(This may be a bit academic, but it helps).
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about why we should not be surprised by the underperformance of the SDGs: human rights almost ignored. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Note: You can easily translate the Readers to many languages, Use the app deepl.com and it is done instantaneously. It takes seconds to download the app into your computer or phone and translations are of high quality.
–Score: SDGs 1, Human Rights 0?
-The SDGs were a politically negotiated consensus that had no significant human rights enforcement mechanism built in.
1. Although the SDGs significantly improved compared to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but they still contain many substantial gaps, such as:
(a) insufficient attention to human rights (HR) and their corresponding obligations;
(b) non-recognition of remedial extraterritorial obligations (ETOs) for what is a failing sustainable development process;
(c) concentration predominantly on territorial rather than global institutional guarantees of freedom from poverty;
(d) employment of an inadequate, economistic definition of poverty;
(e) a state-centered focus that neglect the obligation of individual and institutional non-state actors (e.g., TNCs, philanthropies);
(f) lack of attention to institutional and HR obligations of external development funding (wrongly called foreign ‘aid’ or foreign ‘assistance’); and
(g) inadequate specification of what institutions are responsible for the actual realization of the SDGs, including inadequate independent monitoring and accountability mechanisms.
2. Furthermore, the HR agenda and the sustainable development agenda did not, but must be brought into sync. This requires:
(a) the recognition of the HR framework as a normative basis for certain global obligations for sustainable development, the objects of which coincide with the objects of internationally recognized HR;
(b) the acknowledgement that global obligations correspond to key socio-economic rights indispensable for leading a decent life since they represent minimum core obligations for sustainable development; and
(c) the development of monitoring and accountability mechanisms (mainly by public interest CSOs acting as watchdogs) for evaluating the progress (or not) of the progressive realization of global obligations for sustainable development and for holding global actors responsible.
3. Global obligations for sustainable development include obligations of conduct (obligations of external development funding), as well as obligations of result (obligations to create and maintain a just and sustainable global order and obligations to ensure a decent and sustainable standard of living universally). To a greater or lesser degree, both are embedded in the SDGs. But are the needed reforms of the global institutional order happening to carry out these obligations? Obligations to create and maintain a just and sustainable global order demand duty bearers fulfilling their duties to achieve real distributive justice.
4. Essential measures to guarantee the application of distributive obligations to ensure a decent and sustainable standard of living universally presuppose:
(a) a commitment to secure not just a basic standard of living, but also a decent standard of living;
(b) recognizing and carrying out not only immediate HR obligations for sustainable development, but also obligations for the progressive realization of other rights that require more long-term commitments;
(c) applying an inclusive HR-based approach to address the issues not of poverty, but of disparity reduction*; and
(d) specifically use criteria of UN HR treaty bodies, especially the Committee on ESCR, to address all SDG goals.
*: What we are not doing through the SDGs is measuring the disparity reduction ratio from here to 2030.
5. Human rights-based, non-discriminatory, human-centered and disparity reduction-focused initiatives call for agreeing on shared global obligations in development cooperation among all UN member states, intergovernmental organizations, non-state actors, and individuals.
6. State-centered external development funding must become human and HR-centered –which now it is not. ‘Level field’ partnerships and institutional obligations of external development funding must not be seen solely as duties of developed states towards residents of countries rendered poor. Developing societies have the right to it, on top of having the duty to take part-in and to contribute to the realization of agreed outcomes of this funding coming from abroad. and
7. A global partnership for sustainable development requires creating and maintaining an institutional framework in which various traditional (top-down and state-centered), as well as alternative (bottom-up and polycentric) governance and accountability modes are interconnected and coordinated. It ought to involve multi-level (but not multistahkeholder as we now know it!) North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation, while recognizing private and public non-state actors (with their respective limitations and conflicts of interest!), as potential partners for sustainable development. (Elena Pribytkova)
Bottom line: SDGs what ifs
-Put simply, when we set a goal, we ought to take the actions needed to achieve it.
8. Having treated goals as rights could have strengthen the motivation to follow them. Claim holders and their representatives would then know their rights. Duty-bearers would be clearly identified and held accountable for doing what they are supposed to do. Important nutrition goals, for instance, would be more likely to be achieved if the goals were treated as inseparable from the right to food and adequate nutrition. Making them a right and not just an aspiration could have transformed the incentives in the rolling out of the SDGs. A good progressive human rights-based accountability system would have increased the likelihood that the pathway to the goals is followed until the goals are reached. Managers’ and staff’s commitment would have been strengthened to secure the achievement of the respective goals. So, …What if… (George Kent)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com