The MDGs remain a distant dream for Nepali children, with 38 percent of the population defecating out in the open because of poor sanitation. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By George Gao
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 31 2013 (IPS)

What values does a Yemeni journalist who fuelled the Arab Spring hold in common with a former principal of the U.S. National Security Council? And how in turn will they see eye to eye with a Jordanian queen, or the president of Indonesia?

The subjects of this riddle are meeting in Monrovia as part of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s 27-member High Level Panel of Eminent Person’s on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP).

The purpose of the HLP is to lead the discussion around a new framework, the post-2015 development agenda, to replace the expiring Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The HLP’s work will culminate with an advisory report to Ban in May 2013.

The meeting, which takes place between Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, is the third in a series of four. Previous meetings took place in London and New York, and the forthcoming one will take place in Bali.

“This (meeting in Monrovia) is the HLP’s chance to hear the perspectives of a wide range of organisations and individuals in Africa about their priorities for a post-2015 agenda,” said Claire Melamed, head of the Growth and Equity Programme at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

“It’s important those perspectives are reflected in the final report,” Melamed told IPS.

ODI, in partnership with the World Wide Web Foundation and the U.N., developed an online survey to gauge the priorities of the world’s citizens. The survey, conducted through myworld2015.org, inspired a running Twitter conversation on the topic (#post2015). The online platforms sparked international chatter that was absent during MDG discussions.

“As we witnessed in the historic events of 2011 – from the Arab spring to the rise of Occupy – the possibility of mobilising public opinion on a global scale is becoming ever-more urgent and realistic,” Rajesh Makwana, director of Share the World’s Resources (STWR), told IPS.

The airing of new voices does pose a challenge: how will 27 panellists harbour the hopes and concerns of so many people?

“My apprehension is that this process is moving in so many levels (that) there’s no priority on how these different conversations (will) come together in one place,” said Radhika Balakrishnan, executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University.

“There’s consultations happening all around the world… There’s not a clear way to see how these are going to come to fruition at the end,” Balakrishnan told IPS, noting that she is still hopeful, despite the challenges.

Approaching sustainable development

One agreement that did emerge from the HLP’s first meeting in New York was to anchor the post-2015 agenda through “poverty eradication” and “sustainable development”. This idea builds off both the MDGs and the 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro.

The Rio+20 outcome document entitled “The Future We Want” specifies that the process leading to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should converge with the post-2015 framework.

“The post-2015 agenda builds off Rio+20 in the sense that one follows the other, and some of the same people and institutions are involved in both,” said Melamed, author of the report “After 2015: contexts, politics and processes for a post-2015 global agreement on development“.

“But the extent to which they become the same agenda is a hotly contested issue, and it’s not clear how or if that will happen,” she added.

Balakrishnan stated that the category “sustainable development” should also encompass economic issues, as in “sustainability of the economy to reproduce itself in terms of taking care of the people in it”.

“So many people are left out of the economy,” she said. “How sustainable (is a) world in which people cannot have an adequate standard of living?”

When asked about changes in the world between 2000 and 2015, Balakrishnan highlighted the geopolitical shift in north-south dynamics. “The north-south divide is not so clear – Europe is in the middle of huge crises in austerity,” she explained. “In a way the global economy is vulnerable all over.”

Makwana said, “We have to accept that we currently consume 50 percent more resources than the planet can produce and that it is imperative to follow an entirely different economic model – one that puts human and environmental welfare before economic growth and wealth generation.”

On climate change, Melamed said, “We know at least two more things about climate change than (we did) in 1999. Firstly, that it is not only happening, and fast, but that its impact will potentially be catastrophic. So there is more urgency.

“But we also know more about how to tackle it. We have better scientific and technical resources to solve the problem, if – and this is where the problems come – governments and companies choose to use them.”

Makwana echoed Melamed’s point, noting that around 40,000 people die every day due to lack of food, water and healthcare. He said, “We already know how to prevent these deaths, and the systems and institutions that can do so have long been in place.”

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and co-chair of the HLP, addressed civil society organisations in Monrovia during a pre-consultative forum on Tuesday. “The meeting in Liberia is on ‘economic transformation’, and we want to make sure that we depart from the normal paradigm,” she said.

“We’re saying ‘economic transformation’ will go beyond growth, go beyond GDP (Growth Domestic Product),” she concluded.

When asked to comment on the weaknesses of current MDGs, Balakrishnan, co-author (with Diane Elson) of the report Post-2015 Development Framework and the Realization of Women’s Rights and Social Justice, said MDGs approached women’s rights through too narrow a scope and failed to address women’s role in the larger economic framework.

Makwana argued that while MDGs ignored much of the root causes of poverty, “we must of course support the (post-2015) process… because it is currently the only internationally agreed framework for trying to address some of the most pressing issues facing humanity”.

He added, “The post-2015 debate provides an important opportunity for policymakers to be far more ambitious about securing basic human needs for all.”

Malawi President Joyce Banda (left) and Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at a women's rights event held at the Liberia Ministry of Gender and Development. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Wade C. L. Williams
Jan 31 2013 (IPS)

Fatou Nernee is scavenging through the debris of her home, which was razed to the ground by bulldozers belonging to the Monrovia City Corporation in Liberia. She is looking for something to keep as a treasured memory of a place she called home for over 20 years.

Nernee and many others have been left homeless because of a current cleanup drive by the government ahead of the United Nations High Level Panel (HLP) meeting on the Post-2015 Development Agenda this week.

“They broke my house down yesterday. The police arrested my brother and took him to the station,” Nernee told IPS.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon named Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as co-chairs of a high-level panel to advise him on the global development agenda after 2015, the expiry date for the millennium development goals.

The Monrovia meeting is the third of four HLP meetings, the first of which was held in New York in September 2012. The HLP will be finding ways to build and sustain broad political consensus on the post-2015 development agenda around three themes – economic growth, social equality and environmental sustainability.

The demolition of these homes comes as Sirleaf appointed the five-star, privately-owned Royal Grand hotel –which belongs to Lebanese businessman Ezzat Eid– as the venue for the meeting.

Mayor of Monrovia Mary Broh defended the demolitions.

“We want to make this city the greenest and cleanest city in West Africa,” she said during a press conference.

But Nernee and other residents of the over a dozen demolished buildings and businesses on 24^th Street, which is about 10 blocks away from the Royal Grand hotel, say the government has destroyed their homes and made their lives more difficult.

“It is not easy to find a place to rent in this city. This has made plenty people homeless. Our stuff was in the house when they demolished the buildings,” she said.

Those who are frustrated with the slow pace of progress in LIberia held public protests as President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf gave her state of the nation address. Courtesy: Wade C. L. Williams

The HLP meeting is taking place in a country that is the embodiment of global developmental challenges. Liberia’s infrastructure and political institutions were broken down during the country’s two civil wars, which occurred from 1989 to 1996 and 1999 to 2003 and were considered among the bloodiest in Africa.

This West African nation is in the early stages of rebuilding and a lack of electricity and access to cheap energy continues to be a problem. As many as 85 percent of the country’s estimated 4.2 million people are said to be unemployed, according to the U.N. Development Programme.

The government Bureau of Statistics, however, puts Liberia’s current vulnerable employment rate at 77.9 percent. Vulnerable employment is an indicator that is defined as people who are self-employed and holding unsustainable jobs, mostly menial labor.

Sirleaf argues that her government has made considerable progress since she took over in 2006.

While the government continues to announce progress in healthcare delivery, challenges still remain.

The U.N. has reported that the number of women dying of pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications has almost halved in 20 years, yet Liberia continues to have one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world with a maternal death rate of 994 per 100,000 live births.

“Liberia is once again considered a true friend to many, a good neighbour in our region, a reliable contributor to international peace and security, and an improving destination for investors. Today, our republic is safer, stronger and better,” Sirleaf told lawmakers on Monday, Jan. 28, the day of her state of the nation address.

Those who are frustrated with the slow pace of progress here held public protests as Sirleaf gave her state of the nation address.

“We have come to inform the visiting guests that everything is not fine in Liberia. This government has been able to make many of our people homeless and jobless,” said Julius T. Dweh Jessen III, one of the protesters.

Ma Mary Frederick, a 74-year-old widow whose husband was killed during the civil war, stood under the burning sun with a placard she could not read, protesting for the payout of her late husband’s military benefits.

“I have seen the first vote, second vote and I can’t get anything from the government,” she said referring to the country’s two democratic elections since Sirleaf became the country’s first post-war president in 2006. “All day we stand in the sun and the police beat us. I have nothing; my grandchildren can’t go to school,” she said.

“We are sitting down at home with nothing good to eat and they made matters worse by breaking down the house I used to live in. Now we are sleeping outside.”

The two contrasting images of a meeting of world leaders at a five-star hotel in downtown Monrovia as blocks away locals decry the demolition of their homes raises questions about the purpose and substance of the meeting and the implications it will have for this post-war country, student activist Janjay Gbarkpe told IPS.

Though not everyone agrees.

Liberian economist Sam Jackson told IPS that the HLP meeting gave Liberia an opportunity to highlight the progress made after the war and a chance to carve out a development agenda.

“Liberia is a post-war country and being a post-war country, the developmental challenges are huge,” he told IPS.

“Therefore it is important for the issues of peace and security to be part of the new global agenda and with Liberia you can see after 10 years of peace and security, what can be accomplished. We are looking at peace and security to be the foundation of economic transformation for the world.”