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IPU President calls on parliaments to consolidate influence on post-2015 agenda

SDGs

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the end of 2015. ©UN

IPU President Abdelwahad Radi has called on Member Parliaments to consolidate efforts to ensure parliaments keep playing a crucial role in the ongoing process to develop the post-2015 development agenda. He is encouraging Members to share with governments and constituents the first draft of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the end of 2015. This would ensure maximum visibility and debate on an issue that will have a direct impact on people´s lives.

“There is no agenda more important for the health of the planet and well-being of the people than the SDGs that governments will need to adopt by the end of next year,” President Radi said in a letter to Members. Since early 2013, IPU has been urging the inclusion of a stand-alone goal on democratic governance with specific indicators relating to parliament. Draft goal 16 - “to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, to provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”- points in the right direction. For President Radi, “this is the equivalent of the democratic governance goal that most of us have been advocating for years.”

Goal 16 contains a number of targets that speak directly to IPU´s concerns, including a target to “develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels,” and another to “ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels.” Parliaments are not explicitly mentioned in this goal, but they are clearly implied. The President stressed that IPU would continue to push for parliaments to be featured in either one of the targets or the indicators that will eventually be elaborated to monitor progress on the implementation of the goal.