Jordan: Good plans but no implementation

In Jordan the plans are good but just not implemented. The submission of the Voluntary National Review in 2017 was an opportunity "to further strengthen national ownership of the 2030 Agenda, build a proactive momentum around it, and accelerate its realization”. The preparation of the VNR “ensured the widest participation of all major groups and organizations” according to the report by the Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics Studies. This report was “a remarkable step forward in creating an inclusive strategy to achieve the SDGs” but “the lack of concrete and effective implementation of this strategy, as well as the failure in implementing an effective monitoring system, dramatically affected its effectiveness as a tool for integrating the SDGs in the national agenda”.

In less than two years since the submission of the VNR, three different ministers of Planning and International Cooperation were appointed by the Prime Minister who, in turn, has also changed. Lack of implementation is attributed by the civil society report to “the ongoing economic slowdown, as well as in the absence of cooperation between the central and local administrations on one hand, and, on the other, between the government and civil society”.

By Ahmad Awad, Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics Studies.

Read this chapter here.

Source: Report Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2019.