To ensure the successful implementation
of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Mr. Samuel Zan Akologo, Executive
Secretary of Caritas Ghana, has reiterated the need for more stakeholder responsibility
toward collective actions to attain the SDGs.
He said the “overwhelming
endorsement of the Declaration and the 17 SDGs by the UN was an indication of
the responsibility to act! Implementation is at the heart of the responsibility
to act which must be manifest in concrete initiatives and allocation of
resources”.
The Executive Secretary said these recently in a keynote
address in Luxembourg at the climax of the European Year for Development and
Luxembourg Presidency of the European Union Commission in 2015.
Mr. Akologo called for effective engagement in innovative
partnership to implement the SDGs, noting that the
imperative of partnerships that underpinned the unprecedented collective action
and agreement of all the diverse International Financial Institutions (IFIs),
comprising the global and regional development Funds and Banks, projection that
the Post-2015 financing for Development will rise from Billions to Trillions,
should characterise further deliberations leading to the implementation and attainment
of the SDGs.
“This was a great innovation of
partnership which further imposes a responsibility to act in the spirit of
togetherness and to deliver the financial resources they projected for the
implementation of the SDGs” he added.
To show commitment to the
collective partnership in implementing the SDGs, Mr. Akologo expressed the need
for the respective principal shareholders of the IFIs to begin defining a
common purpose of financing for a people-centred development that will
contribute to ending extreme poverty by 2030 in ways that will ‘leave no one
behind’.
He also entreated Civil Society
Organisations to engage the IFIs through effective and innovative advocacy
actions, underpinned by dialogue to ensure that the responsibility to act by
these IFIs on the development agenda remain paramount.
With the adoption of the Addis
Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) as the outcome for the Third International
Conference on Financing for Development in July 2015, which the United Nations
Agenda 2030 recognised as the principal means of implementing the SDGs; Mr. Akologo
also tasked major stakeholders at the UN Sustainable Development process and Financing for Development to critically act
together in partnership in all actions necessary and desirable to the
implementation of the SDGs.
He observed that, another dimension
of understanding the framework for the implementation of the SDGs is the
inter-relationship with the just ended climate change conference in Paris.
“The Sustainable Development
Goals were the principal reason and thus constitute the content of the Special
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in September this year
2015,” said Mr. Akologo, who added that the outcome document – Transforming our
World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development expresses global commitment
to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, were adopted on 25th
September, 2015 by world leaders from 193 countries.
He said another dimension of
understanding the framework for the implementation of the SDGs was the
inter-relationship with the just ended climate change conference in Paris, and
reiterated Pope Francis’ call on world leaders that Economic Justice, Care for
our common home (the Earth) and Social Development can no longer be issues of
separable concern.
The Executive Secretary
therefore entreated civil society organisations and those in corporate business
as well, to accept as a common ground and normative value for dialogue and
partnership to work to advance economic justice, care for the environment and
social development.
He suggested that stakeholders
focused more clearly in defining and developing innovative partnerships around
these five critical issues in goal 17 of SDG Framework.
Even though the Group of 77 and
China have sponsored a resolution for the consideration of the Second Committee
of the UN General Assembly on issues of implementation of the post-2015
development agenda, “we in civil society and other stakeholders need to make
sure that the spirit of this resolution is consistent with principles of
participation and partnership as defined by the SDG Framework” he added.
At the event
were Ministers, Commissioners of the European Union and delegations from other
countries, as well as a good representation from Caritas Europa and other civil
society organisation.
*Mr. Zan Akologo, delivering his
address.
No comments:
Post a Comment