Welcome to the United Nations
Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality
United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth– Sectoral position paper to the 2019 UN High Level Political Forum
1. Inclusion of all people is needed to collectively move towards the future we want while leaving no one behind. This will require transformations in our economy, social structures, financial systems, and political institutions.
2. There are clear interlinkages and tradeoffs across SDGs. Putting society on a path consistent with the aspirations of the 2030 Agenda depends on our ability to effectively address them.
3. The trajectory towards sustainable development remains far from desirable. The accumulation of inequalities are undermining sustainability, peace, and resilience. The continued wave of anti-collectivism and globalism is further catalyzing these adverse effects. The lost sentiment of Agenda 21 to confront historical injustice hinders the efforts of the HLPF. This should be a central focus in assessing the first cycle of the HLPF (2015-2019) and developing modalities around the second cycle (2020-2024).
4. Inclusive formal and informal quality education and lifelong learning are fundamental human rights and key drivers for sustainable development, yet barriers fail to be systematically addressed;
5. “Decent work” needs to be further defined and protected, especially with the uncertainties of the future of work. Alternative measures of ‘growth’ need to be integrated into formal indicator frameworks as GDP alone fails to capture the well-being of people and planet;
6. Inequalities continue to deepen, due to factors such as discrimination; illicit financial flows and unfair trade agreements; human rights violations; various forms of censorship; political and corporate capture; stigmatization and marginalization.
7. Actions towards climate change mitigation are not on par with the commitments made. Transgression of planetary boundation and biologic carrying capacities continue to undermine development efforts and weaken the likelihood of attaining peace, security, and equality;
8. Protracted and emerging issues continue to jeopardize progress. These include: a neoliberal, growth economic paradigm that puts profit above the well-being of people and planet, militarisation of economies and politicization of peace efforts for national interests; corporate concentration and rising power of transnational corporations (TNCs) that further wealth inequalities, exhaust the planet’s regenerative biocapacity, engender modern colonial divides, and lead to regulatory capture;
9. The UN, in its growing need for funding, is leaning towards the private sector without accountability mechanisms. It is critical to assess the implications of various funding sources and continue thoughtful debate on guidelines for establishing public-private-people partnerships;
10. In order to align our global architecture to achieve this Agenda, the UN MGCY emphasizes the following:
11. Integrated territorial development is indispensable to localise this global agenda. It addresses inequalities between different types of human settlements;
12. Building on work of UNEA, agreeing on a universal protocol on plastics is needed. Forests should be given status as protected global commons. Efforts towards the Global Pact on the Environment should be assured to strengthen international environmental law and environment-related instruments to enhance the environmental dimension;
13. Policy approaches should align macroeconomic frameworks with the three dimensions of sustainable development. Concrete initiatives like UNEP’s E-RISC1 and ETR2 should be universally applied;
14. Gender oppression and inequalities remains significant. Essential to overcoming structural barriers that limit agency of girls and young women is inclusion of their voices in all decision-making spaces;
15. Evidence from various sources (formal, informal, traditional, indigenous, etc.) must form the foundation of each stage of the policy cycle. Anticipatory, participatory technology assessment platforms are needed to ensure technology justice;
16. Promote greater integration and coherence of the various global frameworks and inputs from ECOSOC’s subsidiary bodies and forums (e.g. AAAA3, SFDRR4, GCM5, NUA6, 10YFP-4-SCP7, SPF,8 Paris Agreement, CSW9, Youth Forum, etc.).
17. Ensure rights-based participation that provide protected spaces for critical segments of society, the HLPF reform process should engage major groups and other stakeholders, building on the modalities in A/RES/67/290.
