On 28 January 2020 the President of the General Assembly (PGA), Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, and the President of ECOSOC, Mona Juul announced a new initiative: “a high-level panel on international financial accountability, transparency and integrity (FACTI)”. This joint endeavour is framed as a means to target and recover assets for investment in the Sustainable Development Goals.

At present, the UN estimates the financing gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) totals a staggering $2.5 trillion. Proponents of a robust and strong agenda on tackling illicit financial flows (IFFs) suggest that this gap could in part be closed by addressing the various forms of illicit financial flows that divert or “rob” governments of vital public resources that could and should be invested in public goods to achieve the SDGs.

How to capture and manage big data? This is a question that will confront the 51^st session of the UN Statistical Commission in March 2020 as they review the official reports. The four-year process of finalizing the global indicator framework to measure the 169 targets of the SDGs is drawing to a conclusion with the acceptance by the IAEG-SDGs of 8 additional indicators, 14 replacement indicators, 8 revised indicators and 6 deleted indicators. The framework has gone to the Commission for approval in March and the focus of different players in the data and statistics community is shifting to the management and use of data to influence and shape development policy agendas.

Photo by Elena Malmo

"Last year over 200 defenders of Human Rights and the environment were killed in Latin America. They gave their lives for their communities and for the principles that the United Nations stands for. And yet, the statistical framework for the SDGs tells us that the “partnerships” that should contribute to achieve sustainable development will be measured by the dollars they mobilized. The blood spilled by our friends and colleagues doesn't count." During a debate over the 75th anniversary of the UN, at the Pyeong Chang Peace Forum, Social Watch coordinator Roberto Bissio expressed the frustrations of civil society over the lack of meaningful interaction with the UN.

Photo by Elena Malmo

Intervention of Barbara Adams, Global Policy Forum, at the Parallel Session “UN2020” of the PyeongChang Peace Forum, Republic of Korea, February 10, 2020.

In the Philippines, the preparation of the country's VNR report 2019 catalysed a multi-stakeholder consultation process to which some CSOs, like Social Watch Philippines (SWP) were invited. SWP, in turn, convened a broader consultation process that will result both in inputs to the VNR as well as in an independent civil society report.

The Philippines is currently one of the fastest growing economies of the world, with GDP hovering around 6 to 7 percent in 2018 and growing at an average of almost 5 percent a year in the last decade, but those figures coexist with a high poverty rate, a paradox situation called ‘jobless growth’.

SWP comments that “there seems to be an unspoken yet dominant perspective on wealth, that as long as poverty is minimized, there should be no objection to the unbridled gains of the rich. It is assumed that wealth will trickle down to the poorest.