World Vision welcomes the 30 May report of the High Level Panel (HLP) on the Post-2015 Development Agenda as, ‘Presenting a bold vision for the eradication of extreme poverty’. The majority of priority issues that World Vision advocated for are reflected

Monday, June 10, 2013

World Vision welcomes the 30 May report of the High Level Panel (HLP) on the Post-2015 Development Agenda as, ‘Presenting a bold vision for the eradication of extreme poverty’. The majority of priority issues that World Vision advocated for are reflected in the report in varying degrees. The challenge is now for the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, to retain and strengthen the HLP’s proposals as he prepares his recommendations for the important UN General Assembly in September.

The report highlights five major shifts that it hopes if achieved will finish the work of the MDGs. These are:

• leave no one behind;
• put sustainable development at the core;
• transform economies for jobs and inclusive growth;
• build peaceful effective, open and accountable institutions for all; and:
• forge a new global partnership

As an organisation concerned with realising the rights of the most vulnerable children, we are particularly pleased to see the commitment to ‘leave no one behind,’ with its promise to finish the work of the MDGs by moving towards the eradication of poverty and focusing on the most excluded populations.

However, the report contains very little detail about how these commitments will be realised. There is, for example, no mention of the right to health. World Vision will now look to draw on our experience from working with vulnerable children and communities to further specify how the right to health can be translated into practice.

The report goes on to focus on several themes that World Vision also prioritises including: health, nutrition and food security, fragility, and child protection. World Vision has taken positions regarding how the report suggests moving forward in these various areas, for example, World Vision welcomes the inclusion of the goals and targets in the HLP report that directly contribute to strengthening protection systems for children. However, there are two areas that we had wanted to see included which have not appeared in the Report. The first is the elimination of the worst forms of child labour (ILO Convention 182). The second missing dimension is a recognition of the need to strengthen protection systems.

World Vision will also take the bold step of strengthening ties with other Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) from other sectors, such as education, water and sanitation, whose successes in realising goals and targets in their areas of interest will contribute to children’s well-being.