since the roadmap to a debate on the agenda in the United Nations General Assembly this September – and beyond that to the eventual agreement on what the agenda will actually include in September 2015 – is much less clear. The United Nations Foundation has produced a useful graphic about this multilayered process:

Read more at Brookings

The Public Dialogue and Leadership Meeting on Addressing Inequalities in the Post-2015 Development Agenda took place from 18-19 February 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Co-hosted by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UN Women and the Governments of Denmark and Ghana, these meetings were the culmination of the Global Thematic Consultation on Addressing Inequalities in the Post-2015 Development Agenda and were held to review the final report and findings of the consultation.

The public dialogue, held on the first day, included three interactive discussions that focused on: the impacts of inequalities; the different dimensions of inequality that should be of greatest concern, the synergies among them, and the common factors that drive and sustain them; and the most effective ways to address inequalities and their driving factors in a new development agenda, as well as ways to assess and measure progress on reducing inequalities in the years ahead.
 

Read more at iisd Reporting services

The United Nations General Assembly will hold a High-Level Meeting on Disability and Development with the overarching theme “The way forward: a disability inclusive development agenda towards 2015 and beyond”. The meeting will take place at the level of Heads of States and Government on 23 September 2013, at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The High-level Meeting is expected to result in a concise, action-oriented outcome document, which would enable the international community to advance a disability-inclusive development agenda, in alignment with existing international commitments.

The Secretary General’s report submitted to the 67th session of the General Assembly discussed on-going progress made in the implementation of the MDGs in policies and programmes related to persons with disabilities and provided recommendations on priority areas for inclusion in the outcome of the high-level meeting, as well as in ongoing efforts to mainstream disability in the development agenda towards 2015 and beyond.

Read more at United Nations enable

As part of its efforts to develop an inclusive post-2015 development agenda, Precious Gbeneol, the senior special assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals, has announced that her office in collaboration with the United Nations System in Nigeria is organising a stakeholders’ consultative forum.

The stakeholders’ meeting which holds at the Ladi Kwali Hall in Sheraton Hotels, Abuja on February 18 and 19, 2013 will be chaired by Anyim Pius Anyim, secretary to the government of the Federation, while a keynote address will be delivered by Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, coordinating minister of the economy and Member, United Nations High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Read more at Business Day

As the deadline for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches, the UN is driving a global consultation around a new global development agenda post 2015. The People’s Health Movement (PHM) welcomes the prospect of a global compact which commits to sustainable and equitable development. However, the negotiators will need to go beyond the mere palliation of symptoms to confront the dynamics that are driving widening inequality, avoidable suffering and accelerated destabilization of the biosphere including global warming.

The UN documents on a post 2015 development agenda are neither addressing the looming crisis of capitalism, accelerated by the ascendant ideology of neoliberalism nor the unequal global power relations which both reflect and deepen the crisis.

Read more at Global Social Justice

The 51st session of the Commission for Social Development concluded at the UN Headquarters in New York yesterday.

The session adopted a resolution pertaining to mainstreaming disability in the development agenda.

In the closing statement, Chargé d’Affaires of the Permanent Mission of Nepal to UN, Sewa Lamsal Adhikari, said delegates in the session said the government has an essential role in creating an enabling environment to empower people by providing tools and capacity-building opportunities.

Nepal is the current chair of the Commission for Social Development.

Read more at The Himalayan

European Commissioner for Environment, Janez Potočnik spoke yesterday at the 27th Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme held in Nairobi, Kenya and addressed the critical issues of poverty and sustainability of prosperity. In his speech, he underlined that these are the two most pressing challenges the world faces today and they need to be addressed together by all countries.

As Commissioner Potočnik stated: “Following the pathway to sustainability is a must for all to pursue. Goals will guide and provide stimulus all along that pathway. Goals should be set on a 2030 timescale and address the overarching objectives of sustainable development: poverty eradication, changing unsustainable consumption and production patterns and protecting and managing the natural resource basis.”

Read more at News Europe

Following the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012, the United Nations are facilitating an open consultation to identify priorities from citizens and stakeholders around the world for the post-2015 development agenda, as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will reach their target date in 2015. Water is one of the eleven thematic areas around which the global consultation is organized, along with inequalities, governance, health, environmental sustainability, population dynamics, growth and employment, conflicts and fragility, food security and nutrition, education and energy.

Read more at UN Water

For the debate on what should follow the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire in 2015, a number of processes have been put in place to seek inputs from country, regional and global levels, into the post-2015 development agenda and framework.

Platform focal points are frequently exchanging ideas on possible inputs and entry points to the post-2015 dialogues. At the board meeting in the Hague on 1 February and two subsequent telcos, they agreed on the importance to supply concrete evidence on the multi-functionality of agriculture to address hunger. The currently considered approach is two pronged, advocating for a 'hunger & FSN goal' and specifying inputs on specific targets/indicators. Since member agencies are at the early stages of drafting their strategies and priorities, focal points will collaborate to give their views additional visibility.

Read more at Global Donor Platform for Rural Development

There’s a lot of interest in an ‘employment goal’ as part of the post-2015 agenda.  That makes sense.  Ask people what they’re most concerned about worldwide and it is jobs and the economy. Ask politicians what they’re most concerned about and employment will come high up the list.

So what measure would we use?  We can’t use ‘reduced unemployment’ as the goal, because it doesn’t really capture the full scale of the problem. The great majority of working age people are ‘employed’ worldwide, because if they weren’t doing something to earn money or grow food they’d be reduced to begging to survive –in most countries there just isn’t much in the way of a safety net to support them.

Read more at Global Development: Views from the Centre

This week we launched ODI’s new Future Development Goals Tracker. This is an exciting tool for post-2015 watchers, since it brings all the proposals for future goals together in one place and allows you to search for what’s been said in your areas of interest. We’ll be putting out more analysis soon to help make sense of it all, but with ‘a good education’ shaping up as the top post-2015 priority according to the first MyWorld global survey results, here’s an early look in at what the Tracker tells us about proposals in this crucial sector.

Read more at UKFIET Community of Practice

Global development goals due to replace current anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire in 2015 could be unified by a concept that calls for an integrated view of economic growth and development, said Helen Clark, head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The concept -- the water-energy-food nexus -- aims to create a sustainable economy and a healthy environment by considering how each of the three elements interrelate and are affected by decision-making.

“It’s a more holistic approach  --  without water you can’t farm, without clean water you can’t be healthy, without ways of allocating and looking after the water supply there won’t be enough to meet our needs -- it’s got many dimensions,” Clark said.

Read more at AlertNet

The integrated event of Seventh Regional EST Forum in Asia and Global Consultation on Sustainable Transport in the post-2015 Development Agenda will be held on 23‐25 April 2013 in Bali, Indonesia. The Regional EST Forum, under the theme of “Next Generation Transport System We Want for 21st Century~ Looking Beyond Rio+20”, will discuss and share the progress and achievements made by the countries towards achieving the goals under the Bangkok 2020 Declarations and will address EST in the context of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) outcome ‐ "The Future We Want".

Read more at Sustainable Development Policy & Practice

With the all but impossible task of deciphering global priorities – let alone goals and strategies to achieve them – the post-2015 United Nations development process got a dose of clarity recently.

Most readily accessible as a web platform, MY World is a global survey for citizens initiated by the United Nations Development Program, the UN Millennium Campaign, the Overseas Development Institute, and the World Wide Web Foundation to allow people from across the world to voice their priorities for the post-2015 agenda. The offline version of MY World is being rolled out in 20 countries to help further capture people’s views.
The initial results are in…

Read more at Global Partnership for Education

Since September last year, UNICEF and UN Women have been supporting an open consultation on Addressing Inequalities in relation to the Post-2015 Development Agenda. This has been held entirely on-line, at www.worldwewant2015/inequalities. A report, aiming to synthesize the many contributions from around the world, has just been posted. The findings will be discussed at a “leadership meeting” hosted by the Governments of Denmark and Ghana on the 19th February in Copenhagen.

We received more than 175 papers for the consultation. The largest number contained analysis and personal testimony on gender inequalities, while others focused on economic issues, disabilities and the experiences of young people, slum dwellers and minority groups. Some of our NGO and UN partners also teamed up to moderate online discussions on these issues. Almost 1,300 people participated in these e-discussions over several months.

Read more at Institute of Development Studies

On February 11th, the United Nations Foundation organized a panel on the United Nation's Post- 2015 Development Agenda, featuring Mr. Will Davis, director of Washington's United Nations Development Programme and Mr. John Norris, executive director of the Center of American Progress.

The United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were created "to establish peace and a healthy global economy" by highlighting major issues such as children's health, female empowerment sustainable environment, poverty, disease and development. These goals were created in 2000 and were set to be achieved by 2015. The year 2015 is approaching and the United Nations has so far been doing a successful job in achieving these goals- but what happens after 2015?

Read more at The Global Citizen

Based on lessons learnt from MDGs as well as based on evidence gathered through work of the UN system, the OECD, and the World Bank, achieving progress towards various development targets very much depends on enhancements of women’s empowerment and gender equality.  Gender inequalities are often reinforced by combination of inequalities in income, unequal access to paid work, lack of property and ownership rights, difficult access to basic services, on ethnicity or disability.  They are detrimental to women and men, girls and boys, families, communities and for society as a whole. The obligation to address and tackle (gender) inequalities is born out of international human rights standards against which policies, including macro-economic policies should be held accountable. 
 
A post 2015 development agenda should therefore pay attention not only to inequalities (including those gender based), but make their causes explicit, aiming at formulating realistic goals and targets (in various areas, including in economic, social and political spheres) which will lead to reduction of inequalities and more sustainable progress in inclusion.

Read more at UN Turkey

As discussed in previous blog posts in this series, good governance and human rights are essential to human well-being, and should be included in the post-2015 global development agenda. Rule of law and access to justice are linchpins of these concepts.

Globally, the United Nations Development Program estimates that four billion people live outside the law’s protection, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and neglect. Empowering individuals and communities to assert and realize their rights can ensure that the law protects against government corruption and discrimination, and gives a voice to the least politically powerful, who might otherwise be ignored. Rule of law and access to justice can also acts as a powerful economic lever, allowing small farmers and entrepreneurs the opportunity to protect their assets and enforce contracts. And rule of law and access to justice are universally applicable issues, in rich and poor countries alike, making these goals particularly appropriate for a global development agenda that aims to have far-reaching scope and relevance.

Read more at Council on Foreign Relations

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation has worked for nearly two decades to strengthen citizen action and civil society throughout the world, especially in areas where participatory democracy and citizens' freedom of association are threatened. CIVICUS has a vision of a global community of active, engaged citizens committed to the creation of a more just and equitable world.

CIVICUS is seeking a freelancer or application development company to rapidly develop and deploy a multi-lingual component for a website developed using Joomla! 2.5.x. The component will enable human based translation of existing and new content on a website developed in Joomla! 2.5.x. The component may be similar to JoomFish.

Specific requirements include:

• Compatible with Joomla! 2.5 (and upwardly compatible with Joomla! 3.0)
• Be based on Joomla’s MVC model
• Will have a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interface, enabling translators with access privileges to identify content for which translator is available and provide the translation
• The component will support front-end module positions via which users can indicate their language of choice
• Where specific content is not available in a selected language, fall back to the website’s main language

Fragile states constitute a global development crisis. Government capacity and public institutions in these states are weak and international aid approaches are often fragmented and piecemeal. Extreme poverty doubled in fragile states in just five years between 2005 and 2010[1], and not a single Millennium Development Goal (MDG) has been achieved in low income and conflict affected fragile contexts. The failure of MDGs in these volatile contexts means that the most basic standards of care do not exist for a widening number of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

The UN Secretary-General has tasked the UN High-Level Panel on Post-2015 Development to address conflict and fragility as part of its broader mandate to envision development beyond the MDGs. Despite this task, the UN’s preparatory report to inform the Panel’s work scarcely mentions fragility[2]. Instead, it takes up issues shared more broadly among developing countries, such as peace and security, sustainability, and human rights. In order to deliver on its mandate of tackling fragility, the High-Level Panel must significantly elevate this development crisis and seek out new models for resilienceas part of the post-2015 development agenda. Any model for resilience must address foremost the reasons why the MDGs did not work in fragile states.

Read more at Yale Journal of International Affairs

Minister for International Development Heidi Hautala will attend the Informal Meeting of Ministers for Development Cooperation being held in Dublin on 11 and 12 February. The agenda for the meeting includes, among others, the post-2015 international development goals and the crisis in Mali.

The existing UN Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015. Preparation of the following international development goals is under way. Finland considers it important that during the drafting process the EU acts coherently and supports the UN's responsibility for leadership in the matter. The ministers will also discuss this topic at a working dinner, where the participants will include former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, Special Advisor of the UN Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and USAID Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg.

Read more at 4- traders

A UN group tasked with defining a new post-2015 development agenda completed their second substantive meeting last week in Monrovia, Liberia focusing on the theme of “National Building Blocks for Sustained Prosperity.” Civil society was also actively present, providing their input to the three-day meeting.

The High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) is a 27-member panel formed in July 2012 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to advise on the global development framework beyond 2015, the completion date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). (See Bridges Weekly, 7 November 2012)
Having met twice during the latter half of 2012, the HLP will have one more substantive meeting - dealing with Global Partnerships - in March, before submitting their final report to the Secretary-General by the end of May.

Read more at International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development

In India, women, dalits and minorities are not going to achieve millennium development goals set by the United Nations for 2015.

Corruption is forbidding these sections from doing so, reveals a study by civil society organisations. 

Releasing a report card on status of millennium development goals on the ground, Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (Do Not Break the Promise Campaign), says that aggregated data on various human development indicators like poverty, health,  nutrition and education mask the real picture.

The real picture, according to the campaign, is that marginalised sections are nowhere near the development goals.

The campaign, which is joined by several NGOs, carried out the study in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Manipur.

Read more at Deccan Herald

Myanmar government and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will implement three of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) under a five-year Country Program Framework (2012-16), official media reported Wednesday.

The program will be carried out by the FAO and three Myanmar ministries -- Agriculture and Irrigation, Livestock Fisheries, and Forestry to assist the MDGs No. 1, 7 and 8.

The framework agreement was signed between Myanmar Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development and FAO in Nay Pyi Taw Tuesday.

Read more at English.news.cn

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and UN Women, co-leaders of the Global Consultation on Inequalities in the post-2015 development agenda, provided a briefing for UN Member States and Observers at UN Headquarters in New York, US, on 4 February 2013.

Carsten Staur, Permanent Representative of Denmark, highlighted that the High-level Leadership Meeting on Addressing Inequalities, to be held on 18-19 February 2013, in Copenhagen, Denmark, will be the first of a series of Leadership Meetings being organized by the 11 Global Thematic Consultations. He added that the thematic consultations supplement the national consultation process, and will feed into the reports of the UN High-level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) and UN Secretary-General. He said the Draft Report on the Global Thematic Consultation on Inequalities, already made available for comments, is now being finalized and will be discussed during the Leadership Meeting. The final report is expected to be launched by 10 February 2013.

Read more at Sustainable Development Policy & Practice

Last week the UN high-level panel to create a framework for post-2015 development met for the second of three rounds of official talks in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. Amina Mohammed, special adviser to the secretary general on post-2015 development planning and ex-officio member of the HLP on post-2015, said the panel was "going for gold" in its discussions to come up with something to replace the millennium development goals in two years' time, although she admitted the challenges were great.

In an interview, the Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, also on the panel, said better infrastructure and more jobs needed to be part of any future development plan – as well as new ways to pay for it. Traditional donors could not be relied upon for funding, she said.

Also meeting in Monrovia last week were civil society groups, which held their own three-day event. Their talks resulted in a strongly worded communique calling for the panel to consider new economic models and to put equality central in their talks. Women's rights activists reiterated the importance of gender equality in development.
You can read more about the meeting on our future of development page.

Read more at The Guardian Poverty Matters

Many familiar problems were raised at the Liberia meeting of the UN high-level panel tasked with drafting global post-2015 development goals: extreme poverty, lack of productive employment, environmental degradation and growing inequality. But these big questions are still being met with small answers, suggesting that the international community remains in the wrong frame of mind to meet such major challenges.

A recent Guardian editorial noted how "small", "technocratic" and "fragmented" the discussion within the international development community has become. But it missed a major reason for this: the continued but misplaced faith in "market fundamentalism". This adds to the perception that globalisation is an irresistible force beyond the control of governments, a process driven by countless invisible hands, infallible business acumen and continuous technological revolution, and reaching its zenith with the unleashing of finance.

Read more in Poverty Matters Blog

As part of this process, a UN-led consultation process ‘The World We Want 2015’ is taking place. The IUCN Global Water Programme is taking a lead role in the thematic consultation on Water, and in particular for the Sub-stream 'Water for Nature and Nature for Water', taking place this week from 28 January to 1 February.

Read more at IUCN

The 27 eminent persons gathering in Monrovia this week to discuss what should replace the current set of Millennium Development Goals have a prodigiously difficult task ahead of them. The process to agree the original MDGs was contentious enough, but the ‘High Level Panel’ of world leaders selected by Ban Ki-Moon to help set new goals when the current ones expire in 2015 face a host of additional challenges.

Firstly, the panel suffer from the benefit of hindsight. The MDGs have been a victim of their own success; dominating global development efforts since their adoption in 2000, they have been criticised in equal measure. Despite being ground-breaking in many ways (a single set of agreed development priorities, an emphasis on transparently measuring progress over time), the MDGs’ most innovative features have also proved their most controversial. As with all prioritisation exercises, the MDGs necessarily de-prioritised a range of other issues which have subsequently come to be seen as glaring omissions: Climate change, conflict and security, jobs. By focusing on a single set of targets baselined to 1990, when many countries – particularly in Africa – were entering a period of unusual turbulence caused by the end of the Cold War, real progress in the past decade has often gone unacknowledged. And by focusing almost exclusively on quantifiable end goals (numbers in school, poverty levels) the MDGs engendered a results culture that detractors argue has been to the detriment of quality, sustainability and equity.

Read more at Labour List beta

David Cameron arrives in Monrovia to co-chair the Post-2015 High Level Meeting. Watch the video on The Guardian. Visit monrovia2015hlp.org to learn more about the meeting.

This week in Monrovia, Liberia a high level meeting is taking place to look at global development for post 2015 after the expiration of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Co-Chaired by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono along with 27 members of the high level panel will collectively determine the aid and development agenda for the next twenty years.

From the high level meeting several key tweets emerged at the #post2015hlp hashtag.

Read more at Mom Bloggers for Social Good: A Global Coalition of Mothers Who Care

Sometimes it can feel difficult to make our voices heard on this big planet. But I just found out about a new website created by the United Nations with civil society groups to collect ideas for solving global poverty problems [including water and sanitation] after 2015. It’s called The World We Want 2015. Like the internet and the United Nations, it’s not perfect. Themes aren’t inclusive, not everyone have access to a computer, and allocated time is too short. But if you’re interested in global conversations regarding “development” after Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015, this is a chance to hear and speak about such issues from January 15th to February 15th.

Read more at Water for the Ages

Brendan Cox, Save the Children’s Director of Policy and Advocacy said in Monrovia:

“Today’s commitment from the High Level Panel in Liberia to focus on ending extreme poverty is what we’ve been calling for. It is now critical that the Panel retains this level of ambition and agrees a blueprint that can get us there.
“We know that in order to end extreme poverty, we must focus on the very poorest who have been left behind by growing inequality.

“With ambition and the right approach, the Panel can ensure that we see an end to extreme poverty in our generation.”

Read more at Save the Children

Minister for International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson is one of 26 members on the UN high-level panel tasked with presenting proposals for the global development agenda after 2015, the deadline for the current Millennium Development Goals. On 31 January to 1 February, the panel will hold its second high-level meeting, this time in Liberia’s capital of Monrovia.

The main theme of the meeting is ‘national building blocks for sustained prosperity’, which includes issues of inclusive growth and conditions for business development. The meeting also has a particular focus on the situation in fragile and conflict-affected states. Ms Carlsson will be working to ensure that the issues of democratic governance, political accountability, transparency and the rule of law are included in the panel’s framework. These issues are key to guaranteeing people’s political rights and are also important drivers of development and growth. Ms Carlsson will give one of the panel meeting’s main speeches on the area and will also discuss the way forward with the other panel members

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The ongoing process to craft a post-2015 global development agenda should be more transparent – otherwise, world leaders may not want to sign on, a panel of British parliamentarians worries in a report published Tuesday that also identified job creation as the most important goal for the coming years.
 
It’s the first time since a high-level panel tasked by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with crafting a followup set to the Millennium Development Goals began its work, belatedly, at the end of last year. And it foreshadows the intense debate that is sure to heat up further as the deadline for reaching those anti-poverty targets draws closer.

The U.K. lawmakers, who are part of the House of Commons’ International Development Committee, are urging Prime Minister David Cameron to use all power at his disposal to engage his peers in the process of crafting measurable targets to guide international cooperation. Cameron co-chairs the high-level panel which is now crafting an agenda to succeed the MDGs, which expire in two years. The panel is expected to share its recommendations with the United Nations later this year.

Read more at The Development Newswire

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono landed in Liberia as the first stop on his eight-day African and Middle Eastern trip to address economic and multilateral diplomatic missions.

The Garuda Indonesia Airbus A330-300 carrying Yudhoyono, First Lady Ani Yudhoyono and a number of Cabinet members touched down at Roberts International Airport in the Liberian capital of Monrovia at 8 a.m. on Thursday local time (3 p.m. Jakarta time), according to the President’s official website.

The President was welcomed by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Indonesian Ambassador to Liberia Sudirman Haseng.

Yudhoyono will cochair the third meeting of the UN High Level Panel (HLP) on the post-Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Liberian capital. Yudhoyono and Johnson, as well as British Prime Minister David Cameron, have been appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to cochair the panel.

Read more at The Jakarta Post

Today EU Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, will take part in the second UN High Level Meeting on the post-Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agenda beyond 2015, which takes place in Monrovia, Liberia. The meeting will be co-chaired by David Cameron, UK Prime Minister, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of Indonesia.

This meeting will focus on the lessons learnt from the implementation of the current set of MDGs and further elaborate on the principles and main elements of a post-2015 agenda. This will bring the panel one step closer to finalising the report, which is to be submitted to UN's Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon by the end of May 2013.

Read more at Andric Piebalgs Member of the European Commission

Even as the US media is in a frenzy about comprehensive immigration reforms - long overdue, but in terms of detail, still more forest than trees - there is another sense of urgency about how might migration feature in the post-2015 development goals (see my earlier blog). One reason for the urgency is the upcoming High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development at the UN in early October 2013: this meeting could successfully advocate the crucial role played by migration in impacting global development, and it could even suggest one or two goals or metrics for the post-2015 development goals.

Last week I attended a series of meetings on this topic at the UN (for example, the second roundtable organized by the IOM, UN DESA and UNFPA). In my powerpoint presentation, I made the following points:

Read more at People Move: A blog about migration, remittances, and development

Consultations on growth and employment are being coordinated by an advisory group consisting of staff from the United Nations Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, UNCTAD, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and UN Women, as well as representatives of other international and civil society organizations.

The thematic e-discussion on development-led globalization will be led by UNCTAD from 25 January to 22 February 2013, and will be moderated by Ralf Peters and Amelia Santos-Paulino (from UNCTAD) and Jayati Ghosh (from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi).

The e-discussion has been launched on the World We Want 2015 website, as part of the Global Consultation on Growth and Employment for the post-2015 development agenda.

The e-discussion aims at advancing thinking in four areas:

Read more at United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

The United Nations in Viet Nam has initiated a series of consultations with a broad range of Vietnamese citizens on the new development framework to be put in place in 2015, once the current Millennium Development Goals expire.
As part of this process, the UN is consulting with representatives from eight target groups to seek their views on the world they want. The eight groups include ethnic minorities, the urban and rural poor, people with disabilities, people living with HIV, young people, the elderly and the private sector.

Since the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by world leaders in 2000, they have helped to set global and national development priorities. With the MDGs expiring in three years, work has started at global, regional and national levels to define what kind of global development framework should be put in place after 2015. The UN is leading part of this work.

Read more at United Nations Viet Nam

Today the HoC International Development Select Committee launched its report on the post 2015 development agenda.

The current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will expire in 2015, and the Prime Minister is co-chairing a UN High Level Panel to consider what should replace them. The Panel meets next week in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
Commenting on the launch of the report, Chair of the Committee, Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Bruce MP, stated that 'the Prime Minister must use his influence to ensure that the goals are simple and measureable'.

Read more at UK CDS: UK Collaborative on Development Sciences

On 22 January, the International Development Committee published a report on the post 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the report, the Committee supports Prime Minister Cameron’s emphasis on the eradication on poverty. Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Bruce, chair of the committee stated "Aiming to eradicate extreme poverty is ambitious, of course, but for the first time in human history it is also eminently achievable. The MDGs have been successful in halving extreme poverty, but progress has been very unequal. Now is the time to focus on those who have been left behind."

Read more at United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe