{"id":1617,"date":"2020-07-20T09:18:56","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T09:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icae.global\/en\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2020-08-12T12:15:09","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T12:15:09","slug":"icae-at-the-high-level-political-forum-hlpf-2020-on-the-un-sustainable-development-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/icae.global\/en\/2020\/07\/icae-at-the-high-level-political-forum-hlpf-2020-on-the-un-sustainable-development-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"ICAE at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) 2020 on the UN Sustainable Development Goals"},"content":{"rendered":"

As every year, ICAE participated in the UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF)<\/a> (7 to 16 July 2020), which has the task to review the progress of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Members States were reporting, experts, civil society representatives and other actors met, discussed, reviewed and made plans for the next steps in the implementation. ICAE represented the \u2018Education and Academia<\/a>\u2019 sector and was very active, doing our best to make sure that education, especially adult education and lifelong learning are visible and loud there, and the civil society is recognized as important partner. Although the conference is over, time for reflection and analysis lies ahead of us.<\/p>

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This year\u2019s HLPF was supposed to be different, because of the \u2018milestone moment\u2019 \u2013 5 years passed since the adoption of the Agenda 2030 and SDGs, and the HLPF review was announced. Therefore, the expectations were high and the preparations started early. The main theme was “Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development ” and 47 countries announced the presentation of their Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs). But the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced the ECOSOC Bureau to changed the plan, so all meetings, official session, presentations of VNRs, side and special events were held virtually. The program can be found here: https:\/\/sustainabledevelopment.un.org\/content\/documents\/26157HLPF_2020_PROGRAMME.pdf<\/a> and all documentation can be found in the Outcome<\/a> section of the 2020 HLPF website. 

As Education and Academia Stakeholder Group (EASG)<\/a>, we did our best to adapt to the new situation and to make the best out of it. Since the beginning of 2020 we took part in all preparations, meetings and actions of the Steering Group and Task Groups of the Major Groups and other Stakeholders (MGoS)<\/a> , we shared with the colleagues from other MGoS and faced the challenge of virtual HLPF as much as we could.

There were plenty of advantages:<\/strong> more people could follow the sessions online (streamed on UN WebTV<\/a>), although the number of registered participants was far smaller than in 2019 (reason being that registration wasn\u2019t a precondition to be able to participate in most of the session). We didn\u2019t face travel restrictions, delayed approvals and visa constrains, and most of all \u2013 we didn\u2019t have to pay huge amounts for flights and stay in NYC. Unfortunately, this democratic potential wasn\u2019t used enough \u2013 the most important reason were not the technical difficulties (they were expected under the circumstances), but it was harder to make interaction. Also there was the lack of interpretation, which is mandatory at all official session in the UN  and translation was only provided sporadically, by initiative of single countries and organisations. This actually has political meaning and consequences and clearly goes against the spirit of understanding and collaboration that the UN Charter foresees. Another missing aspect was the lack of informal communication and exchanges during various meetings and sessions, as opportunity for our advocacy work for education. But this is understandable and we can only hope that we will have an opportunity to make it up.

Summarizing our achievements,<\/strong> we could list several sessions the members of ICAE and EASG spoke, our own events which attracted more than 100 participants each (see reports below), several other events (both formal and side-events) were we spoke, numerous sessions we attended, interventions we made, submission of an EASG sectoral paper and contributions\/suggestions to various documents, including the Ministerial Declaration and Ministerial General Debate. ICAE played the main role in coordinating civil society around the globe to submit questions and comments to the VNRs, and this role was highly appreciated by all our colleagues. <\/p>

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But we were not so much focused on \u2018ticking the box\u2019 and counting the interventions we made, but more on the strategic and systemic issues. Namely, HLPF has a specific format, underlying the strict and extremely formalised rules of UN procedures, especially when it comes to the civil society. Although our right to participate, speak and intervene is guaranteed by the UN General Assembly Resolution 67\/290, in the reality we are facing difficulties in assuming this role. This year it was more difficult than ever \u2013 we were excluded from some processes where we were supposed to be invited and many of our interventions were very limited.

Since HLPF deals with broad range of issues, education has the difficulty to \u2018compete\u2019 with \u2018heavy\u2019 topics of war and peace, climate change, trade etc, as if education has any links to those issues. So, couldn\u2019t go for advocacy for detailed and specific subtopics within the education sector and couldn\u2019t represent the variety all issues that are important for our constituencies. The efforts had to be focused on:<\/strong><\/p>