GPE welcomes new United Nations report on post-2015 development agenda

On Friday the United Nations High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda released an ambitious report aiming to generate debate on a new agenda for sustainable development beyond 2015. As a catalyst for the hairy process of global consensus-building, the report, entitled A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development has helped to put an inspiring vision for our common future on the table. Indeed, the successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has the potential to galvanize new ways of working together to end poverty, transform economies, fortify good governance, build peace and put us on the path toward living in balance with the environment.

“We can be the first generation to eradicate global poverty”

I am impressed by the breadth of the framework proposed by the High Level Panel (HLP), and echo the ambition of Liberia’s President Johnson Sirleaf that “we can be the first generation to eradicate global poverty.”  While no doubt the coming year will be fraught with lively and passionate debates on the many dimensions of our collective vision for a better world – and we should not shy away from being even more bold in our targets and more precise in defining how we should get there – the HLP, in its call for five great transformations, has shown how far we have come since the MDGs were adopted in 2000.

A new global partnership

We also have a solid foundation of lessons to build on. The fifth transformative shift called for by the Panel relates to the need to build a new global partnership “which starts with a shared common vision, one that allows different solutions for different contexts but is uniformly ambitious (p.10).”   The past decade of the Global Partnership for Education has grappled with just such a paradigm shift. By bringing together governments, multilateral institutions, civil society, and the private sector at global and national levels, the GPE has helped to define the responsibilities and accountabilities of each partner in our common cause to achieve universal quality basic education.  We have tried to turn the global promise of the MDGs into a reality for children attending schools, taught by good quality teachers, with the right materials and supports they need to learn.  And it will take partnerships like the GPE to make good on the promises of a post- 2015 agenda for development.

Translating the goals into national policy is next

Michael Anderson, DFID’s Director-General for Policy and Global Programs said on Friday, “The only power of these goals is to inspire and move people to take action. This is not a treaty, or laws, or binding in any way. We hope this report inspires, but to be honest it is not a substitute for a global treaty where governments agree to take steps.”

He is not alone in putting the issue of how the new goals can lead to lasting change at the national level. Indeed, there is a strong recognition that the power of this new framework will depend on the extent to which we can translate the goals into national policy frameworks, backed by good data, and implemented through collaborative partnerships which are underpinned by clear accountabilities – and which are led by strong, open and transparent governments.

The GPE welcomes the High Level Panel’s long term ambition to bring the world together behind a new set of goals, and it stands ready to embed that vision into action plans that can be implemented. Let us now begin the debate in earnest about the concrete steps needed to get us from here to 2030.

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