Jointly organized by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), in cooperation with the League of Arab States (LAS), this meeting seeks to support Arab regional preparations for the third session of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), to be held in New York in June-July 2015. It also aims to contribute to the elaboration of the regional input to the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD 3), which will be held in Addis Ababa in July 2015. The Forum will take stock of, exchange views and harmonize regional positions on the progress of negotiations relating to the post-2015 development agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and will discuss developments in the drafting of the outcome document of the FfD 3. In particular, the Forum will provide a multi-stakeholder platform for: exchanging perspectives regarding the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the SDGs; reviewing status and trends of sustainable development in the Arab Region over the past two decades; developing a comprehensive regional approach to the mobilization of financial resources to achieve sustainable development in the region; gathering inputs on means of building effective institutions for sustainable development at the national and regional levels, and developing strategic development planning systems that mainstream sustainable development; and identifying means for advancing implementation of the SDGs in the region and building national capacities in monitoring and evaluation.  

dates: 5-7 May 2015  
location: Bahrain  
contact: Federica Pietracci  
phone: +1 212 963 8497  
e-mail: pietracci@un.org  
www: http://www.escwa.un.org/information/meetingdetails.asp?referenceNum=3572E
 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=13&nr=1149&menu=1634