26 July 2015: The revised draft of the outcome document for the UN summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda was released on 26 July 2015, ahead of the second week of the final negotiation session on the agenda. Co-Facilitators David Donoghue of Ireland and Macharia Kamau of Kenya write in their covering letter to UN Member States that the draft takes account of the wide range of views expressed during the first week, held on 20-24 July.
The revised draft document is titled ‘Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Outcome Document for the UN Summit to Adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda: Draft for Adoption.’
In the latest draft, the section on Means of Implementation (MOI) and Global Partnership no longer contains the MOI-specific targets from the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are contained in the previous chapter, along with the rest of the Goal and target set. The latest draft refers to the MOI targets as “at the core of our Agenda and of equal importance with the other Goals and targets,” saying they shall have “equal priority in our implementation efforts and in the global indicator framework for monitoring our progress.” It also reiterates that the agenda and its Goals and targets are “universal, indivisible and interlinked.”
The reference to the Technology Facilitation Mechanism as agreed at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) launches the TFM in order to support the SDGs. It decides that it “will be based on a multi-stakeholder collaboration between Member States, civil society, the private sector, the scientific community, United Nations entities and other stakeholders and will be composed of a United Nations inter-agency task team on science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals, a collaborative multi-stakeholder forum on science, technology and innovation for the sustainable development goals and an online platform, as detailed in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. The meetings of the forum will result in a summary of discussions as an input to the meetings of the High Level Political Forum, in the context of follow-up and review of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.”
An additional change with respect to the SDG targets is that the proposed revisions to the targets, for numerical values and specificity and for consistency with international agreements, have been removed and placed in an annex to the document. Five new target revisions are proposed with regard to landlocked developing countries (LLDCs).
Indicating their approach for the week’s meeting, the Co-Facilitators note that “the positions of delegations on the issues in these negotiations are very widely known at this stage,” and the focus should be on textual work to finalize the document. They therefore call on delegations to utilize group arrangements as much as possible and channel proposals for revised language through group coordinators. Informal informal evening sessions are being provided for, they note, to promote informal interactive engagement on the text. The Co-Facilitators reiterate their intention to conclude negotiations by Friday, 31 July.
Reacting to the revised draft in the first meeting of the week’s session, on 27 July, Member States differed over: whether to include the preamble; mentioning the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) as opposed to “shared responsibility;” language on climate change; sexual and reproductive health and rights (including references to the review conferences of International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action (ICPD) and Beijing); and a reference to “unilateral economic, financial and trade measures.”
Some countries called for recognizing the human right to water, with the US and the Russian Federation remaining opposed. The EU and others were concerned that the AAAA was no longer annexed to this version of the outcome document, while the Group of 77 and China (G-77/China) continued to assert that the AAAA is different in scope from the post-2015 development agenda, and that the two cannot be conflated.
The session will continue on 28 July with a focus on the Goals and targets chapter. [Letter and Revised Draft] [IISD RS Meeting Coverage] [IISD RS Story on Start of Final Negotiating Session]