A Dark Day - The US Denounces the SDGs and Agenda 2030 : An exchange of messages between Robert Cohen and Kul Gautam
From Robert Cohen
This happened yesterday at the UNGA, In summary: "The United States strongly supports efforts to sustain peace and pursue diplomatic solutions to crises around the world. The country firmly supports individual rights, including freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and religion or belief, as these are fundamental to America's security and the promotion of tolerance, mutual respect, and peace globally. However, the United States has decided to call a vote on this resolution due to concerns that it reaffirms the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The U.S. government believes that Agenda 2030 and the SDGs advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with American interests and rights. The recent U.S. election mandate was clear that the government must refocus on the interests of Americans, prioritizing their lives and moral and civic duties. President Trump emphasized a course correction on gender and climate ideology, which were key components of the SDGs. As a result, the United States rejects and denounces Agenda 2030 and the SDGs. "
This is a radical rupture by the US with the entire framework of global cooperation and the UN itself. A framework that JPG and you helped craft starting with the goals of the World Summit for Children.
A dark day indeed.
Reply by Kul Gautam
To the best of my knowledge, so far, no country in the world has rejected SDGs 2030. The US has clearly become a pariah state in rejecting these development goals that were carefully negotiated and unanimously agreed to by all UN member states.
All SDGs are, of course, to be adapted to the realities of each country. But their wholesale rejection, as the US statement implies, is unprecedented.
I will not be surprised if the Trump administration also rejects the historic Universal Declaration of Human Rights crafted under the leadership of Eleonor Roosevelt, and some other UN treaties and conventions to which the US is already a state party.
This is total misinterpretation of the election mandate of Donald Trump akin to Adolf Hitler's nefarious power grab and imposition of Nazi rule in 1933.
What a shame!
Yes, horrible with respect to using the 2030 Agenda as a rights-based reference, and another stumbling block as civil society and governments are beginning to look at post-2030 agenda designing. However, there are 404 voluntary national reviews https://hlpf.un.org/countries presented since the first high level political forum for SDG reporting in 2016, but none from the US. So regardless of the US admin in place they have not been involved.
ReplyDeleteI have read and listened to African intellectuals and officials in countries where I once worked. Many do not seem as worked up about USAID's shutdown or the UK halving its aid budget as you might expect. Some appear rather indifferent, others are reflective, and even positive, and a number of African economists welcomed it. The ones most upset seem to be the ones working in the aid industry, together with some liberal Western politicians and newspapers, in particular The Financial Times, which has published many articles condemning the governments of both the US and the UK for cutting aid. What does this tell us? That aid workers are upset is obvious, many fear losing their lucrative livelihoods. But do FT and Western liberals know better than African thinkers and economists how important aid is? Probably not. This may offer the aid industry an opportunity to truly rethink aid.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the comment above: the views expressed to me by African Ministries of Health officials and the national NGOs who work with them to deliver critical health services to underserved people tend to be rather different. I should say "used to deliver critical services" and "used to work with them", because large swathes of basic services have folded due to the the USA pulling its support. Also to mention, for example, HI-positive people who have lost access to ARV medicines due to interruptions in PEPFAR; and refugees and IDPs whose rations the WFP have been forced to cut (further). I could go on. Maybe African health workers know better than African "thinkers and economists" how important aid is. Having said that, I fully agree with the Ken Opalo's that African dependence on aid - including in the health sector - is long overdue for change. A clear 5-year phase out of USAID with interim support for sustainable national financing and capacities to deliver critical services would have been an infinitely more appropriate - and human - approach.
ReplyDeleteIt is unfortunate that, in this discussion, ‘development’ aid and humanitarian aid get conflated. Most aid critics are critical of development aid, though there is also much that can go wrong with humanitarian aid. Arguably, PEPFAR and similar subsidies are humanitarian aid and to cut it from one day to the next is totally inappropriate. However, it is high time that development aid is critically reviewed and analysed, by both recipient (and especially aid dependent) countries and donor countries alike.
ReplyDeleteOne could also argue and challenge that the small portion of government services in many "developing" countries that is dependent on ODA, and within ODA, on UN - is very very tiny in many cases. Whether we stay or leave is not of great consequence to them. We may often fund things governments are not keen to fund - or help them save a portion of their social sector budget to plough it back into defense or a new mansion for the head of state. A seasoned economist in UNICEF has told me that if we focussed our effort to advocate for these governments where we have "programmes" to simply do 2 or 3 things slightly differently we would have a HUGE impact on putting CHILDREN FIRST: 1. collect revenue better. this is a joke in most places. I was renting a house for over 24,000 USD per year from an upper class person in my last duty station. He paid zero tax on rental income and the house he rented out - the property tax was 60 USD per year. he could pay much are could 100s of 1000s of elites. 2. spend the revenue yoou have better - adjust by single percentage points budget towards social sector and this would totally dwarf the ODA going in. 3. make sure you don't just collect revenu and allocate to sectors - but SPEND IT ON THINGS that change lives. The latter is where UNICEF should be the BEST ADVISOR on the planet - if we did not have our noses stuck in writing proposals to donors, contorting ourselves to get that money that does not quite fit our mandate, reporting back to donors, hiring photographers to capture pics of what we do and writing human interest stories, monitoring dashboards on how our office is doing, even worse monitoring how a REGION is performing? Who CARE is West Africa is doing better in timely donor reporting or DCT liquidation than South Asia? We got it all WRONG. Maybe the current crisis can be a kick in the guy - for us to wake up and do better for children?
ReplyDelete