Welcome to the United Nations
Together 2030 Sectoral Paper
High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) 2021
The 2021 HLPF theme "Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development" will represent a decisive and critical effort to reposition the world in the path to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by the year 2030. The COVID-19 crisis not only revealed the vulnerabilities, but also exposed the scale and depth of structural inequalities within and between countries while at the same time magnifying gender inequalities and the crisis of care.
A just and inclusive COVID-19 recovery should be the stepping stone towards a rights-based human development approach to the Decade of Action and Delivery of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. There is a need for a strong multilateralism that puts human rights first over any other national or international obligations, firmly grounded in the principles of transparency, justice, peace, solidarity, and accountability to the peoples. This should create new global public goods for public health and solidarity, enable an equitable transition to a decarbonized economy, enact proactive environmental protection measures, and rebuild a gender just society.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made evident the global fragility and the need for cooperation and solidarity, already established in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and later renewed by the commitments made in 2019 by Head of States and governments for a Decade of Action and Delivery. To ensure a sustainable and resilient recovery, multilateralism must be at the core of any subsequent efforts geared towards an inclusive implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Countries should more than ever work on addressing increased social inequalities in alignment with the human rights agenda and the people-centered principle of the 2030 Agenda. They must also work on aligning health crises measures through global policies, and strengthening, as well as adapting data collection systems that could help with adequate responses to vulnerable and marginalized populations who suffer more acutely and disproportionately in any given crises. More importantly, cooperation should harness lessons from the pandemic, making sure that best practices, resources, innovations, and findings are shared altruistically and in solidarity to build a stronger global response in future crises.
Clearly spelt out policies and measures should include debt cancelation for enhanced fiscal space for public healthcare, ensuring universal access to health treatment and medicine by suspending patents and trade rules restricting access to medicines and medical technologies, establishing participatory mechanisms for assessing technological solutions, providing adequate social protection, decent work and living wages for all workers, and protecting state policy space to address the crises, as well as relevant stimulus/recovery packages.
Meaningful participation, VNRs and the HLPF
Stakeholders’ engagement in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda has generally been limited and challenging. The latest edition of the report PROGRESSING NATIONAL SDGs IMPLEMENTATION: An independent assessment of the voluntary national review reports submitted to the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2020, has noted that reporting on multi-stakeholder engagement outside governance arrangements experienced some backslides and highlights that VNR reports were silent on closing civic space globally, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic had often been used as an excuse by some governments to further close civic space.
Meaningful participation at the HLPF has become more urgent in the context of a global response to the pandemic. It is known that marginalized groups are left further behind in virtual consultations and remote participation. Similarly, data collection is challenged by the context and therefore poses questions of reliability and evidence-based decision-making.
