Let us not rest on our laurels

I’m on my way back from four days in Barbados, for the ninth and final workshop of the initial series of what is now Regions Refocus 2015. This Caribbean meeting was one of the best in a process bookended by small island states (with the Pacific meeting first, in June) with each meeting full of incredible people, good food, interesting side trips (Machu Picchu, for one), and truly interesting and productive meetings.

Let us not rest on our laurels, intoned the Barbadian representative of the Ministry of Finance during the opening of the regional workshop, upstairs in the cricket hall at University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. (The walls were decorated with the cream of the crop of Barbados’s cricket stars, black and white photographs of “the quintessentially elegant” King so-and-so, descriptors of the players’ prowess at batting and consistently sharp style. The IGDS professors wore ankara dresses and summarily dispatched the crispest moderation I have yet to witness -- informing us that no, the internet does not work, end of discussion.) And following that instruction, the workshop got right to the point. It tackling difficult issues (the narcotics industry, divisions between the women’s rights movement and that for LGBT rights) and innovative ones (a somewhat un-PC descriptor of the Caribbean’s comparative advantage in tourism, the business potential for regional expertise should the US completely legalize marijuana). Scholars and activists from a lot of sectors, ages, and countries came up with concrete proposals and energized plans for the way forward.

At lunch the first day, I had an interesting (and somewhat concerning) conversation with the head of the co-sponsoring institute at the university. I was telling her about our project, about some of the workshops we’ve co-organized and places we’ve gotten to go (nine regional meetings, eight sub-regions, nine months). Rather than asking about the project, she turned to me and said how incredible this must have been for me, and asked how it feels to travel the world learning about the negative effects of American policies on other places. I told her I feel very grateful (for the first part) and consistently disturbed (re: the second), and said I don’t know for sure, but I think I’ll probably end up working on American policy eventually. As an American, you’re only allowed to learn for so long before you have to go do try to something about it, I said. She agreed, with a slight nod of her intricately dreded head.

So, I’m incredibly proud of our project and of having helped to start it, thrilled about where it’s going and where it might take me, and gearing up for a whole lot of work to launch the first phase and continue with the second. But as Chris, our bespectacled taxi driver, responded while being grilled by one of the most impressive and intimidating participants, ideas are the number one thing that’s missing in the leadership of Barbados and the region. Our project is contributing to amending that deficit, at the global level. I’m contributing some of it, especially in the report and in the planning of phase II. But let me not rest on my laurels either, in terms of my own responsibilities and in outlining my career. We may have lay on the beach this trip, but our laptops sat squarely in our laps.

The Barbara Paper Is Finished (Confronting Development, published by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

I spent most of the past five months working on this paper with Barbara Adams, analyzing the SDGs. It's finally finished, and published! 

In the year 2000, the world’s leaders assembled at the Millennium Summit to affirm their commitment to an ambitious development agenda, later distilled into eight “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs). The summit famously called, among other demands, for concrete and time-bound action to eradicate extreme poverty. Criticized from the outset for being crafted without broad consultation, for an excessive focus on “measurable,” quantitative goals, and for lack of accountability—especially for rich countries—the MDGs’ accomplishments have been dubious and uneven. As the MDGs’ expiration approaches in September 2015, their failure is unavoidable.

With this deadline approaching, the United Nations are presently considering what the world’s development agenda should be post-2015. In September, two distinct UN processes—the Open Working Group and the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing—are expected to converge in the 2015 Global Summit. These processes have been the fulcrums so far of efforts to shape the future agenda. They have benefited from wide-ranging substantive contributions and expertise, and have also generated diverse approaches to participation and engagement.

These parallel processes are taking place in a broader context defined by the Millennium Development Agenda, 2012’s Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, and the Financing for Development conferences. As the MDGs give way to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is necessary to ask, what is it that makes them sustainable? Who are the main actors shaping the goals, and what are their main interests? What role do business interests play, and what opportunities exist for member states, civil society, social movements, and others to shape these goals?

In this study, Barbara Adams and Kathryn Tobin give their take on the post-2015 process and suggest how various actors can intervene to shape these goals. Trained as an economist, Adams has spent decades working in (and writing about) international politics both in and out of the UN, including at the Quaker United Nations Office in New York, the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS), and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Tobin is an independent consultant for several UN-based organizations. She has previously worked for UN-NGLS as well as for NGOs and educational institutions in New York and Uganda.

The Sustainable Development Goals will help shape the global development agenda for years to come. They will affect not only the UN’s Secretariat, funds, and programmes but each member state as well as non-governmental organizations and the private sector around the world. If these processes converge to create an agenda that is universal and effective and which holds governments and others to account—that is to say if the UN lives up to its founding values—then it will reassert itself as the unique multilateral forum for addressing the many conflicts and crises that cannot be resolved by individual nations. Such an accomplishment would have implications not only for development work but across a whole spectrum of issues, and it is not too late for the United Nations—that is the organization, member states, and international civil society—to make it happen.

FULL TEXT (English) 
FULL TEXT (German)

Regions Refocus 2015, a new initiative fostering regional and feminist solidarities toward justice

In 2015 the world’s governments will define a global agenda for sustainable development, amidst global trends of rising inequality, declining economic growth rates, and mega public-private partnerships accelerating the scramble for resources, assets, and markets. In this context, a new initiative housed at the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation – Regions Refocus 2015 – fosters regional and feminist solidarities toward justice.

Please join us on 26 January for the launch of Regions Refocus 2015, at the Ford Foundation Headquarters or online via live webcast at www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus. This event and collaborative publication will present experiences of advancing progressive public policies based on nine regional workshops held over the past nine months in partnership with civil society, government, sub-regional alliances, and the UN. Just as negotiations get underway for the Third Conference on Financing for Development and the Post-2015 Summit, this launch will feature regional perspectives on overcoming global obstacles that impede structural change for justice.

We hope you will be able to join us in New York or online for the launch of Regions Refocus 2015. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter @ReFocus2015 and join the conversation using #ReFocus2015. More information is attached and on our newly launched website, here: www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus

Regions Refocus 2015
Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
Website: www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus
Twitter: @ReFocus2015
Email: team@regionsrefocus.org
Register: https://regions-refocus.eventbrite.com
Share this event on Facebook and Twitter

Mercy Global Action Advocates at the UN for the Right to Water and Sanitation

As part of my ongoing consultancy for the Sisters of Mercy/Mercy International/the Mining Working Group at the UN, I wrote the article below, about the important work on the human right to water and sanitation that my colleagues have led over the past few months. Even though the Open Working Group won't end up including the language we want - including the explicit mention of the right - in its report, we're proud of our efforts and will keep working. 

In accordance with the Sisters’ of Mercy great concern with the future sustainability and availability of water for all, Mercy Global Action has focused much of our recent advocacy work at the UN on the human right to water and sanitation.

Davide Restivo. under CCO

Particularly through convening the Mining Working Group at the UN, we have been advocating for the inclusion of the human right to water and sanitation in the ongoing discussions of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our message to governments, UN officials, and fellow civil society organizations has consistently focused on the need for the SDGs to prioritize – for present and future generations – the human right to water for health, life, food, and culture over other demands on water resources.

Over the past few months, the Mining Working Group has made a series of oral statements in OWG meetings, submitted detailed recommendations for text amendments to subsequent iterations of the OWG draft, and written a series of advocacy letters – to the UN Secretary-General, to the co-chairs and government representatives of the Open Working Group, and to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. We have met with almost 30 governments at the UN, tracked their positions, and targeted several groupings of member states based on the progression of their views on water and sanitation.

Significantly, the MWG and the Blue Planet Project spearheaded a joint letter on the urgent need to protect and promote the human right to water and sanitation in the Sustainable Development Goals. This letter was sent to every UN government on June 13, and has so far been signed by more than 300 civil society organizations all over the world. 

Through Mercy Global Action, Sisters of Mercy and our partners in mission have strongly engaged in this advocacy effort, sending letters to their national governments in anticipation of the OWG meetings and signing on to the global letter writing campaign. This letter is available online, along with the list of its signatures, on the World We Want web platform.

In accordance with our universal approach to analyzing systemic, structural and root causes of poverty and injustice, in our advocacy around the OWG we call for the promotion of a hierarchy of use that places potable water and sanitation, small-scale food production, ecosystem needs and cultural use before large-scale commercial use. We insist that the SDGs must take a people-centered approach, categorically rejecting the commodification and privatization of water. In line with our consistent advocacy for a rights-based approach to natural resource management, we advocate for a human rights-based approach that explicitly names the right to water and sanitation, aligns targets to the human rights framework, and guarantees non-discrimination, accountability, and public participation in decision-making. We insist on a meaningful commitment on the human right to water and sanitation must include indicators that accurately measure safety, affordability, accessibility and acceptability of water and sanitation services from the perspectives of rights holders. Our advocacy is grounded in the experience of Sisters of Mercy and our partners in mission in their work all over the world, fighting against the poisoning and destruction of watersheds from Cajamarca to Patagonia to Newfoundland.

As the Open Working Group nears the end of its mandate and its thirteenth and final session nears, it remains to be seen whether its report will in fact include an explicit mention of the human right to water and sanitation, as we have advocated so strongly for over the past months. Either way, Mercy Global Action will continue our work at the UN setting to hold governments accountable for the commitments they have made. Moreover, we will continue to promote a sustainable and forward-looking global agenda that prioritizes people’s human rights and the protection of the environment in all regions of the world.

Read the original article on the Mercy World website here.

Recap of Pacific Partnerships to Strengthen Gender, Climate Change Response and Sustainable Development

In early June, I got to go to Fiji for a meeting on Pacific Partnerships to Strengthen Gender, Climate Change Response, and Sustainable Development (as I mentioned earlier). The meeting brought together a total of 60 participants - most of them women, most of them from the Pacific, and pretty much all of them amazing - for five days of strategizing, capacity-building, and collective planning towards the SIDS, post-2015, UNFCCC, and relevant regional processes.

here we are

The set-up of the meeting - two days CSOs, then two days CSOs with national women's machineries, followed by a high-level dinner and final day - was the best-designed of any I've been to. All of us staying in the same hotel the whole week, sharing meals, drinks, swims (not to mention the unexpected presence of the entirety of the Fijian national rugby team) built an incredible atmosphere of camaraderie and collectivity. 

me with the amazing rapporteur team - representing GIZ/SPC, Pacific Youth Council, DIVA for Equality, & SPC

The participants worked hard on two outcome documents: a civil society/social movements/Major Groups statement, and a joint outcome agreed by both the civil society and the government representatives present - the first of its kind, with strong language on climate finance, structural issues of trade and the international financial system, and gender equality as a cross-cutting regional priority. 

The statements were presented by participants at the high-level dinner and have already served as advocacy tools in the second SIDS prepcom, held the week before last in New York. 

For more on the meeting, see its Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube page (don't miss my fairly awkward recap of my presentation) and stay tuned - this important intersectional analysis, led by the Pacific itself, will continue to be taken forward in key regional and global fora. 

Pacific Partnerships on Gender, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development (why I am in Fiji)

Tomorrow we start getting ready for Pacific Partnerships on Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development, a five-day regional meeting bringing together civil society, women's machineries, and heads of state. Dag Hammarskjold Foundation is funding it and A and I are supporting it, but she's had to go home on a family thing so it looks like I'm about to learn a whole lot real fast.

I spent the past couple of weeks putting together background documents for the meeting:

- an overview of government positions based on the OWG and the Asia Pacific HLPF regional meeting http://bit.ly/1q4RIm5
- an in-depth document looking at the OWG Zero Draft and Member State positions, as they pertain to our meeting http://bit.ly/1pltggK 
- an in-depth document that provides an overview of the Asia Pacific HLPF regional meeting as it pertains to our meeting http://bit.ly/RUv3gm 

Sharing here in case they're useful! Follow updates from the meeting via its Facebook page, here: https://www.facebook.com/PPGCCSD 

And now off to put aloe on my sun rash and hop into bed! The 16 hour time difference is no joke. 

Tracking the Open Working Group (It's Target Time)

A few weeks ago, I attended (almost all of) the 11th session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG on SDGs). It was useful for all three of my consulting jobs - I took 102 pages of notes and highlighted them according to a color scheme: one for the Fiji meeting, one for Beirut, one for the Mining Working Group, and one for the privatization of post-2015 work I'll be doing when I get back. Then I did one tracking who said what on civil society - always good to know your allies.

Now that I'm finally finished, I figured I would share this work so that all of these hours of my life served as many purposes as possible. Also, I'll be in Fiji and Beirut for the informals and 12th meeting of the OWG (respectively) so I won't be able to contribute much around the next one... unless I decide to be really insane and watch all the webcast archives when I get back.

To read some (I hope) useful info, which I have already shared with a few civil society colleagues, please click the links below:


Positions of the Group of 77 and China (G77/China) as of OWG11

Positions of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as of OWG11 

Positions of the African Group as of OWG11

Mentions of Civil Society during OWG11


and let me know if you want the whole 100 pages of notes. I'll sell them to the highest bidder. :)