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Sustainable Development: The World We Want February 3rd, 2015
Which of these Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are you working for?
- Dignity: to end poverty and fight inequalities
- People: to ensure healthy lives, knowledge and the inclusion of women and children
- Prosperity: to grow a strong, inclusive and transformative economy
- Planet: to protect our ecosystems for all societies and our children
- Justice: to promote safe and peaceful societies and strong institutions
- Partnership: to catalyze global solidarity for sustainable development
2015 is the last year for the millennium development goals, which were launched in 2000 to make global progress on poverty, education, health, hunger and the environment. UN member states, on the basis of a broad international consultative process, are finalizing sustainable development goals to replace them. What do the SDGs aim to achieve? How are they different from the MDGs? What progress was made in meeting the Millennium Development Goals? See how the MDGs have shifted into the SDGs, and explore each SDG in more detail: An Interactive on The SDGs: all you need to know
For more information on the SDGs, read the UN Secretary General’s 2015 Report: The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet
Thanks to Daniel LeBlanc, OMI, Oblate representative at the UN, for this information.
Human Rights Mentioned in Proposed UN Sustainable Development Goals July 23rd, 2014
Used under Creative Commons license; courtesy of Steve Cadman
Civil society welcomes human rights language in the open Working Group (OWG) outcome, while continuing to call for a rights-based approach towards development justice.
The Mining Working Group at the UN has reported through VIVAT that they congratulate the members and co-chairs of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the completion of their work and their adoption by consensus of an outcome that includes seventeen proposed goals and an introductory chapeau. The group said: “In particular, we celebrate the mention of the human right to water in paragraph 7 of the chapeau, as an essential entry point for further work on ensuring a rights-based approach to development. With the Blue Planet Project and more than 300 civil society partners, we advocated long and hard for those two small words – “and water” – to be added to the text, and we applaud this achievement on the part of the governments that championed this language: Palau, Nauru, Papua New Guinea; Italy and Spain; Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador; and Uruguay.” Please see the OWG Press Release MWG
For more information on the Mining Working Group please visit miningwg.com
NOGs and Religious Groups Call for Inclusion of Human Right to Water and Sanitation in SDGs July 7th, 2014
More than 300 Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), including Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, recently sent a statement to the General Assembly’s Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to explicitly affirm its commitment to protect and promote the human right to water and sanitation within the SDG framework and implementation:
“We join the repeated and insistent calls from civil society around the world to ensure that the SDGs are explicitly aligned to the human rights framework. For the post-2015 development agenda to reach its objective of being just, people-centered, and sustainable, the goals must prioritize-for present and future generations-the human right to water for health, life, food, and culture over other demands on water resources. This is even more critical given the key role of water for achieving other sustainable development objectives such as sustainable energy and food production, gender equality, and climate change mitigation.
SDGs must be designed to catalyze increased capacity and political will for States to fulfill their legally binding obligations to respect, protect, and promote the human right to water and sanitation. Our organizations fear that the human right to water and sanitation continues to be contested within the context of a global competition for scarce water resources. We are concerned that a development agenda that is not explicitly committed to upholding this vital human right may end up undermining it.”
Click here for good resources on the UN Human Right to Water: Human right to water and sanitation | International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005-2015
Click here for eight fast facts on the HR to Water and Sanitation (poster)
