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The Women’s Major Group, bringing together over 600 national and international women’s CSOs, continues to be actively engaged in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They want to contribute to the success of the 2030 Agenda, and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in all countries, and help achieve real transformative change towards gender equality, human rights, and responsible and equitable stewardship of the earth’s climate and natural resources. In that sense of a constructive contribution by the women’s organisations. They expressed that although it is good that many different people have become engaged in spreading the word about the 2030 Agenda and the 17 SDGs, the group we call on leadership from the UN to avoid trivialization and over-­‐simplification in the main messages to the public. The need to maintain integrity and forward momentum of the SDGs in substance and scope in all messages coming from the UN.

Leaders of United Nation Member States are set to endorse the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Framework (now to be called the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) at the General Assembly on 25-27 September 2015. Following what has been a long and at times arduous process to develop and agree this framework, throughout which the Trade Union movement has been actively engaged, the Post-2015 Summit in September will no doubt go down as an historic event. There are definitely grounds for celebration, not least simply because an agreement was actually reached, signalling a win for multilateralism on the whole, but also because it represents the culmination of one of the most inclusive efforts by governments to include the voices of civil societies and other non-state, non-executive actors in an international agreement. It would be fair to say that this is reflected in the level of ambition achieved in key parts of the outcome. Nevertheless, some reservations and concerns remain.

After a long process of negotiation since the 2012 Conference for Sustainable Development – Rio+20, the Outcome Document for the upcoming UN Summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda, was agreed by consensus at UN headquarters in New York on August 1st, 2015.

This final text, titled Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, presents a political declaration and a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets in the search to overcome poverty and for a sustainable future for all mankind. As opposed to the Millennium Development Goals, the former international development framework, the SDGs were built in an open debate with the participation of not only UN agencies and governments, but also civil society and other stakeholders.

A United Nations committee has adopted a set of nine principles for sovereign debt restructuring after two years of deliberations. A report will now be submitted to the UN General Assembly for its review and action.

The adoption of the Principles on Sovereign Debt Restructuring Processes is timely, as more countries are facing or are in danger of facing sovereign debt crises, and the need for and terms of restructuring their debts have become urgent and often controversial topics.

The nine principles were agreed to at the third working session of the Ad Hoc Committee on Sovereign Debt Restructuring Processes on 27-28 July held at the UN headquarters in New York. They will be part of the Chair's summary to be submitted to the UN General Assembly.