BankTrack recently published the second edition of its “Banking with Principles?” report, evaluating the progress of global private sector banks towards integrating the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights into their policies, due diligence processes and reporting. The report is an update to our December 2014 benchmarking exercise, with its scope expanded from 32 banks to 45, and aims to uncover what progress has been made by the banks, 18 months on from the previous report and five years from the establishment of the Guiding Principles.

Corporate reporting can provide an essential contribution to monitoring the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

This conclusion was highlighted in an UNCTAD Secretariat Note titled "Enhancing the role of reporting in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals: Integration of environmental, social and governance information into company reporting" prepared for a meeting of UNCTAD's Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (ISAR).

ISAR, comprising accountancy experts, is holding its thirty-third session from 4-6 October.

Photo: UNDG

During the last few years Morocco has adopted some public policies that might help meet the 2030 Agenda objectives, but many challenges have to be confronted in order to ensure to proper and effective progress towards sustainable development.

The 2030 Agenda, negotiated by Member States, lays out goals and targets at the global level. Like other countries, Morocco needs to translate these into the national context, with a strategy designed to achieve local priorities. Efforts to achieve the SDGs may be hampered by the government’s persistence in carrying out neoliberal policies (privatization of public services such as education and health for example, austerity and public spending cuts) as part of its commitments to the International Monetary Fund. Similarly, monitoring and evaluating the action plans set out for delivery of the 2030 Agenda is crucial in achieving successes. Unfortunately, this practice is still uncommon in Morocco.

Photo: UN

It may sound like an issue for health specialists, but at the UN high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) ministers and heads of state from around the world made clear that it is more than that it appears.

This is the fourth time that the UN General Assembly has addressed health issues. As the representative of Portugal pointed out, this meeting “is proof of global recognition of this problem and how important an issue it is”. Executive Director of South Centre, Martin Khor said that AMR is “as serious as Climate Change and perhaps more immediate”.

It's had a very useful if sometimes controversial past and it will have great relevance for many more years ahead.
That's the sense one has about the Declaration on the Right to Development as it is commemorated 30 years after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly in 1986.

Three decades ago, the Declaration "broke new ground in the struggle for greater freedom, equality and justice," remarked the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, at a session of the Human Rights Council on 15June, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Declaration.