Missing a chance to share experiences

The Government of Pakistan has established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) task force with its secretariat at the National Assembly and appointed Marriyum Aurangzeb, the minister of state for information, as its convener. Provincial offices of Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services also act as provincial SDGs secretariats. The mandate of these secretariats is to facilitate regular vertical coordination between the federal parliament and provincial assemblies, and enable horizontal coordination and knowledge sharing.

Although this shows the government’s vigilance on SDGs, it isn’t reflected pragmatically, considering that Pakistan missed being part of the second High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on SDGs at the UN headquarter. Forty-four countries, including Afghanistan and India, represented their progress reports at the HLPF. The forum included partnership exchange, voluntary national reviews (VNRs) and, most importantly, SDGs business and ministerial forum.

The HLPF is a central multi-stakeholder mechanism established by the UN to follow up and review the 2030 agenda for SDGs and its achievements. As written in paragraph 79 of the document, it expects member states to “conduct regular and inclusive reviews of progress at the national and sub-national levels, which are country-led and country-driven,” to serve as a basis for regular reviews by the HLPF. This year, seven SDGs were under discussion — Goal 1: no poverty, Goal 2: zero hunger, Goal 3: good health and wellbeing, Goal 5: gender equality, Goal 9: industry, innovation and infrastructure, Goal 14: life below water and Goal 17: partnerships for the goals.

To push forward the 2030 agenda at the national level, Pakistan has increased the health budget by 80% in the current fiscal year with around 59% in Punjab, 39% in K-P, 26% in Sindh and Rs18 billion allocated to Balochistan. Budget speeches loudly stressing spending in the social development sector as essential are also welcoming. But by not attending the forum, Pakistan has missed the opportunity to review its progress towards the SDGs.

This is not to say that Pakistan is lagging behind Afghanistan, India and other South Asian countries in terms of progress. However, HLPF’s attendance gave the governments of those countries an opportunity to consolidate their work with their civil society to present at the forum.

Thus, there is a dire need for a joint venture between the government and civil society on SDGs in Pakistan. This could bring forth a national level review, follow up and evaluation with published annual progress report, formal presentations of the achievements and challenges. That could then be presented at the forum. Having task force on SDGs is important but ensuring its capacity, orientation, commitment to the cause, yearly calendar and devising implementation plan is equally significant.

If our absence was due to political upheaval, it shows the government’s incapacity in terms of not following or developing a yearly calendar or mapping implementation plans at a macro level with a trickling down effect. Governments of other member states make their yearly to-do lists in order to meet global and national commitments, which are above and beyond the political crisis. The civil society, as an independent entity, also joins these high-level forums.

The civil society brings in shadow reports on the basis of work done by it, or evaluates the government’s progress. The facts and figures it shows are often contrary to the government’s figures. However, our governments are offended by this evaluation, rather than taking it as a part of parallel evaluation as governments globally do. Thus, by not attending, we missed VNRs aim of sharing experiences, including successes, challenges and lessons learned with a view to accelerating national development plans in global harmony.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 25^th, 2017.

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