Youth in Rwanda fill out the MY World survey. Credit: Mark Darrough/Girl Hub Rwanda

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2013 (IPS)

Kanny Daylop, a legal practitioner and consultant from Nigeria, recalls her encounter with a woman named Joy.

“She was young, probably a teenager,” Daylop said."It is a useful guide for us but the conversation has to be far more holistic and far more real." -- NFI's Amitabh Behar

Contrary to her name, Joy’s life was filled with hardship. She became pregnant and dropped out of school. Her parents threw her out of their house. Since then, she has been working as a seamstress to earn money to take care of herself and her unborn child.

Joy wants a better life for herself.

“Education and then healthcare are her topmost priorities,” Daylop said.

As a youth advocate for the United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC), Daylop interacted with many women like Joy as well as hundreds of Nigerians who participated in “MY World”, a United Nations global survey where citizens from all over the world are voting on issues they think are important in their lives.

The survey results will be used for the future development agenda of the U.N. after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) end in 2015.

The “MY World” survey offers individuals a list of 16 issues to choose from. The voters are then required to prioritise six of those issues they consider most important to their lives.

The anonymous survey, which began early this year, requires participants to list their gender, age and country for the purpose of analysis. People vote online, through mobile phones or offline, using pen and paper.

Corinne Woods, global director of UNMC, said the ongoing survey is a “true partnership” involving non-governmental organisations, grassroots groups, private sector bodies, youth groups and different players across many disciplines to reach out to people living in the remotest areas around the world.

More than 590,000 people from194 countries have participated in the survey so far. Close to 60 percent of those countries have very low Human Development Index (HDI) rankings. In terms of demographics, it is “overwhelmingly the youth” who have participated in the survey, Woods said. “Almost three-quarters of the vote are up to the age of 30.”

The survey will continue until 2015.

“Right now there is a global moment in time where the world is going to decide what are going to be the new sets of sustainable development goals,” Woods said. “So this is a particular moment in time where as a citizen I can say to my government ‘I think you should sign up to X, Y and Z’.”

While thousands of voters continue to participate in the survey, the U.N. initiative has generated scepticism among some voters and members of civil society.

Amitabh Behar, executive director of the National Foundation for India (NFI), said that his experience with “MY WORLD” has been “both interesting and frustrating”.

In a developing country like India, Behar said, “When you actually talk to people, they don’t see their life in a structured fashion.

“People will not want to make those choices and we also think that these are not fair choices to be asked,” Behar said. “I think it is the responsibility of the state, either national or globally, to ensure safe drinking water as well as good education as well as good health as well as no discrimination and so on. But this is like putting a gun to somebody’s head and saying ‘pick one of those’.”

In regions within the least developed and developing countries, resources are limited and challenges are too many. Add to that corruption, which is more a way of life than just an evil.

In such countries, choices cannot be exclusive of each other, Behar said.

Moreover, most of the voters are clueless about the MDGs and post-MDG process, say members who carried out the survey on behalf of the U.N.

There is also a growing trust deficit when it comes to what the global body promises to do and what it actually does.

“This also stems from the fact that it’s not the first time that they are being asked about such things, but they have never seen follow-up action to change their reality,” Behar said.

In Mexico, where a little less than 7,000 people have voted so far, voters weren’t sure if the U.N. as a world body was really effective in alleviating problems, said Juan Varela, international advisor to Axios Misión Mujer, A.C., an organisation which works with adolescents in Mexico.

Varela said that people believed that this was just another survey and that the national government wasn’t actually going to do something with the results. “So some of the people actually didn’t want to vote,” Varela added.

Like Mexico, people’s approach to the survey in Nigeria, too, was cynical. Some had lost hope and some had lost confidence in the government. With the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram wreaking havoc across the country, Nigerians want to see quick results from such initiatives.

“People understood that research was going on in various areas, but they haven’t seen any impact,” Daylop said.

The crux of the matter, as Behar points out, is the “very idea of looking at an aggregate picture.”

With different regions having different sets of problems, the survey may not reflect the actual situation on the ground. “The second thing is the interconnectedness of all these – only when you have safe drinking water will you have good health and so on.”

But critics like Behar also acknowledge the fact that the very nature of a global survey requires uniformity.

“Therefore, we have to take it with a pinch of salt or a bagful of salt to understand that it is a useful guide for us but the conversation has to be far more holistic and far more real,” he added.

Woods acknowledges the fact that while different countries have different issues, there is certain amount of continuity, too.

The collated data all over the world indicated greater need for education and heath care as well as “an honest and responsive government”. There were some problems that most countries had in common, Woods said.

Some of the largest number of voters came from Nigeria (157,843 votes as of now) and India (79,450 votes). But participation levels varied widely, with countries like Turkmenistan contributing only 45 votes towards the survey. Close to 400 people voted from Iran and there were nine votes from Guinea-Bissau.

More than half of the votes have been collected offline.

The survey as of now heavily weighs towards Africa, but “the aim is to reach as many countries as possible,” Woods said.

With local organisations are playing an important role to reach out to people in different countries, careful observations are made on voting patterns so that regional groups do not end up pushing their agendas via this survey, she added.

Women return from fetching water in Malawi. Over 40 percent of all people without improved drinking water live in sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 2 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations apparently lacked the online resources of the fast-growing digital age when it created its highly-touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2001, with a targeted deadline of 2015.

But as it readies to formulate its post-2015 economic agenda, the world body says it is one step ahead this time around.One of the failures of the current MDGs is that they were not drafted with sufficient input from the developing world and did not reach out to marginalised groups.

The United Nations is now reaching out to a vibrant online community, dialoguing with governments, civil society, the private sector and think tanks to create a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2015 and beyond.

Olav Kjorven, assistant secretary-general and director of the Bureau for Development Policy at the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), told IPS, “The United Nations has so far engaged more than 200,000 people from 189 countries through a mix of digital media, mobile phone applications, conferences, and paper ballot surveys.”

The “global conversation”, as the U.N. dubs it, is an initiative which was officially launched last month and will continue through the end of 2015.

Kjorven said U.N. teams based in the field are making sure that groups usually absent from participation in global processes – for example, women, indigenous communities, the youth, people with disabilities – are consulted on what they see as priorities for development of their communities.

The eight MDGs included specific targets on poverty alleviation, universal education, gender equality, child and maternal health, HIV/AIDS reduction, environmental stability and a global partnership for development.

The proposed SDGs, which could range anywhere between 10 to 20 or even more, are expected to include sustainable production and consumption, revitalised global governance, protection of the global environment and strengthening of goal-implementation. 

A high-level panel, appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is expected to submit its final report on a post-2015 development agenda when it meets in New York at the end of May.

The panel includes UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

In a report titled “The Global Conversation Begins”, released last month, the United Nations said it has facilitated “an unprecedented series of consultations with people the world over to seek their views on a new development agenda to build on the success of the MDGs.”

The study said that face-to-face meetings have been magnified by an active and growing online community, with people offering their opinions and knowledge, and participating in MY WORLD – the U.N. global survey on priorities for the next development agenda.

Asked to elaborate, Kjorven told IPS that in Peru and Ecuador, the U.N. Country Teams are placing a particular focus on children, young people, women, and grassroots leaders from the Amazon region.

In Colombia, he said, consultations with indigenous organisations have yielded a proposal for five specific goals for the indigenous people of Colombia.

In Uganda, a mobile phone text message campaign has reached 17,000 people who have voiced their opinions on issues that they care about.

“In Nigeria, for example, we will be reaching out to 150,000 people in communities in 32 different states and allow them to join MY WORLD in the format of printed ballots,” he noted.

Asked if the findings give any strong indications as to what the priorities should be in the post-2015 development agenda, Kjorven said there were three emerging priorities.

First, the progress on MDGs should be accelerated and adapted to contemporary challenges, such as growing inequalities within countries and the impact of globalisation.

Second, the consultations point to the need for a universal agenda to address challenges like environmental degradation, unemployment, and violence.

Third, people want to participate, both in the agenda-setting as well as monitoring the progress in implementation of the Post-2015 framework.

Farah Mihlar, conflict prevention coordinator at the London-based Minority Rights Group International (MRG), told IPS that “organisations like MRG have tried to encourage our partners from across the world to participate in these dialogues and consultations, but it is certainly a very limited process”.

She said post-2015 MDGs both target and impact the poorest, most marginalised people, and “unfortunately they are unlikely to have the resources or the know-how to participate in these processes.

“One of the failures of the current MDGs is that they were not drafted with sufficient input from the developing world and did not reach out to marginalised groups such as minority communities,” she noted.

The United Nations should have learnt from these mistakes and rectified the system to be able to include the voices of the poorest and most marginalised peoples, she added.

“For the next set of SDGs to be successful and have an impact they cannot be drafted by elite high-level panels from comfortable conference rooms in capital cities”, she said, but “they must include the voices of the communities and people who the MDGs affect and target.”

It is still not too late, said Mihlar, because many international organisations and U.N. agencies work with partner organisations in developing countries and “there is still time to reach out and include their voices into the decision making process”.

Meanwhile, in a statement released last month, a coalition of activists said civil society organisations are “deeply concerned about the direction the high-level panel may take with regards to the roles of government, business and multilateral institutions in society.”

The eight “red flag” issues raised by civil society include land and water grabs; the extractives development model; a disregard for planetary boundaries; a lack of gender justice; the current global economic and financial architecture; disregard of human rights; conflicts and violence and accountability; and corruption.

“We need to urgently address the ‘poison threads’ in society,” says Amitabh Behar, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

He specifically referred to “corporate land grabs, mega-mines, unjust global trade rules, financial speculation, corruption and the privatisation of essential social services, which are heightening inequalities, ruining our environment and impoverishing communities across the globe.”

“The poison threads in our society often fuel violence and conflict as well,” added Marta Benavides, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and a convener of the Feminist Task Force.

“Greed, struggles for resources and a lack of decent work are behind so many of the world’s wars. No society can develop in an environment of fear and insecurity. Real peace is an essential precondition for development and the high-level panel must address it.”