While the Arab region’s countries and peoples are busy with their crisis conditions as a result of the difficulties and challenges facing the democratic transition process, preparations continue for the UN General Assembly’s 68th summit in late September. The summit is expected to consider the political situation around the world, and the situation of the Arab region will be one of the most important cases on the agenda, particularly the crisis in Syria that has taken on international dimensions. On the one hand, the scope of blatant interference in the internal conflict by regional and international powers widened, and the Syrian Revolution turned into a regional arena of conflict with international dimensions due, on the other hand, to the use of internationally-banned weapons of mass destruction in many stages of the conflict (their recent use in residential areas led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens).

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. (Photo: UN,  Rick Bajornas).

The UN Secretary-General’s (SG) report “A life in dignity for all” (A/68/202) calls for a “new post-2015 era […] a new vision and a responsive framework […] a universal agenda that requires profound economic transformations and a new global partnership.” Unfortunately that new vision and the new partnerships proposed by the SG derails our ability to meet the challenges we meet today.

From 16 till 18 September UN Women convened an expert meeting on the post-2015 development agenda and gender equality in Kenya. Approximately 40 experts with representation from diverse backgrounds contributed to this meeting. A wide range of challenges that the world is facing were discussed, varying from specific topics such as women’s role in sustainable livelihoods, women’s health and violence against women, to more general topics such as poverty, education, economic development, food and natural resources. The expert meeting said to be committed to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals and the acceleration of their implementation and to the prior commitments in the Beijing Platform of Action.

The Report Collecting Inputs from Marginalised populations on the Post 2015 Development Agenda says that in the last 15 years in Thailand there has been improvement in some important social services, such as education and healthcare, and people have grown more aware of their rights. However, rapid economic growth also widened the gap between different parts of the country and groups of people in the society, leading to marginalisation and growing disparities.

For many of these people life became more insecure: loss of source of livelihood (job, land, access to natural resources), identity crisis, deterioration of social relations, and disempowerment. This has been attributed by many to the economic development approach adopted over the years, which led to the commodification of natural resources and food. In parallel, public sector governance structure did not allow for significant people’s participation in the policy and decision-making processes at the local level.

In devising the post-2015 framework, the international community needs to move beyond the primacy of this narrow economistic metric toward a broad rights-based agenda rooted in the human rights principles that the international community has already endorsed and coupled with rigorous monitoring and accountability mechanisms, writes Roberto Bissio of Social Watch.

Despite significant macroeconomic growth over the past ten to fifteen years globally, especially in many developing countries, progress of key social indicators has slowed down since 2000. To a considerable degree this is the result of growing inequalities between and within nations.