NEW YORK: The High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development wrapped up its latest session on Thursday (early Friday in Pakistan) with Pakistan’s Ambassador at the United Nations Munir Akram calling the outcome as a “beacon of hope” for the developing countries trying to recover from the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus crisis.
In his closing remarks, Akram, who also heads the Economic and Social Council, said the deliberations over eight days, in which many world leaders, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, took part — both virtually and in-person — were “intense and action-oriented.”
He expressed the hope that member states would be guided by that beacon of hope as “we navigate heavy seas” towards the post of the anti-poverty Sustainable Development Goals.
The HLPF, a subsidiary of ECOSOC, is the core UN platform for the follow-up and review of the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 objectives.
Akram, who presided over the intensive deliberations, said the forum examined the voluntary national reviews of 42 countries that illustrated both the common and differentiated challenges they confront in realising the SDGs and responding to the pandemic.
The status of implementation of key SDGs was also reviewed that “unless states, individually and jointly, take bold emergency actions, we will, by and large, be unable to achieve the most of 17 SDGs by 2030”, he said.
The meeting also unanimously adopted a Ministerial Declaration that prescribes the required actions and commits governments and other stakeholders to implement them.
Ambassador Akram said the main messages from the forum’s deliberations and the declaration include:
(1) The world must quickly contain and defeat the virus. No individual will be safe until everyone is safe. The world economy will not fully recover, nor can we achieve the SDGs in time unless we do so. The vaccine is a global public good and must be made available to all.
(2) Financial assistance is the key to recovery, SDG achievement and arresting climate change and environmental degradation. Resource mobilisation must be pursued as a global goal to address all aspects of the triple crisis: Debt restructuring, concessional assistance, creation and generous reallocation of unutilised Special Drawing Rights quotas, scaled-up public and private investment in sustainable infrastructure and other employment generating projects and programmes.
(3) Poverty and hunger that have increased sharply must be addressed frontally, including through social protection programmes and safety nets, and massive concessional assistance to those in need, the poorest people and the poorest and vulnerable countries.
(4) The UN platform must continue to be the principal advocate of the poor and act boldly to secure implementation of all the commitments made in the declaration. It must press the powerful to make the paradigm change in the methods and modalities of mutual cooperation, which embraces the objectives and equity, inclusion and universality.
“Without this, we will be consigned to a world that is increasingly divided between the rich and poor, to rising poverty, human suffering, social chaos and proliferating conflicts,” Akram added.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed also addressed the closing session.
Mohammed attributed the pandemic to “a reversal of SDG progress in some areas, and delayed action on many of the major transitions required to meet our 2030 goals”.
She said the pandemic has had a “deeply negative impact” on health and well-being; employment, businesses, incomes, education, and human rights with “a particularly damaging effect on women and girls”.
The diplomat said many participants observed that some of the measures put in place during the pandemic could provide a foundation for SDG progress, giving the examples of digital learning, which could help to transform education more broadly, along with building on critical fiscal support many countries had provided to their economy, jobs and people.
“Governments should now consider whether some of these measures can be integrated into comprehensive social protection systems”, the official said.
Recovery efforts can be designed both to restart economies and accelerate SDG implementation, she added.
