ADA Monthly Newsletter- November 2017

Dear ADA members and Friends, 

November has been another busy month for the CSOs around the world and ADA being part of leading SDGs campaigns at national, regional and global levels aims at strengthening the capacities of CSOs and encouraging them to contribute through advocacy and being part of SDGs implementation monitoring mechanisms and voluntary national reviews.
 
Please remain in touch to get the latest news and updates on SDGs, development, and democracies!
Please show your solidarity by contributing any news, information or article from your country/ region to our newsletter.  

Hope it is useful for your reflection… Please see below for details how to get involved and share your activities for greater impact!

In solidarity, 

ADA Secretariat
                                       

Table of Contents

 

ADA and Members Activities
National Activities
National Civil Society Conference 2017: 7-8 November, Kathmandu, Nepal
Regional Activities
GALA South Asia: Pokhara, Nepal- 12-16 November, 2017
Global Activities
Leadership Development Program (LDP) – 18-21 November, Dhulikhel, Nepal
2017 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights: Geneva, 27-29 November, 2017
Useful Documents
For your Action
Voluntary National Review (VNR)
Registration for the HLPF 2018
International Key Events related to SDGs 2017

 

National Civil Society Conference 2017: 7-8 November, Kathmandu, Nepal 
NGO Federation of Nepal (NFN), a common platform of civil society organizations actively working in the forefront towards promoting advocacy, social mobilization, citizens' empowerment and civic participation for socio-economic transformation, development and national unity, organized its 23rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) alongside the National Civil Society Conference 2017 on 7-8 November 2017, in Kathmandu. 
NFN district chapters, NFN CSOs member from all over countries, federations, alliances, networks, INGOs, embassies including government officers and prominent leaders of civil society movements and human rights campaigns in Nepal, attended the AGM and Conference. 
The conference witnessed the participation of more than 500 federations, alliances, network, INGOs, and UNRC who expressed their views and opinions. They also reaffirmed their commitment to work together, work hand in hand with the development of CSOs, protection of Human Rights, and for the Development of Nation. 
The full report can be found here

 Regional Activities

GALA South Asia: Pokhara, Nepal- 12-16 November, 2017

The 5th Glocal Advocacy Leadership in Asia (GALA) Academy – South Asia is a joint initiative by Asia Development Alliance (ADA) and Asia Democracy Network (ADN) with the aim of strengthening advocacy capacity of CSOs fordefending and promoting civic and democratic space and human rights through strategic “glocal (global and local)” actions on the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development known as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The 5 days training was organised in Pokhara, Nepal from 12 to 16 Nov. 2017 in partnership with the International Forum of National NGO/CSO Platforms (IFP), Transparency, Accountability and Participation (TAP) Network and Asia Partnership for Sustainable Development (APSD) with the NGO Federation of Nepal as a local host.
Trainees from the countries of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka underwent the training on SDG 16 and SDG 17. Apart from them, there were few trainees from Latvia, Zambia, Slovakia, Nigeria and Senegal as a regional partnership solidarity. The trainees designed their country-level indicators for monitoring SDG 16. The participants were also trained on framing national indicators on SDG 16, based on the global indicators. During this training, the participant also prepared their draft Guidelines and Timeline for CSO  engagement in HLPF VNR 2017 country-specific guidelines on VNR after intensive training on SDG 16 Mapping about Glocal Actors (GO, CSO and Multi-stake Holders (MSH)). Later the participants also did the country level strategic planning, which will be shared with the wider civil society following GALA S. Asia.

Global Activities

Leadership Development Program (LDP) – 18-21 November, Dhulikhel, Nepal

In a bid to stimulate debate and peer exchange on leadership,  the International Forum for NGO Platforms(IFP) jointly with Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) conducted a leadership training for CSO leaders from 18th – 21st November 2017 at Dhulikhel Lodge Resort-Nepal. The Leadership Development Program (#LDP) that brought together at least 12 CSO platform leaders (from Zambia, Indonesia, Slovenia, Chez Republic, India, Nepal, Latvia, Brazil, Seychelles, Nigeria, Uganda and Uruguay) aimed at developing them as social change actors and preparing the next generation of leaders who would steer the role of national NGO platforms towards social change. ADA was represented in this important deliberation as a regional platforms to share the stories of change in Asia.

Ms. Nomvula Dramni the Executive Director of Community Development Resource Association while facilitating during the training emphasized that – “Leadership is about the ability to connect with your power, and if you don’t know the essence of your leadership, then you lead anyhow”.

The 4 days training provided an opportunity for participants to understand social change, the role of CSO platforms in social change as well as the kind of leadership that CSO platforms should be offering to enhance social change.

As takeaways from this training; agency ought to be at the center of social change, alliance building is critical in the pursuance of social change, self-change can greatly impact on social change, legitimacy and credibility of CSO platforms are fundamental during campaigning for social change, CSO platform leaders ought to learn how to manage diversity within the membership so to avoid the tensions that tend to rise and end up affecting the campaign for social change. It’s important to understand the context within which you are campaigning for social change citizens(understand the social change landscape which is regularly changing.

2017 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights : Geneva, 27-29 November, 2017

The central theme of the 2017 UN Forum was “Realizing Access to Effective Remedy”. The Forum addressed the critical issue of access to remedy by examining systemic flaws and shortcomings in existing efforts and reviewing emerging good practices and innovations, with a view to achieving greater coherence and committed action in the service of human rights and rights-holders. Discussions included the full range of mechanisms covered by the third pillar of the Guiding Principles: from State-based judicial and non-judicial mechanisms to non-State-based remediation and grievance mechanisms involving companies, industry bodies, multi-stakeholder initiatives and regional and international institutions.

A few ADA members met and discussed the CSO engagement on SDGs and Business and Human Rights (BHR) about the G20 Summit in Argentina in 2018, in Geneva during the 6th UN Global Forum on Business and Human Rights (GF-BHR) on 24 Nov. 2017.  Among 5 Asian G20 countries, Mugianto from INFID and Hideki Wakabayashi from JANIC together with Anselmo Lee, ADA Co-convener discussed ADA engagement and agreed to continue to work together with other ADA members in Indonesia and China, as well as other CSOs in other continents through IFP.  the SDGs agenda was adopted as the agenda of G20 Hanzhou Summit in 2016 in China in the name of Sustainable Development Sector, and BHR at Hamburg Summit in 2018 in Germany. 

Useful Documents

Synthesis of Voluntary National Reviews 2017: The Division for Sustainable Development (DSD), from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has just published a report with a synthesis of the VNRs presented this year at the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). You can find it here: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/17109Synthesis_Report_VNRs_2017.pdf
Update of the VNR Guidelines:
collective paper with concrete recommendations on how to improve the current VNR guidelines, including to government delegations in New York, United Nations and civil society partners.
Arelys Bellorini (World Vision) and Naiara Costa (Together 2030 International Secretariat) signed a guest article at the IISD SDG Knowledge Hub page highlighting the main points from our paper. You can find it here: Improving the Accountability Cycle: Recommendations for Stronger VNR Guidelines.
World Vision has also issued a report with concrete recommendations to update the VNR guidelines (please, see here). You can find very interesting data about how governments have been using (or not) the current guidelines.

ESCAP engagement on the 2030 Agenda and sustainable development processes – upcoming opportunities
There are quite a few opportunities for civil society experts to engage in ESCAP's work coming up including  sub-regional meetings that started with a meeting in Central Asia last week, to be followed by the North-East Asia forum on 10-11 October, and the South East Asia forum on 18-19 October Bangkok and the South-Asia meeting in early November
The ESCAP secretariat is organizing several events and producing several knowledge products between now and the 2018 Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD). Civil society’s perspectives and contributions related to the joint 2018 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) and APFSD theme, to the cluster of goals and the follow-up and review process will ensure that due attention is paid to the right issues and that there is more awareness and understanding of the realities faced by different constituencies.
Civil society colleagues are invited to review the opportunities below and pre-register their interest to participate. For more information, please scroll down.

• Subregional Forums on the SDGs (September-November 2017)
• SDG Week in Bangkok (27 November to 1 December 2017)
• Guidelines on Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) (October and November 2017) or complete the offline version of the questionnaire and send to escap sdghelpdesk@un.org with the subject line “MSP Guidelines Asia Pacific”
• SDG Help Desk (16-17 October 2017)
• Thematic report on the 2018 theme of APFSD (October 2017)
• Contributions to the review of the cluster of goals for the 2030 Agenda (October-December 2017)
• Collecting good practices on stakeholder engagement for the 2030 Agenda (November-January 2017)

High Level Political Forum 2018
The meeting of the high-level political forum on sustainable development in 2018 convened under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council will be held from Monday, 9 July, to Wednesday, 18 July 2018; including the three-day ministerial meeting of the forum from Monday, 16 July, to Wednesday, 18 July 2018.
The theme will be "Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies". The set of goals to be reviewed in depth will be the following, including Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, that will be considered each year:

• Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
• Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
• Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
• Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Voluntary National Review (VNR)

In 2018, 48 countries will be conducting voluntary national reviews at the HLPF. For more details, please click here.
The following countries from Asia will be presenting their VNR in (10): Bahrain; Bhutan; Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Lebanon; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Singapore; Sri Lanka; United Arab Emirates; Vietnam

Registration for the HLPF 2018

Governmental and non-governmental representatives planning to participate in the high-level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF) must be accredited to the United Nations in order to register for this meeting.
The following participants may attend or be represented: States Members of the United Nations and States members of specialized agencies, inter-governmental organizations, United Nations system, major groups and other stakeholders, and media.
Further information on registration will be forthcoming.

• ADA's official website has been renewed. All the information related to the implementation of SDGs in Asia and actions conducted by Asian CSOs will be accumulated on this website. Please visit www.ada2030.org
• ADA's Facebook page has been activated! The page will channel useful information among civil society actors in Asia. Feel free to tag @Asia Development Alliance in future collaboration. The page is accessible with this web address: https://www.facebook.com/ada2030/