Month: December 2017

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Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations was formed in 1945, officially coming into existence on October 24. As it stands today, its goals are to save people from war, to affirm human rights to all people, to uphold justice and respect, and to promote social progress as it relates to freedom. This is ultimately to create tolerance to find peace, unite in international peace and security, ensure the limitation of use of armed forces, and to enhance economic and social aspects of all lives.

Through the United Nations today, we have just passed the timeline for the Millennium Development Goals and come into the timeframe of the Sustainable Development Goals. The SDGs span a wide array of goals, economic and social, to benefit humanity as a whole. The 17 goals are:

  1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
  2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
  3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
  4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
  5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
  6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
  7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
  8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
  9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
  10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
  11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable
  12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
  13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
  14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
  15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
  16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
  17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

One important thing to notice about the SDGs is that many of these topics can encompass the same issues. For instance, Clean Energy and Climate Action will have many similarities yet are different goals. This allows for two benefits that did not happen under the MDGs. First, metrics and indicators for each are more clear and precise to allow for better project implementation. Second, by allowing goals to have similar targets, there is a greater chance that something will be done when they can be approached from multiple perspectives at the same time.

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Millennium Development Goals

Global Strategic Frameworks, and in this case specifically the Millennium Development Goals, have certain opportunities as well as limitations. While this post will focus on the limitations of these global strategic frameworks, it is important to note that even failures within them show us where to improve and demonstrate a desire to do so in the first place. On that note, the Millennium Development Goals were not reached. It is that simple. There are many arguments as to why but one of the most important that was heavily addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals was what and how the Millennium Development Goals measured initiatives and outcomes. One example of this is Goal 2 of the MDGs: Achieve universal primary education, was measured by enrollment rates and how many students attended school each day. While numerically, many country’s rates of student enrollment increased, it did not measure the quality of education they received as a result of rapid school building projects to achieve Goal 2.

Another argument, rooted in the one before, is that the MDGs were more useful to donors and program initiators then the governments behind them. Because these goals were largely drafted without the input of the developing nations that would be receiving the aid, the language was drafted in a way to benefit investors and donors than to be clear to locals or government officials.

Finally, the immediately obvious difference between the MDGs and SDGs is the number of goals. The MDGs lumped many things into single categories, not emphasizing certain issues enough. This has hopefully been addressed by separating many of these categories into their own entities in the SDGs.

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Inclusive Education

Inclusive Education has many different aspects to consider. Physical and mental disabilities are important to remember in education accessibility as they carry a great ability to isolate people within education systems or even keep them out in many cases. In order to address this, the United Nations created the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or CRPD, under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict). The CRPD was created to develop a ‘model policy document to be used as a template to assist UNESCO member states in promoting the effective use of inclusive ICTs in education for learners with disabilities,’ according to the Model Policy for Inclusive ICTs in Education for Persons with Disabilities. This model policy document serves two purposes: to act as a blueprint for short, mid and long-term action as well as to be an audit tool for member states to check their progress in relation to inclusive education.

The specifics of inclusive education can involve anything from personalized class lessons to screen readers or wheelchair ramps. The inclusion of both physical and mental disabilities has been considered under the CRPD which has led to a non-discriminatory approach regarding the intersectionalities between disabilities, human rights, gender equality, and access to services. This has been done through reasonable accommodations for different disabilities and an outlook for how to improve based on current technologies and capabilities. While there are still areas lacking in inclusive education, many areas have made huge strides to reduce the stigma around this group of people and allow for further educational advancements. In order to further this, individual needs must be met, ability for lifelong learning must see increased focus, and education for those with disabilities must see a systems approach in order to normalize this population’s education.

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Were the MDGs Successful? The Efficacy of Global and Regional Frameworks

Since the SDGs were adopted as a global framework in 2015, many have attempted to evaluate the success of the Millennium Development Goals in achieving goals of:

  1. to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
  2. to achieve universal primary education;
  3. to promote gender equality and empower women;
  4. to reduce child mortality;
  5. to improve maternal health;
  6. to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases;
  7. to ensure environmental sustainability; and
  8. to develop a global partnership for development.

 

While based on empirical data, each of these eight goals was advanced during the time period of 2000 to 2015, the question as to whether or not the existence of the Millennium Development Goals directly accelerated progress in each area remains to be seen. According to Brookings, the clearest victories of the MDGs were in lives saved. During the MDG era, accelerated progress in addressing child mortality, maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis saved an estimated 21 million extra lives.[1] In addition to saving lives, the MDG period saw significantly increased participation in education, access to potable water, and nutrition in some regions (Sub-Saharan Africa in particular), with stagnated progress in others.

But did the Millenium Development Goals play a significant role in sparking accelerations in achievement in the 8 key issue areas, or would increasing rates of international cooperation achieved these same gains without the framework? This is the central question for the efficacy of UN frameworks as a whole. Many critics of the Millenium Development Goals often cite the fact that many of the nations that achieved progress in the areas, were already on track for progress well before the adoption of the framework. While this is a valid criticism in the case of China and India, nations in Africa experienced rapid progress towards the goals that they were not on track to achieve before the adoption. Therefore, the success of the Millenium Development Goals as a global framework is contestable. But, one thing that’s clear is that in order to ensure the success of the SDGs, research has to be done in order to identify which types of government, public sector, and private sector actions contributed to advancement towards the goals.

Works Cited

[1]  Rasmussen, John. “How Successful Were The Millennium Development Goals?.” Brookings. N. p., 2017. Web. 8 Dec. 2017.

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Intersectionalities

Although the term intersectionality is discussed foremost in social justice spheres, in practice it sees use in a number of fields. Intersectionality in development discourses has become increasingly important as the idea of inclusive development-seeking directly to address the issues faced by a number of dispossessed groups-has grown. By allying together, different interest groups can act as more forceful advocates for their agendas in international policy-making. This also reflects how non-state actors, particularly civil society groups, have grown more influential in international politics.

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Multistakeholder Global Governance

Multistakeholder Global Governance is the idea that by bringing together diverse stakeholders to participate in decision-making, policy formulation, and implementation, more comprehensive and compatible solutions to global challenges will result. In regards to internet governance, multistakeholder governance is a strategy that is extremely compatible due to the internet’s ability to unite diverse individuals from anywhere on Earth. In this incredible capacity of the internet to expand participation, multistakeholder governance has become the norm for internet governance. The strengths of this approach are numerous, but Internet Society identifies a few key situations in which a multistakeholder approach is needed:

  1. When the decisions being made impact a wide range of people and interests
  2. When there are overlapping rights and responsibilities across sectors and national borders
  3. When the issue being addressed requires different forms of expertise in addition to diverse perspectives
  4. When the legitimacy of decisions being made directly affect the success of implementation

The potential for the internet to influence the policymaking process is enormous. By expanding participation to more voices, the likelihood of developing policy solutions that consider the experiences, realities, and needs of different populations can be increased. In addition to influencing the policy making process, the internet has single handedly revolutionized the capacity for collaboration transnationally. As we have discussed in class, the internet has expanded the formation of transnational virtual collaboratories (groups of individuals working together towards shared goals). In doing so, the scope at which organizations can now work has been greatly expanded. Organizations, for example, can now have research fellows conducting their research on one side of the globe, while organizers and advocates are on the ground on the other side. The two groups can collaborate digitally, working simultaneously to achieve organizational goals. This opens up tremendous opportunities for cooperation in advancing goals in which transnational efforts are required, like the SDGs.

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Intersectionality in Sustainable Development

The main theme of SDG’s is inclusiveness, meaning including the active participation of all sectors of society and all types of people. The SDG’s cannot be achieved without collaboration of all, and an intersectional approach that interconnects social categorizations such as race, class and gender to a given individual or group, as a result creates barriers to an inclusive society.

In 1992 during the Earth Summit, the first UN Conference on Environment and Development, it was acknowledged that achieving sustainable development would need the active participation of all sectors of the society, thus Agenda 21 adopted at the Earth Summit drew up the “UN Major Groups”. To this day, most of the UN processes related to environment and sustainable development use the “Major Groups” framework or some variation, which includes nine sectors of society, as the main channels through which board participation would be facilitated. The nine group include: women, children, farmers, indigenous people, NGO’s, trade unions, local authorities, science and technology, and business and technology. However, the problem with these categorizations is it is missing out major stakeholders, such as the 1 billion persons with disabilities and the older population (estimated[1] by 2050, about 2 billion people will be over 60, 22% of the world’s population). Hence, as a result, lots of identities are not included.  However, when advocates argue about the need to expand beyond these nine groups, many appeal to the argument of intersectionality that indicates we deal with these groups under the nine specific groups (For example: women with disabilities as part of the women category). However, to what extent do the category deal with the problem separately concerning people with disabilities or older generations? And to what extent are they successful addressing these groups? While we question on aspect of not including these groups, there is also another perspective- if we add more groups-will it be progressive in achieving all the set forward goals with the multiple representatives (transaction costs)? However, at the same time by excluding a certain group undermines the concept of inclusivity, and thus the SDG’s. In conclusion, while intersectionality exists the issue of exclusion will persist.

[1] http://unsdn.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/gray-panthers.pdf

 

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Inclusive Education

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the main international legal framework on human rights that clearly highlights the rights of children with disabilities to education. More importantly, article 24, on the right to education, emphasizes the rights to inclusive education and prohibits disability-based discrimination in education. Learners with disabilities at all levels of education are one of the most vulnerable communities and exposed to exclusion from educational opportunities. Their vulnerability extents beyond just their enrolment but to issues of quality of education received, retention and progression throughout the school system. The World Report on Disability estimates that there are between 93 to 150 million school-aged children with disabilities worldwide[1]. Therefore, it is important to recognize the importance of international cooperation in including children with disabilities in programming as well as in its role in support of national governments. The inclusion of children with disabilities is a moral issue, as well as an economic and social issue.

Education is the essential part of human existence and a key to power. It’s the core principle in solving challenges such as demographic change, global competition, technological development and other various areas. Human development, a concept evolved by Amartya Sen, is a means in increasing beyond just income or GDP. It also impacts the economic, social and political components. It impacts scientific innovations and introduction of modern technology. It increases opportunities for employment, and resilience to economic shocks [2].

Therefore, a nation with a more educated population has greater chance in innovations and creating more job opportunities. Therefore, the economic and social cost of exclusion are high. Leaving a huge proportion out of the labor market just negatively impacts the long term productivity of the economy. However, investing in inclusive education, enrolment of children with disabilities is a smart investment and carries high returns. It allows to increase labor potential, impacts progress, reduces poverty, inequality and gender inequality.

Inclusive ICT can be a valuable and important instrument for learners with disabilities who are vulnerable to the digital divide and exclusion from educational opportunities.

Some aspects of inclusive ICTs for education include: mainstream technologies that are readily available in the commercial marketplace to all individuals, assistive technologies that take in consideration the difficulties in accessing and using the mainstream technologies, compatibility between assistive technology products, and accessing digital learning content and instructional delivery systems.

By incorporating inclusive ICT, it can reduce the barriers such as social exclusion and access to information through the use of virtual organization and collabotory . There are many actors involved in creating an inclusive ICT environment besides children with disabilities, but also those that are involved in developing, implementing and evaluating policy objectives and initiatives such as the parents, teachers, leaders, and other education professions and the IT professionals. ICT is a cross-sectorial sector.

[1] http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002272/227229e.pdf#page=11

[2] Riboud, Michelle. 2016. Investing in inclusive human development. Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies 8 (2): 168-200.

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Efficacy of Global and Regional Framework

During Millennium Summit of the UN in 2000 eight international development goals for the year 2015 that were established known as the Millennium Development Goals. MDG became a global strategic framework for 191 member states of the UN and 22 international organizations that committed themselves to achieve the 8 MDG goals by 2015. Each goal had specific targets and dates to achieve them. The significance of MDG was that it was an explicit recognition by the international community of the reality that that a large proportion of people in the world were deprived and poor, and it became a global attempt to place this persistent problem on the development agenda for international cooperation. To what extent was is it successful? By the end at least 21 million extra lives were saved. Number of lives were saved on child mortality, maternal mortality, HIV/AIDs and tuberculosis.  However, despite these successes the MDG global framework had its limitations. One of the biggest critiques of its consequences was it didn’t include marginalized and vulnerable groups. In result, gender inequality persists, there are big gaps between the rich and poor households, and children with disabilities are excluded.

Thus, global frameworks, such as MDGs, have a huge number of opportunities, but also a number of limitations: First of all, these frameworks are a great way to unify all state and non-state actors towards international cooperation. They tend to set norms and values in terms of operation. They act as a form of peer pressure that will increase debate in the communities. It’s a great advantage for many non-state actors such as NGOs because of all the funding and resources that is provided, the fundamental research that has already been done, and the understanding of global standards. However, despite these advantages there are also a number of limitations that are inherent in these global agendas in terms of conception and design. One of the biggest problems with global agendas such as MDGs is they are set without the proper representation and participation of the members of the group that has been affected (nothing about us without us), and thus they can’t and dont’t take into consideration many areas.  In addition, usually these global agendas include multiple objectives without specific ways in implementing these goals(MDG’s). Resulting in many issues such as how do you implement and enforce these policies, and then how do you follow up with the progress. Thus, it creates a constant need for modification and new enforcements.

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Multi-stakeholder Global Governance

In 2005, WSIS defined Internet governance as: the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective role, of share principles , norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the internet’. Today the internet is operated across borders and with a multi-stakeholder approach, meaning internet government is not a product of institutional hierarchy. Instead, it is a bottom-up approach where individuals and organizations from different realms have the opportunity to participate alongside each other to share ideas and develop consensus policy. It is the most optimal way for policy decision making in a global network that allows a wide range of people to impact and make decisions, to share their experiences and problems, bring in their expertise and legitimize policies. Thus, making the multistakeholder decision making process accountable, effective as well as sustainable and inclusive. Inclusiveness is the basis of legitimacy of a decision-making process, and those who are affected by a decision should have the chance to be involved in making the it.

The Internet government forum embraces the multistakeholder model, where states-including authoritarian governments- agreed to participate in policy discussions on an equal ground with all private and civil society sectors. It serves to bring people together and discuss public policy issues, exchange information and share expertise. It facilitates a common understanding on how to maximize internet opportunities and address risks and challenges that arise. Chiefly, it gives developing nations a voice and a chance to engage on debate on internet governance and to facilitate their experience in existing institutions and institutions.