By Mandeep S.Tiwana
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 23 2015 (IPS)

For those of us interested in a vibrant civil society, it seems to be best of times and the worst of times.

In recent months, there has been great progress in recognising the importance of civil society in shaping the so-called ‘post-2015’ agenda and an explicit recognition of the important role that civil society will play in delivering sustainable development. However, in many countries around the world, the actual conditions in which civil society operates are getting worse not better.

As we come closer to a new global agreement on sustainable development goals (SDGs), we need to push for an agreement – backed by robust indicators – that will make a tangible difference in protecting civic freedoms.

Mandeep S. Tiwana

Indeed, a perceptible rise in bureaucratic harassment and raids on NGO offices, violent dispersal of citizen demonstrations, attacks on and illicit surveillance of activists, combined with the application of draconian laws to silence dissent and restrict funding, has many civil society observers worried about shrinking space for the sector.

Over the course of last year, CIVICUS, the global alliance for citizen participation, monitored severe threats to civic freedoms in roughly half of the globe’s 193 countries. Amnesty International’s Annual Report for 2014/2015 calls it “a devastating year” for those seeking to stand up for human rights. Front Line Defenders, which works to protect human rights defenders at risk, reports the killing or death in detention of over 130 human rights defenders in the first ten months of 2014 alone.

All of this is happening while the United Nations is making unprecedented efforts to ensure greater civil society participation in the post-2015 global development framework.

While the next generation of sustainable development goals, their associated targets and indicators will be decided by world leaders at their Sep. 25-27 summit in New York this year, civil society’s role in grounding the framework in people’s aspirations and holding duty bearers to account is crucial.“Assurances for a civil society enabling environment and respect for the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly in the post-2015 framework are integral to greater public involvement and accountability in development”

In light of recent trends which point to shrinkage of civil society space, in both democracies and non-democracies, there is naturally a high level of anxiety whether guarantees on civic freedoms and civil society participation will be included in the final framework. Indeed, a major criticism of the current Millennium Development Goal (MDG) framework is that it has failed to recognise and thereby institutionalise the role of active citizens and civil society organisations in development.

Assurances for a civil society enabling environment and respect for the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly in the post-2015 framework are integral to greater public involvement and accountability in development.

So far, some progress has been made but the gains remain shaky because many governments which will be involved in adopting the final framework in September are themselves complicit in serious violations of civic freedoms. These include some influential states such as China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and Turkey whose developmental models are predicated on top-down governance with scant role for independent civil society.

Positively, the U.N. Secretary General’s Synthesis Report on the Post-2015 Agenda, released in December last year, calls for the creation of an “enabling environment under the rule of law for the free, active and meaningful engagement of civil society and advocates reflecting the voices of women, minorities, LGBT groups, indigenous peoples, youth, adolescents and older persons.”

Notably, participatory democracy – without which civic freedoms cannot meaningfully exist – has been described as both an enabler and outcome of development.

From the perspective of civic freedoms and civil society participation, the U.N. Secretary General’s report has done well to elaborate on the proposal submitted to the U.N. General Assembly by the Open Working on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG) in July 2014.

Comprising 30 representatives nominated by U.N. member states from all the regions of the world, the OWG recommended 17 goals and 169 corresponding targets which are the basis of intergovernmental negotiations on the SDGs this year.

Two goals are particularly relevant from the standpoint of civil society’s ability to freely operate and monitor progress on the framework.  These are proposed Goal 16 (“promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”) and proposed Goal 17 (“strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for development”). 

The proposed goals are further sub-divided into targets. For instance, targets under Goal 16 include “responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision making at all levels” and “public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.” A key target under Goal 17 is to “encourage and promote effective public, public-private, and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.”

Progress on the proposed targets will be measured by indicators currently being developed by various U.N. bodies, including the U.N. Statistics Division. Ultimately, it will be the indicators that will anchor the post-2105 agenda because gains will be gauged through their prism. It is therefore crucial that the United Nations is able to identify suitable tools to measure civic space and civil society participation.

Although, the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) has produced a report titled ‘Accountability through Civic Participation in the Post-2015 Development Agenda’, much more needs to be done to put in place relevant indicators that are linked to the targets identified by the OWG.

For instance, in relation to proposed Target 16.10 with its focus on “fundamental freedoms”, it would be valuable to evaluate whether both legislation and practice protect civic space, in particular the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly.  Similarly, under proposed Target 17.17 with its focus on encouraging and promoting civil society partnerships, it will be vital to measure the existence of enabling conditions such as mandated requirements for civil society involvement in official policy making processes at the national level.

Currently, there are a number of initiatives that measure civic space and civil society participation. Some of these, such as the World Press Freedom Index, the Freedom in the World survey and the Enabling Environment Index, are led by civil society organisations, while others such as the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation are being developed by multi-stakeholder initiatives.

With post-2015 negotiations entering the final phase, it is vital that political negotiators and technical experts are convinced that adoption of the above and associated methodologies will lead to better service delivery, citizen monitoring and accountability.

With the attention on the post-2015 agenda now focused on measurement, civil society advocates have their work cut out to also engage and influence the statisticians. Ambitious goals and targets will count for nothing if not backed by relevant indicators. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Children from families displaced by the drought line up to receive food at a feeding centre in Mogadishu. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By Genevieve L. Mathieu
ROME, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will expire in 2015 and be replaced with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are intended to strengthen the international community’s engagement with eradicating poverty and hunger.

In the run-up to the drafting of the SDGs, the importance of food and nutrition security remains crucial. “In a world that produces enough food to feed everyone, there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry,” David Taylor, Economic Justice Policy Advisor for Oxfam International, told IPS.

Yet, the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that there are still 842 million people who are under-nourished, representing one in eight globally.

While the first MDG “target of halving the percentage of people suffering from hunger by 2015 appears to be within reach, chronic hunger persists in many areas, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, with marked disparities in progress,” Taylor remarked."In a world that produces enough food to feed everyone, there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry" – David Taylor, Economic Justice Policy Advisor for Oxfam International

For these reasons, he believes that “major challenges in food and agriculture remain” and, consequently, “the post-2015 agenda must chart a new pathway towards a target of zero hunger.”

The discussion surrounding the SDGs as a successor framework to the MDGs began in June 2012 at the Rio+20 Conference. Subsequently, in January 2013, “an Open Working Group (OWG) was established to steer the formulation of the proposal on SDGs,” Dorian Kalamvrezos Navarro, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Post-2015-SDGs coordinator, told IPS.

On 2 June, the OWG, made up of member states from all five continents, released the Zero Draft on SDGs with 17 proposed goals to be attained by 2030. The group is also supported by a U.N. System Technical Team, which comprises 40 U.N. entities.

Many of the targets of the OWG’s Zero Draft are welcomed by Oxfam, said Taylor, “including the target to end rather than merely reduce hunger, and the emphasis on supporting small-scale producers, women and other marginal groups.”

“If we’re to have an effective framework we need to identify applicable indicators. This is very challenging,” Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development and FAO lead for post-2015, told IPS.

Previously, critics such as Olivier de Schutter, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, have argued that the 18 targets of the MDGs had been decided on the basis of the most easily compiled data available, neglecting the deeper causes of poverty and hunger.

Sundaram pointed out that in drafting the SDGs, the international community needs to identify suitable goals and targets that are easy to measure, for which we have available data and, of course, that are meaningful.

“A welcome step forward is the inclusion of goals on reducing inequality and on climate change – and of course on food security,” Taylor noted.

This is especially important, he said, considering that “two major injustices continue to undermine the efforts of millions of people to escape poverty and hunger: inequality and climate change.”

But “as member states discuss the next drafts and refine the number of goals and targets, the goals on inequality and climate are at risk of being cut,” he told IPS.

While the MDGs have succeeded in mobilising public and political momentum in supporting development effects, the aim of the post-2015 agenda is to strongly amplify it, explained Navarro.

The challenge is important because the level of Overseas Development Aid (ODA) is plummeting. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it fell by 4 percent in real terms in 2012, following a 2 percent fall in 2011.

Additionally, agricultural investment in developing countries has decreased dramatically over the last decades although it has been shown that it is positively correlated with food security and poverty reduction, according to FAO.

The intended shared responsibility of the SDGs could help keep the momentum going. “The MDGs were essentially targeted only at developing and least developed countries, while the SDGs will instead be universal, placed within a global agenda,” Navarro told IPS.

Amid criticism that the design process of the MDGs was not inclusive enough, a “more engaged participation by, and effective partnerships with, the full spectrum of relevant stakeholders has been underlined as a key element of the post-2015 framework,” said Navarro.

For instance, in an attempt to bridge the gaps between all stakeholders and favour global exchange and dialogue, “the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) organised a series of stakeholder consultations at national and regional levels as well as a set of 11 global thematic consultations,” Navarro told IPS.

This is key according to Manish Bapna, Managing Director of the World Resources Institute (WRI). Considering changing climate, rapidly increasing rates of urbanisation and changing demographics, the post-2015 agenda “must be a shared, universal [one] that leaves no one behind – one that elicits action from developed and developing countries, North and South,” Bapna told IPS.

As such, “food security is a perfect example of an area that can be universally relevant and a ‘triple win’ for [the post-2015 agenda] by integrating social, environmental and economic aspects,” he said.

Navarro explained further that “a new global partnership must emphasise triangular or South-South cooperation and focus on the exchange of good practices, institutional and otherwise,” in order to achieve worldwide food security.

An example of such a partnership is the Beyond 2015 coalition, of which Oxfam International is a member. Beyond 2015 is a global campaign mainly made up of civil society organisations from the North and the South that advocates a strong and legitimate post-2015 framework that is based on shared values, such as environmental sustainability, human rights, equity and global responsibility.

The U.N. Secretary-General is expected to report on the post-2015 agenda towards the end of 2014, taking into account the different contributions received throughout the process. The intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda, which will lead to a high-level Summit in September 2015, are expected to coincide with the unveiling of the final version of the SDGs.

Ensuring that women, youth and other marginalised groups are employed is a challenge in combating poverty. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Walter García and Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2013 (IPS)

In the aftermath of the global economic crisis and with three years to go until the 2015 deadline of the Millennium Development Goals, global leaders are struggling to formulate a post-2015 agenda that can address the widespread dilemmas of employment and inclusive growth.

At a meeting attended by global leaders, ambassadors and civil society to discuss the post-2015 agenda last Friday, panellists agreed that better and more job opportunities are high priorities that must be included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Created in 2000 at the Millennium Summit, the MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education and improving maternal health.

At the meeting, speakers critiqued a report on jobs and growth issued by the high-level panel for post-2015, co-chaired by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Civil society leaders found the report too conservative, as it failed to properly address structural issues and income inequality.

For people under the age of 35, the desire for employment opportunities is particularly high. According to data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), unemployment increased from 170 million people in 2007 to 200 million people in 2012, 75 million of them young people.

To give experts a better understanding of global workers’ views on employment and growth, people were consulted through World We Want, an online platform.

The information they shared was “well-rounded and insightful”, Selim Jahan, director of poverty practice at UNDP, told IPS, and revealed civil society’s seemingly inherent, if surprising, understanding of the risks and issues at hand regarding jobs and growth.

“These are no economists we are talking about. These are not policymakers. But people talked about macroeconomic policies and…different measures to deal with inequality, about measures to deal with education and skill training,” he said.

Their ideas and comments reveal the myriad and complex issues people face in securing and keeping a job. One World We Want user, an executive assistant from Brazil, believed a more open dialogue about HIV/AIDS to be vital in job development.

“[There should be] government incentive for companies [and] tax deduction to hire HIV employees. We still suffer [from] prejudice. We still need to keep this disease as a secret to maintain the job,” the user, who remained anonymous to protect his or her identity, said.

For another user from India, renewable energy was an integral part of future development.

Challenges to job creation

Strong population growth presents a huge challenge for future job creation. With the world labour force growing by 40 million people a year, according to the report, 470 million new jobs will have to be created from 2016-2030 to keep up with the demand for work.

Engaging women, youth and other marginalised groups in employment is another difficulty, with a huge gender disparity in some regions. In the Middle East and North Africa, the gaps are the biggest, with male employment at around 60 percent and female employment hovering around or below the 20 percent mark.

While bringing more women into employment could require a shift in cultural norms, the low numbers of employed women in the MENA region also has to do with the way data is collected, Martha Chen, international coordinator at Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), told IPS.

“In the MENA region, it may also be the case that there are a lot of women doing home-based work and other forms of [paid] employment that do not get captured in the official statistics,” Chen added. “So the gap may not be as big as we think, but the problem may be that women’s work is not being fully captured.”

“It’s a mindset of those who do the interviewing and those who design the questionnaires,” she pointed out. “It’s a mindset about what…work [is], and the fact that women can be doing work in the home.”

“I think there [are] probably a lot of women in their homes doing something for the market, not just for subsistence,” Chen noted.

Youth are not the only ones who will be vying for future jobs. An aging population means that older people will also be looking for work.

“Job training, education, jobs, these are all issues important to older people. We don’t just stop living when we reach age 60,” said James Collins, U.N. representative of the International Council on Social Welfare and chair of the Committee on Aging in New York.

“As governments raise the retirement age, it’s very important that at the same time, they improve access to employment for older people who want to work,” Collins added.