On June 25 and 26 June 2013, the Vienna+20 CSO Conference of more than 140 persons from various CSOs around the world gathered at Vienna on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights and its Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action issued on June 25, 1993. Social Watch was represented by Kinda Mohamadieh.

Grassroots activists in Peru discussing proposals for a new Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda. (Photo: ATD)

Emerging from a sustainable development discourse saturated by “experts”, “eminent persons”, and professionals, the knowledge of people living in extreme poverty, based on lived reality, is crucial to the debate. The International Movement ATD Fourth World organized a two-day seminar, with participants who experience daily hardship, to demonstrate that those who have lived extreme poverty are best equipped to end it.

Present at the seminar were also Amina Mohammed, Special Advisor of the Secretary-General on Post-2015 Development Planning; Olav Kjorven, Assistant Secretary-General at the United Nations Development Programme; as well as academics from Oxford University, UK, and practitioners in the field.

Madhya Pradesh Social Watch Report 2013

Social Watch India, 2013.

In July 2012 after the Rio+20 Conference was held, the UN Secretary General with the support of the UN agencies launched a process to discuss the Post-2015 development agenda. He commissioned to very specific stakeholders four reports that have just been delivered and will serve as an input to his report to the September 2013 General Assembly Special Event on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The four stakeholders that prepared and submitted reports to the UN Secretary-General are the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (Post-2015 HLP), the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the UN Global Compact (UNGC), and the UN Development Group (UNDG).

After five months of negotiations, UN Member States agreed on the resolution text that defines the format, functions and organizational aspects of the high-level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF or the forum). The resolution will now be formally adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The HLPF will be the intergovernmental institution in the UN mandated to “provide political leadership, guidance and recommendations for sustainable development, follow-up and review progress in the implementation of sustainable development commitments, [and] enhance the integration of the three dimensions of sustainable development in a holistic and cross-sectoral manner at all levels.” Its establishment was decided by Member States during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012.