A civil society consultation on the post-2015 sustainable development agenda was held on the 9th of June at CENWOR in Colombo. Members of Sri Lanka’s civil society was informed of the importance and implications of the Sustainable Development Goals to the country and how the goals need to prioritised in the National Development Agenda so that the government and politicians can be held accountable to the proposed goals.
Matters pertaining to financing the development agenda were also discussed at the meeting which was co-convened by Women and Media Collective, Regions Refocus 2015 and the Asia Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women. The main aim of the consultation was to strengthen the substantive dialogue among civil society to advance progressive policies reflecting feminist, youth and other marginalised perspectives in national, regional and global policy spaces.
The year 2015 marks a significant milestone in the global development context as the expiration on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) draws near leaving United Nation member states to adopt the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). Governments will negotiate the SDG goals that are proposed for the next 15 years at a special summit on Sustainable Development scheduled in September. Meanwhile, the Third Conference on Financing for Development (FFD3) will also take place in July where governments will come to terms with how to finance, support and enable the new sustainable development agenda.
In the lead up to such inter-governmental processors various consultations and meeting within regional and local spaces are taking place among governments and civil society. The Asia Pacific Civil Society Forum on the SDG’s which was held in Bangkok in May this year, also expressed concerns in its statement to the governments in the region.