Follow up to our letter to President of ECOSOC on HLPF
Writer secretariat 16-10-12 16:56 count 1,195 Reply 0
Dear ADA Members,
You might remember that an open letter to the President of ECOSOC was endorsed by 240 organizations including ADA and delivered during the HLPF to suggest ways to improve next year's HLPF.
There was a follow-up meeting with the new President of ECOSOC initiated by Amnesty International and Together2030. Please find the summary of the meeting below.
I hope to share more information on opportunities to engage in the processes of HLPF 2017
Kind regards,
Moon
Doun Moon
Program Coordinator at Korea Civil Society Forum
on International Development Cooperation (KoFID)
& Asia Development Alliance (ADA)
Tel +82-2-6925-6589 / +82-70-5056-0901
Fax +82-505-115-3682
Skype ADA2030.ORG
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Savio Carvalho <savio.carvalho@amnesty.org>
Date: Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 8:00 PM
Subject: Follow up to our letter to President of ECOSOC on HLPF
To:
Dear all,
As a follow up to our open letter to the President of ECOSOC sent in July 2016, Amnesty International requested a meeting with the President of ECOSOC, His Excellency Frederick Musiiwa Makamure Shava.
The meeting was attended by Ambassador Shava with his two advisors, Mrs Bernadette Ntaba (Counsellor) and Mr Tonderai Mutarisi, (Counsellor). From our side we had Richard Bennet and we also invited Naiara Costa to join us for this meeting. A few highlights from the meeting;
President Shava was very open and positive about the proposals that we brought and reinforced several times that his office will be open to civil society and other stakeholders during his tenure as President of the ECOSOC. He also said that he would be seeking to be as inclusive as possible in the preparations for the next HLPF.
All points raised were based on the joint letter endorsed by the 240 organizationssent to the ECOSOC President in July and focused on presenting concrete suggestions in preparation for the next HLPF.
1) Requested for the President of ECOSOC to explore avenues for an expanded engagement around the presentation of national voluntary reports. Considering that it is already decided that the Ministerial segment will happen at the second week of the HLPF, we suggested for the President of ECOSOC to consider creating spaces during the expert level week for volunteer countries to deepen discussions on some aspects of their national reports, allowing for more peer-learning and interaction with civil society and other stakeholders and paving the way for the Ministerial presentations.
Comments from the President of ECOSOC:
Ambassador Shava considered that it would be good to set up spaces for discussions of the national reviews during the expert level segment of the HLPF and said he would explore this idea.
He mentioned that 8 countries have already volunteered to present their national reviews and that this information will soon be published at the HLPF website (he did not mention the names of the countries though).
He mentioned that countries under review would get the support of the UN Development System to prepare their reports.
2) Include additional sources of information for national reviews – We proposed for the President of ECOSOC to consider adding other sources of information about the implementation of the 2030 Agenda to complement the national reviews. This could be done by creating a space at the HLPF website where those inputs would be added together with the national reports.
Comments from the President of ECOSOC:
Ambassador Shava also considered that the HLPF web site could be used to include more information in support to the national reviews. He took note of the suggestion.
3) Organization of national “HLPFs” at national level, prior to the Global meeting – We suggested for the President of ECOSOC to encourage volunteer Member States to set up national discussions prior to finalizing the volunteer review report and to discuss the outcomes and challenges in a multi-stakeholder platform. We mentioned that UN DESA could support MS in drafting a methodology for those consultations, including on how to engage with CSOs.
Comments from the President of ECOSOC:
Ambassador Shava agreed that it would be positive to encourage Member States to use the opportunity of preparing the national reviews to enlarge consultations back home and for those to be inclusive.
He will be considering ways of encouraging Member States to do that (Note: We should keep track of his official communication to Member States).
He also considered that it would be important to have Parliamentarians engaging at the national discussions due to their critical role for national implementation.
4) Building upon the modalities for civil society and other stakeholders engagement – We recalled the historic engagement of civil society, major groups and other stakeholders with the HLPF and the support from UNDESA. We recommended to build upon the existing modalities and improve them, creating more interactive mechanisms for our engagement. We referred to the Major Groups and Other Stakeholders Coordination Mechanism (MGoS CM) and on how this structure would be well positioned to coordinate the engagement moving forward. We asked to be consulted when the agenda of the HLPF was being drafted. We also recommended for the preparations to start as earlier as possible in order to facilitate for the participation of civil society colleagues, especially those based from the South. We also reminded him of the need to improve accessibility for persons with disability.
Comments from the President of ECOSOC:
Ambassador Shava mentioned the idea of online consultations regarding the HLPF Agenda –which we supported.
He mentioned that he is planning a retreat earlier in 2017 to discuss the preparations of the HLPF and that he wants to include the participation of civil society – We recommended him to engage with the MGoS CM for the selection of participants.
5) Establishing a space for the direct engagement of Parliamentarians during the HLPF 2017- Parliamentarians are key for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda at the national level and the HLPF could create spaces for an exchange of perspectives/lessons among them.
Comments from the President of ECOSOC:
Ambassador Shava was very positive on this proposal and has already been in consultations with the Inter-Parliamentary Union to find ways of engaging more with Parliamentarians during the HLPF.
Ambassador Shava concluded the meeting reaffirming that he wants to have a good engagement of civil society and other stakeholders during the preparations and at the HLPF session in 2017.
We take this opportunity to thank President Shava and his colleagues for their time and constructive engagement.
And a thank you to Richard Bennett (Amnesty International) and Naiara Costa (Together 2030) for stepping in for me and doing this meeting.
Next steps:
1. At the global level, we will explore how MGoS CM can constructively build on and support President Shava & UN-DESA in organizing HLPF 2017.
2. At the national level – Once we have information on the names of countries who have volunteered, CSOs at the national level can self –organise and advocate for national discussions and an inclusive process.
3. The work on the indicator framework is far from over. CSO colleagues may want to approach their National Statistics Officer to understand the position of their own country and how they are engaging with the global indicator development process. You may want to ask for information on how the process is planned at the national level. We should advocate that HLPF 2017 reviews should have agreed indicators (and baselines) which could be used to measure progress.
In solidarity,
Savio
Savio Carvalho
Senior Advisor, Campaigning on International Development and Human Rights
Amnesty International, International Secretariat,
1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW | +44 (0)203 036 5471. Twitter @savioconnects
