High Level Political Forum Experiences, 2019
(ADA’s key intervention)- July 9-18, New York

Table of Contents
UN Major Group Meeting 2
HLPF Opening, July 9th, 2018 2
SDG 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) Review: 2
Side Events Co-Organised by the ADA 3
Education to end inequality and promote peace" at the  Episcopal Church Centre on July, 11 3
Launch of “Empowering Civil Society for Reporting and Action on SDG16” Report, Rok Mission, July, 12 3
Building Inclusive Voluntary National Reviews: Promoting civil society participation on the SDGs at the Ford Foundation on July 17th, 2019. 5
VLR Lab: Learning workshop, UNDP Office, July, 2019 10
ADA representations at various side events 11
ADA’s Members speak!! 11




















UN Major Group Meeting
The UN Major group organized the pre HKPF meeting on July, 8, 2019 at UNC -. The major points of discussions were:

Major group meeting UNC-3, July 8th, 2019
Micro perspective of the FUR.
Slow progress, despite that there is a limited sense of urgency
Over emphasize on communication initiative
Limited analysis on root cause and systemic determination.
Asynchrony local/global discussions.
Significant process of instutionalisation at national level.
Shrinking space for engagement by those primarily affected by development challenges’
to find ways to raise our voices
1. Advocacy activism
2. De-silo the sdgs discussions
3. Expose the systemic drivers within current economic framework
4. Reclaim decision making policy at the UN level

Role of major group I reinventing the process and spaces.
Engagement of social group
Much more enagagement in the goal mechanism

HLPF Opening, July 9th, 2018
ECOSOC President Inga Rhonda King opened HLPF 2019
on Tuesday, 9 July, and invited Member States to adopt the provisional agenda (E/HLPF/2019/1). In her opening remarks, King said the 2019 HLPF session has special importance because:
• it is the last meeting in the HLPF’s first cycle, marking the conclusion of the first review of all 17 SDGs, discussion on four themes, and presentation of 142 VNRs;
• it will send messages to the HLPF under the auspices of UNGA (SDG Summit) in September 2019;
• it will initiate discussions on the performance of the HLPF in the past four years, and changes needed; and
• it will reflect on collective progress in SDG implementation globally, regionally, nationally, and locally.
Valentin Rybakov, ECOSOC Vice-President, presented key
messages from the ECOSOC Integration Segment held on 8 July, noting that the VNR process was useful for engaging stakeholders and spurring SDG integration in national development plans.

SDG 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) Review:
This session, on Friday, 12 July, chaired by ECOSOC Vice-President Hilale, was moderated by Irene Khan, International Development Law Organization. It was noted that no substantial progress were made on the SDG 16 targets in recent years; women comprise 70% of the victims of violence; nine human- rights defenders were killed weekly in 2018 compared to seven in 2017; and only 40% of children under the age of five have birth certificates in sub-Saharan Africa.
Side Events Co-Organised by the ADA

Education to end inequality and promote peace" at the  Episcopal Church Centre on July, 11

The Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE) and the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the UN (CoNGO), ADA, GCAP, GBCS, Soka Gakkai International and the Episcopal Church Center along with organised its side event on ‘Education to end inequality and promote peace" at the  Episcopal Church Centre on July, 11 . Education has been considered reducing an important areas in order to reduce equality and gender disparity and to integrate and frame education’s role in strengthening sustainable development must be further explored. To effectively promote these aspects, an international development goal on education must continue to support increases in both educational access and attainment. This goal must also be ambitious in its efforts to achieve essential improvements to the quality of education in order to catalyse the transformative learning needed for realising a sustainable future for all.
"Education to End Equality and Promote Peace" was the focus for a deep dive discussion on #SDG4 - Quality Education at the Episcopal Church Center, in the context of #HLPF2019. ASPBAE - Adult Education and Lifelong Learning in the Asia South Pacific, General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, Soka Gakkai Intl USA, the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Status with the UN, Global Call To Action Against Poverty and the Asia Development Alliance co organised this important deliberation. We learned from our participants and guests from UNESCO that the Asia-Pacific region continues to face serious development and education challenges: half of the world’s poorest people, 45% of world’s youth without work, biggest concentration of youth and adult illiterate, many out-of school children. Progress in education lags most in the goal to #LeaveNoOneBehind. We need to ensure educational benefits reach older persons, remote areas, urban slums, minorities, the very poor, refugees and migrants, LGBTQI communities and those affected by conflicts. #EpiscopalUN



Launch of “Empowering Civil Society for Reporting and Action on SDG16” Report, Rok Mission, July, 12
 ( 460 Park Ave 9th Fl, New York, NY 10022, USA) from 9:30am until 12:30pm on Friday July 12th’
With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the focus of the international community turned to ensuring robust monitoring and accountability for these commitments at all levels – including the global, regional, and national levels. While global processes around the 2030 Agenda to date have seen unprecedented levels of engagement by civil society, a significant gap still remains in overall awareness and action from states and other stakeholders on the SDGs. This is particularly true at the national level, where action and follow-up by civil society with their governments will be most critical, particularly in regard to SDG16 on peaceful, just, and inclusive Societies. To support accountability for the 2030 Agenda, civil society can also play a key role by producing SDG “spotlight reports” and taking the lead on other monitoring efforts, which can be an important tool for highlighting progress towards the SDGs through the perspectives of civil society and citizens themselves.
 
This “Empowering Civil Society for National Reporting and Action on SDG16” report — published in partnership by the Transparency, Accountability, and Participation (TAP) Network, Asia Development Alliance (ADA), and Forus, with contributions from CIVICUS, Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (CSPPS), Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), Namati, Saferworld, and Transparency International (TI)—features a compilation of national civil society case studies and civil society spotlight reports on SDG16. It provides analysis of a range of approaches and methodologies utilized by civil society for implementation and monitoring of SDG16 by civil society, specifically with regards to drafting and disseminating of spotlight reports. The report also examines gaps, challenges, and opportunities for robust accountability at all levels, and provides key recommendations for enhancing civil society monitoring and action going forward.
 
 The side-event “Empowering Civil Society for Reporting and Action on SDG 16” enabled Forus, in collaboration with ADA and Tap network to launch a new joint global report on Goal 16 of the SDGs. The content of the report covers many different aspects of civil society’s work at the national level on Goal 16 monitoring and implementation. Forus Chair, Iara Pietricovsky spoke about why and how Forus had contributed to this ambitious Goal 16 global report. Jyotsna Mohan, ADA Coordinator, made a brief presentation about the entire report and acknowledged the contributions from all the authors that have contributed to the national case study and John Romano , global coordinator of the TAP Network shared the  key policy recommendations  Several ADA, TAP network and Forus member organisations who authored Goal 16 national case studies for the report spoke as part of a panel discussion which was moderated by Forus Advocacy Co-ordinator Deirdre de Burca. The Forus  and ADA national Goal 16 case studies were presented by the following individuals and CSO platforms:


1.    Cambodia, Ry Sovanna, CCC
2.    Pakistan, Zia Rehman, PDA
3.    Brazil, Pedro P. Bocca, ABONG
4.    Canada, Laurel Wayne-Nixon, BCCIC


The launch of this report was warmly welcomed by the vast majority of participants and other stakeholders, including the South Korean Development Agency KOICA, ADA's partner in the implementation of SDG 16.

Building Inclusive Voluntary National Reviews: Promoting civil society participation on the SDGs at the Ford Foundation on July 17th, 2019.

ADA along with A4SD Ghana SDG Civil Society Platform, APSD), (A4SD), Forus International, TAP Network), UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub; Governments of Ghana, Timor Leste, and Guatemala organised its side event on Building Inclusive Voluntary National Reviews: Promoting civil society participation on the SDGs at the Ford Foundation on July 17th, 2019.

This side event aimed  at sharing the experiences of government-CSO engagement and the role of the United Nations to encourage multi-stakeholder partnerships and ensure that the transformative promise of the SDGs to ‘Leave No One Behind’ is delivered. It focussed on challenges and opportunities related to CSO-government engagement based on CSO lessons learned during VNR reporting and other SDG follow-up mechanisms between 2016 and 2019, drawing on extensive comparative studies on national CSO reporting from A4SD, ADA, Forus, TAP and partners.

Ayson Neel, Policy and Advocacy Strategist of the UN foundation in the welcome remark shared that the core objective is to have transparent VNR; supported with UN on the VNR Labs; This year  HLPF feels different with many newer voices are at the HLPF - partly due to SDGs under review.

There had been 15 VNRs with another 15-20 by next week and it’s seen that:
1. More are reporting on synergies and interlinkages but have not addressed tradeoffs - exception was Algeria.
2. Many included gender analysis. Sierra Leone has a gender person in its statistical office. Most did not include on LGBTQ.
3. Leave no one behind was mentioned by most. Listed vulnerable groups. Indigenous, rural communities, religious minorities (no mention), etc received less attention.
4. Many more are talking about challenges which is refreshing. Heard from member states that it is difficult in HLPF in this format to feel comfortable here to discuss this compared to regional level. Mongolia focused on challenges.
5. Multistakeholder involvement remains a challenge. Israel has included stakeholders in an annex.

Hannie Meesters from the UNDP regonal hub moderated the session and emphasized that the honeymoon period (4 initial years of SDGs implementation ) is over and nw more enagagement is needed if we want to realise the goals.

She further mentioned that
1. VNRs don’t take place in a vacuum; eg SDG 16 when there is shrinking of civil society space. How can we further use the Agenda 2030 to further civic space
2. Localization - push to subnational and local level - new frontier for civil society given limited resources
3. Increasing attention that business and private sector is getting which is shifting from civil society. How do we change that and deal with it?

Panel 1: Civil Society engagement in the VNR process

Oli Henman, Action for Sustainable Development VNR tool kits
Work we have been doing in past few years:
1. Acting with existing national coalitions of civil society - rewarding to see number of new participants to this year’s HLPF reflecting frustrations with what has actually changed
2. Tool kit sets out ways to approach government; analyze and score progress on key areas eg multistakeholder dialogue; with a survey in this third and fourth learning

Survey is on the way with over 80 countries responding with over 500 civil society partners
1. Lack of real action on leaving no one behind - is referred to but is there actual action
2. How to connect with different agendas eg link social, economic and environmental aspects bring civil society partners together
3. Localization - not can be resolved at the capital level; within towns and cities is where change is needed
4. Public awareness is greater with localization. We had a workshop to see how to drive the Agenda 2030 forward in implementation for community organizations not business.
5. Aim to do is to continue to build momentum - eg during September Summit for a Week of Action linking climate, inequalities and civic space.

Deirdre de Burca, FORUS: Advocacy Coordinator, made up of 69 National and 7 regional coalitions to help them engage with VNRs. Asia Development Alliance is one of our members.

Key issues:
1. Difficulties in identifying entry points into VNR process
2. How to go beyond superficial consultations - one offs; lack of multistakeholder mechanisms for meaningful ongoing ones
3. Contributing to shadow reports - need help on how to do one and need to coalition build; what are best practices.

How we help:
1. Produced tool kits - 2018 three: VNRs briefing book; check list - how ready are you to be engaged; guidelines for CSOs on how to produce shadow resources - all available on website
2. Agenda 2030 Working Group meets every 8 weeks - helps to learn from each other online
3. Have an email bulletin every 8 weeks with info from around the world
4. Capacity development webinars eg with Action for Sustainable Development; TAP Network and Together 2030
5. Directly fund members eg Gala Training via Asia Development Alliance - provided excellent training; regional approach is a useful one. We sub-grant European funding up to 20,000 euros - proposals something to do with VNRs. We have peer scrutiny committee made up of members who decides who receives funding.
6. Do research, policy development and advocacy; eg with A4SD reviewed VNRs via an external civil society consultant and we shape the questions. Reports highlight good practices and gaps. Progressing SDG Implementation at National Level is the name of the reports
7. Doing HLPF reform review work - during September Summit. We have developed proposals to help with how to review. It must be at multiple levels eg national, regional, international. We have a paper on it. Circulate it in your own country.


Panel 2: Moderated discussion and Q & A with key country perspectives

Country Case 1: Fidelis Magalhaes, Minister of State, Timor Leste He will not read his speech in this more informal environment. Timor Leste grew out of conflict. One of the biggest challenge is to handle sense of entitlements due once you become independent when state has limited resources. Government can fall back to operating like the prior governments. He is a politician who claim that we are also victims of the authoritarian past. We don’t agree with this approach. You may censor urging citizen constraint due to limited resources. We had a different approach - to allow citizens to make comments, to voice their concerns. Government must explain if we cannot respond to those demands. Government has little experience in governing. Political space was created. Government had to present in nearly every event to listen. We have a very organized civil society and are active and have moral authority from their past actions. We encourage their participation via mechanisms to provide input. Example: The Social Audit Mechanisms - civil society collect voices and their concerns to the government.

Practical engagement with civil society:

1. Appropriation of data - and use of it. His hope that those voices are solid and unbendable. We have finite resources in our petroleum fund. Evidence is needed to back up demands.
2. Need well informed, well trained civil society. We disagree at times but civil society has a fundamental role to play to ensure solid and inclusive sustainable development.

We have never done it alone. We have conversations with national partners; sometimes we disagree over balance for gaining trust of citizens and constructive skepticism of citizens which is fundamental. Sometimes international partners can lean heavily on criticism not on building trust resulting in disagreement. Government has to be brave enough to disagree. Government needs some financial wiggle room which allows us to disagree which is the source of engagement eg with G7+. No country cannot develop without international support.

2012 when we were transitioning, we made it known to the UN that we wanted to be the captain of our boat.

VNR process is not one on its own for the report but is a reflection of our society. We didn’t do it as an exercise - voices are part of daily life. We have a civil society advisory group and consult Parliamentarians. We consult with opposition leaders; He led/coordinated the process.

We have the national statistics plan. SDGS and statistics plan are married. Hope to have bi-annual VNR presentations.

Country Case 2: Representative of South Africa Risenga Maluleke, Statistician- General
We emerged in 1994 as a country. Now have 50% of women were appointed ministers appointed recently following May elections. They are in key positions: infrastructure, defense, security. In 2012 adopted National Developmental Plan as a basis for tracking of our development goals. Driven by collaboration - we have chapter 9 human rights, financial and trade unions and academia. Civil society has special space based on cabinet decision to involve them coming out of the MDGs. Statistics South Africa is independent. Government makes aspirational decisions. Our job is to have objective measurements. When we meet with civil society, we look at officially published statistics; we need to deal with quality checks on non official statistics (meta data or go through a cohort of evaluation). We engage with civil society and go out to the provinces and meet with them. They are the eyes and ears of everyone beyond what Government can do.

Driven by integrated nature of goals. Post 2015 has raised issues. Principle of funding gets streamlined within our ministries. Approved national coordination mechanism with different stages where SDGs is looked at (civil society is represented). Monitoring and evaluation department sitting in government. Better way comes through engagement with civil society.

Today’s first VNR for South Africa was based on 2017 report and in September we will make available our first report and we will not benefit without civil society.

Government leaders go out of their offices to meet with the public to listen to them first hand on their issues.

South African woman: Had sector working committees reviewing SDGs by civil society. VNR process political, statistical (actually facilitating engagement and to what extent is civil society involved) and transformative (we want dialogue about what is working and what is not to fix what is not) arm. Transformative arm is missing from many VNRs. Are they leading us to change lives? We must have a conversation that VNRs are not just process related but action oriented.

Statistics rep: exclusive approach within the state. Organized labor engages with politicians within labor regulations and laws which doesn’t necessarily sustain with civil society which should hold democratic institutions to account (everywhere). Use of statistics - not doing a great job in the social element - we are not empowering civil society. We should be able engage civil society so that you see results. Government of South tracks unemployment, inequality, poverty and have seen higher numbers for black South Africans. Progress where government is involved. We should share our statistics with civil society.


Indian man: When the issue is inequality there is tension between CSO and government in the reports. What are critical issues - eg development but inequality? We have not taken on the human rights framework. Inequality is due to lack of access but how do we deal with this?

Guatemalan businessman: appreciates this issue. Inequalities is one of our main themes. It is a multi-dimension poverty challenge: access for jobs, education, health, etc. We are more interested in working together. Business wants the impact and needs to work with civil society to get common goals.

Minister: we have conversations with those fighting for human rights and search for common points. We have 10 priorities which cannot wait for the people. Most important, we began dialogue and the road to sustainable development.

Country Case 3: Tur-Od Lkhagvajav, Mongolia
VNR process, two strands: we focused on challenge of air pollution; corruption is a development problem and 2) capacity development. Its VNR process is being used for capacity development not just for government. 3) government is trying to include civil society. Drafting report included 2 strong female Mongolian civilians.

Challenges:
1. Showed spotlight vs government VNR reports - almost the same length but civil society report is just an executive summary so it is much longer as a report. Government focuses more on process/implementation vs whole of society approach by civil society. SDG 16 - we are finalizing the report to submit in September which will be 50-60 pages. Government is not capturing enough of practice experience and knowledge that exists in civil society on SDGs.
2. Gaps in involvement of civil society esp geo political implications. Eg civil society who are more government ones.
3. How do we move forward? Our minister of Finance met us yesterday after the VNR report, he acknowledged where he recognized strength of civil society. VNR should be a partnership involving Parliamentarians, civil society, government. Parliamentarians met on SDGs recently. They could help monitor implementation of SDGs at the national level.

Legislative Act February 2016 adopted SDGs in Parliament.

Country Case 4: Miguel Angel Moir, Director of SEGEPLAN, Guatemala
Minister: Juan Pablo who is part of civil society in Guatemala in the business sector. Wants to showcase efforts that the government is doing in implementation of the SDGs which is the responsibility of the whole country with everyone with their own responsibility. We have a participation mechanism for involvement for rural and urban development. It has different levels from national, regional, municipalities. National level - principle commitment is the president; mayors in the municipality level is in the council and representatives of 18 civil society (farmers, women, cooperatives; adolescents). Also same representations at the municipal levels.

Juan Pablo: nice to hear experiences of other countries. We are working together. He is part of an NGO made up of businesses promoting sustainability working with Ministry of Planning. In 2016 began planning process: broadcasting, prioritization of SDGs eg malnutrition is key for us; 3) validation; 4) approval of goals and indicators to include civil society and business: 5) socialization. We have specific national council for urban and rural development with all actors of society (more than 18 representatives of civil society). Two years ago they had a simpler list of goals made into the national plan. It has not been easy. Hard to have dialogue and gain trust with all the actors. We agreed that we have to support our government to implement the goals.

Harmonization process: 10 specific main topics to improve our development
Difficult to get all parts of our society together. He began about one year ago to see it not just the responsibility of the government. They had workshops and civil society consultations to get to VNR process. It was maybe not perfect but it hasI  been helpful for us to understand the country’s needs. Challenges to gather information: public sector, municipalities, MGoS, international cooperation, etc.

VNR preparation:
Gathering information
Which of the national development priorities is more relevant for you and your family - graph
237 indicators were reviewed

Progress and Challenges - can find the full VNR. This is not perfect or the end of the process.

Case study 5: Ghana
Civil society was part of the VNR committee but didn’t agree with the TORs with an accompaniment to the government’s report which relied mostly on administrative data. We decided to look from the perspective of citizens. We will interview - 20% must be persons with disabilities and 40% must be women. Ghana is 52% women. We worked along side of the government’s process - synergy, Youth, leaving no one behind. We included all parts of the country as the north is where we are living people behind. We got those to be part of the government’s process. Southern engagement focused on youth with our youth sub-platform. We were part of the government as well as a separate. We did not take our sample from big cities but went to rural areas.

What we found:

1. Knowledge of SDGs was among educated but not those in rural areas
2. Civil society are not collecting qualitative data to bring realities to the fore
3. National institutional arrangement was strong but districts were doing their own thing and not involving their citizens.

Recommendations to governments:
1. Support civil society to standardize our data
2. Awareness of SDGs is shared responsible
3. How do sub-national levels coordinate with national ones

Closing: Jyotsna Mohan, Regional Coordinator of Asia Development Alliance  mentation that ADA has membership from from 28 countries in Asia. We found that most of the 8 VNR reporting countries in 2019 has the lack of disaggregated data including qualitative data that civil society is generating and need to localize the implementation of SDGs. She concluded the workshop with the hop of better engagement owith the civil society and other stakeholders in the SDGs implementation, monitoring and review process.

VLR Lab: Learning workshop, UNDP Office, July, 2019
VLR Lab @ HLPF: Learning workshop:  July 18, (9-11 am) at the UNDP office: was coorganised by ICLEI – Local Sustainability, United Cities and Local Governments – Asia-Pacific (UCLG-ASPAC), Asia Development Alliance (ADA, The Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable Development (Regions4), Partnership on Sustainable Low-Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

While Local and Regional Governments‘ (LRGs) efforts to localise SDGs is progressing, their involvement in VNRs is still limited. To fill in this gap, Voluntary Local Reviews (VLR) are produced. The VLR is an initiative in which a LRG voluntarily review the status of its SDGs and publishes the results. With the earlier examples of VLRs reports, this training  equipped relevant stakeholders with guidelines, policy frameworks and decision-making tools useful for conducting VLRs. Those conducted VLRs shared experiences for peer-learning and reflection on successes, challenges and lessons learnt.
The workshop brought together cities, NGOs, research institutes, universities, international organisations, United Nations, and others who have been extensively working on the VLRs and others in order to reflect diverse experiences of different municipalities into the space and to identify the best practices which can be shared and adopted to other cities who wish to conduct the VLRs. The outcome based on discussions at the VLR Lab @HLPF will be turned into a synthesis summary and fed into the development of VLR Guideline. 
The speakers shared the experiences from the Kitakyushu City / Bristol City / Shimokawa Town, Cascais City Council and many more. It was concluded that the real actions and data from the local government can be of invaluable information and captured for the next VNRs. Local challenges and opportunities are often related to the national policies and without collaborating together, it is difficult to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Hence, feeding the VLRs into VNR processes becomes critical. Speakers also shared their ideas and thoughts on what are the linkages between VNRs and VLRs and how to utilize them.

Apart from organizing the side events, ADA was invited into various speaking slots organized by the TAP, UNDEF, UNESCAP, CSO intervention during VNR Sessions

ADA representations at various side events

1. TAP Network and its partners on Goal 16 report produced by ADA-TAP and Forus to present the brief summary report including the key civil society recommendation for Goal 16 , during the side event entitled ‘“Civil Society Driving Progress on SDG16+: Showcasing Best Practices” , on July 9th at the UN Church Center

2. United Nations Democracy fund (to speak on the key messages from Goal 16 and the key civil society concerns) during the side event on ‘what is democracy’ on July 15 at the UN CR2

3. UN ESCAP and the Government of Timor Leste organized side event entitled ‘Taking action on equality, inclusion and empowerment in Asia and the Pacific , to present the key civil society demand for the active implementation of Goal 16 in the region on July 16th, at the UN CRA

4. Smarttalk, Jobel Art and Theator group and the UN ESCAP, to speak on linking art and peace building on July 17th, at the UN CRB

5. ADA made intervention from the floor during the Timor Leste VNR presentation on July 17th at the UN CR4.


ADA’s Members speak!!

ADA members from Cambodia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan made CSO intervention from the floor during their respective country’s presentation.