The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by world leaders at a United Nations summit on 25 September 2015. During the summit, the Swedish prime minister and heads of state and government from Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Liberia, South Africa, Tanzania, Timor-Leste and Tunisia set up a High-Level Group (HLG) on the 2030 Agenda. The HLG committed itself to leading efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda globally, at all levels of society. Welcoming this initiative, civil society organizations (CSOs) from the same nine countries have come together in a Civil Society Group to support and collaborate with the members of the HLG in their efforts to ensure political commitment and leadership, to highlight the sense of urgency and to guarantee the participation of civil society in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
During the 2016 HLPF, the CSO group now launched the report “Champions to be? Making the 2030 Agenda a reality”. It consist of description on the state of the SDG implementation in these nine countries from a CSO perspective as well as ten important recommendations to the nine governments and two recommendations to CSOs. These include: champion states should promote the participation of civil society and formalise multi-stakeholder engagement mechanisms to ensure the effective, inclusive and meaningful participation of all stakeholders. Governments should also provide political leadership and policy coherence for sustainable development. Therefore they should adopt a ‘whole of government approach’ for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda; where leadership comes from the highest possible level, while the allocation of responsibilities is established throughout governments with a clear division of labour.
Furthermore, the group also gives the recommendations to civil society to work in solidarity in order to build alliances across thematic areas and across borders, thus promoting peer learning across countries.
This report reflects our hope that this High Level Group will be a good example of how to work together in true partnership. We call on them to face challenges head-on and move beyond word demonstrating to other nations strong, innovative and creative solutions to fast-track the ambitious implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
