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Bringing a strong human rights voice to the UN Panel on post-2015

Region:
Global

Human rights concerns have been highlighted extensively in a new United Nations consultation report on the form and content of a future development framework. The document summarizes contributions to an extensive online consultation, organized at the request of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which aimed to gather civil society input on lessons to be drawn from the current MDG experience and key elements to be included in a more effective future agenda.

CESR was one of 134 organizations, networks and individual respondents who took part in the consultation, which was staged to inform the High-Level Panel’s meeting in Monrovia from January 30 to February 2. In the words of the report, 'Contributors resoundingly called for the post-2015 development framework to be anchored in human rights, guided by the range of obligations already agreed to by Member States'.

The report cites many of the recommendations made by CESR regarding the ways in which human rights can and must be incorporated into the new development commitments. These include the creation of more effective accountability mechanisms for both state and non-state actors, the provision of a universal social protection floor, better financial regulation and reform of unjust taxation regimes. It also highlighted CESR's recommendation that the human rights framework should be the yardstick by which to evaluate policy coherence at the global and national level.

It is to be welcomed that the important issues outlined above have been included in the document prepared by the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service for the High Level Panel. It is to be hoped that they will be properly considered in the Panel’s final report, set to be published in May this year, which will guide the development of a new set of global goals replacing the MDGs when they expire in 2015.