High-level Political Forum: Calls for Integrity in UN Development System

If ever we are to achieve the UN we need, the UN System must have more integrity by simultaneously upholding the Charter’s three cardinal pillars (• peace and security • forward development • human rights).That was one of the key messages that HIC-HLRN brought to the High-level Political Forum (HLPF) at UN HQ (New York) in July 2024, the annual review of states performance of the 2030 Agenda and its sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Despite promises of repositioning the United Nations Development System (UNDS) to deliver on the 2030 Agenda, the prevailing UN culture is undermining the intended unitary nature of the UN System. The best—perhaps only—remaining prospect for restoring the integrity of the System resides with civil actors to bridge the chasm created and maintained between and among these three foundational purposes.

The UNDS and the states that comprise it could learn from examples of how implementation of human rights obligations and instruments complements performance of development commitments. HLPF could be focused on such an approach, but it’s not.

The UN’s further democratization could also be one way to restore the UN Charter’s inspired unitary construct in the HLPF. There, too, is room for improvement.

HIC-HLRN seeks to provide examples of meeting and/or failing Human Rights Treaty-bound ESCR obligations by assessing specific VNRs. This application provides examples at implementing Habitat International Coalition’s Summit for the Future position.

More Major Groups and Other Stakeholders (MGOS) could be a locus of capacity-development to integrate awareness of these System-wide norms. Of the 21 stakeholder constituencies that are an integral part of the 2030 Agenda, as enshrined in UNGA resolution 67/290 [AR], the Children and Youth Major Group (CYMG) and the Women’s Major Group (WMG) expressed most clearly their demands for a human rights-based and democratized UN.

Children and Youth

At the tone-setting 8 July opening session of this year’s High-level Political Forum (HLPF), organizers invited the Children and Youth Major Group (MGCY). As a demographic constituency, rather than a functional constituency such as small farmers, education and academia, or business and industry, MDCY, like the Women’s Major Group (WMG), nonetheless takes collective positions on issues ranging from war to climate change, humanitarian affairs, human rights, migration. Shannon Lisa represented MGCY addressed “intergenerational injustice and the existential crisis” in the ‘town hall’ segment.

Miss Lisa identified five urgent MGCY priorities:

1. for governments to stop funding the military-industrial complex and implement an immediate permanent ceasefire in all ongoing conflicts;
2. for states to fill the US$500 billion gap in SDG funding cited in the 2024 SDG progress report, taking seriously the commitment to “leave no one behind” and directing funding to communities most affected by systemic inequalities;
3. to stop supporting actions that destroy our planet, and for UN agencies to divest from taking funding from, and engaging in close relationships with industries hydrocarbons, plastics and fossil fuels, and other industries engaged in planetary-scale destruction, joining the movement for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty;
4. the end to closed spaces in the UN system, including hand-picked representation (for youth groups) and representation to be universal, equitable, rights-based collective constituencies; and
5. ensuring the inclusion of include youth indicators across all plans.

During the opening of the High-level Segment of ECOSOC / Ministerial Segment on 15 July, MGCY Organizing Partner Sameh Kamel also called for accountable governance and youth cooperation with government. In addition, he made a pitch for universal social protection; that the UN’s focus on security be more ambitious and effective with Security Council reform, including youth engagement in it. He emphasized that frontline communities should play permanent leadership roles, and urged development of circular economy and protection of environmental and human rights defenders.

Mr. Kamel demanded from the upcoming Summit of the Future and Pact for the Future:

1. urgent reform of the global financial architecture;
2. more progressive models for ‘engagement’;
3. to review youth-specific monitoring;
4. to establish an agenda item on enhancing engagement, as well as a handbook for all UN agencies to enable direct and self-organization of youth and other Major Groups;
5. immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to displacement in all ongoing conflicts, whereas the majority of victims are women, children and youth. He concluded, “As youth, we refuse to be the mass casualties of a military-industrial complex.”

Women’s Major Group

Also a demographic constituency group, rather than a MGOS categorized by their function (as are NGOs or small-scale farmers), the WMG also showed internal coherence in their positioning vis-à-vis the UN and the 2030 Agenda. On 3 June, WMG urgently called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and liberation of Palestine, specifically referring to Israel as a settler-colonial state and its acts of genocide and ecocide. The Women called out Global North governments, particularly Australia, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States and others, for their glaring complicity in arming, aiding and abetting, enforcing and justifying the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The statement pointed out that those states have been undeservedly proud of their human rights records and their feminist foreign and development policies, while deliberately undermining international peace, security and justice by unconditionally supporting the Israeli colonial-settler project. WMG thereby injected the often-missing aspect of the extraterritorial commitments and obligations of states in the 2030 Agenda, especially regarding Goals 16 and 17.

The next day, WMG published its position paper for HLPF 2024. It pointed out that “Our rights, our bodies and our planet are in peril,” as the most structurally marginalized bear the brunt of convergent crises that only exacerbate pre-existing inequalities. The paper noted the rise in militarism and warfare, widespread human rights violations and the dismantling of essential social services for basic human needs, creating new layers of vulnerability, especially for women, girls and gender-diverse people. To remedy this trend, WMG demanded an urgent redirection of military expenditures toward social spending and accelerating efforts toward peace, disarmament, and feminist change, calling on governments to end imperialist occupation and uphold people’s right to justice, self-determination and sustainable development. (These issues also proved contentious in the debate toward adopting the Ministerial Declaration.)

The WMG addressed this Summit for the Future year to assert that “the world can no longer afford to ignore the flawed systems of neoliberal capitalist development and unlimited growth that prioritize private profit over people and the Planet, exacerbating the catastrophic impact of the triple planetary crisis for Global South populations.” The WMG position asserted that governments must do more to uphold international laws and commitments created to protect our human rights including sexual and reproductive health and rights, other species and Planet Earth. As self-identified feminist activists and human rights defenders, WMG urged governments of the Global South to be bold and ambitious, reject false solutions and “demand reparative and adequate climate finance for the ecological crisis wrought by capitalist greed.”

In light of WMG’s anti-militarist and anti-imperialist call, it is noteworthy that only one side event on the official HLPF program, organized by YouNGO, broached the subject of disarmament, a priority theme of the Summit of the Future. With the whole of the MGOS reflecting an innocuous common denominator among the interest groups in the MGOS Perspectives session, this was contrasted by the WMG and MGCY messaging of clarity and internal coherence.

Photo: The MGOS Perspective session at HLPF, 15 July 2024. Source: UN web TV.