3 June 2019: The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Office of Intergovernmental Support and Coordination for Sustainable Development, has updated Major Groups and other Stakeholders (MGoS) on a number of ways in which to engage in the July and September 2019 sessions of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

Registration for the July 2019 session of HLPF is open until 15 June 2019. Participants from organizations with ECOSOC Consultative Status should click here. Those whose organization is on the CSD Roster should click here. Information for those whose organization does not have ECOSOC Status and is not on the CSD Roster should click here.

Another way for MGoS to engage in the HLPF process is to track and contribute to the development of the political declaration to be adopted at the HLPF meeting that will convene at the level of Heads of State and Government – also known as the SDG Summit – from 24-25 September 2019. At the end of May, governments offered their preliminary feedback on the zero draft of the political declaration. The draft contained sections on ‘Our Commitment,’ ‘Our World Today, and ‘A Call to Accelerated Action.’

The co-facilitators of the negotiation process for the political declaration, Sheila Carey, Permanent Representative of Bahamas, and Olof Skoog, Permanent Representative of Sweden, have opened the next stage of consultations, which will be “informal informals,” to the attendance of MGoS. Upcoming meetings will take place on 7 June and 12 June. Through a call for inputs from MGoS that closed on 31 May 2019, DESA reports that that 100 submissions were passed to the co-facilitators regarding key expectations, best practices identified by the MGoS, and what the Summit could do in order to accelerate implementation.

For MGoS representatives who have never attended the HLPF, DESA is organizing a Capacity Development Workshop with support from the MGoS HLPF Coordination Mechanism. The workshop will take place the weekend before the July 2019 HLPF session, near New York City, US. Applications are due by 7 June.

Stakeholders can also prepare to participate in the HLPF through a webinar. The last in a series facilitated by DESA, this webinar will take place in different languages on different days, as follows: Spanish (7 June), English (10 June) and French (11 June). All of the webinars will take place from 9:00am – 10:30am (EST). The webinar will address issues including: Registration, Political Declaration, Capacity Development Workshop, MGoS Preparatory Meeting, the HLPF Programme, Oral Advocacy Opportunities, and Written Advocacy Opportunities. In addition, there will be a presentation by the MGoS task group on the Voluntary National Reviews. Registration information is here.

Finally, DESA reports that a record number of side event applications were received by the deadline. Applications are now being processed. An announcement of the allocation of official side event spaces is expected to be made in early June. [SDG Knowledge Hub sources]