Agenda 2030

President of Liberia, H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General as one of three co-chairs of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. In addition, the former Chair of g7+ and Former Minister of Finance of Timor – Leste, H.E. Emilia Pires was appointed as one of the Eminent Persons. This gave countries affected by conflict and fragility an important voice in the negotiations of the post-2015 development agenda.

Extensive consultations were held with the aim of including often marginalized fragile state voices. To this end, various consultation and advocacy events have been organized by the g7+ group.

The g7+ has actively lobbied for the inclusion of Sustainable Development Goal 16 – “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions” – in the final list of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be agreed in 2015 to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The first High level event took place in September 2012 during the 67th United Nations General Assembly. Attended by more than 300 participants, including heads of states and governments, ministers, ambassadors, CSOs, academic organisations and UN agencies, the event set the stage for further advocacy for peacebuilding and statebuilding to be recognized as a goal in the post 2015 development agenda. In February 2013, the g7+ co-hosted the Dili International Conference on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, bringing together representatives from fragile states and the Pacific to ensure their concerns were heard during negotiations. The discussions resulted in the Dili Consensus, which calls for stronger links between development and peace.

A High-Level Side Event on the margins of the 69th United Nations General Assembly was also held in September 2014 in collaboration with the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. This focused on ensuring that peace and capable institutions are included as a stand-alone goal in the post-2015 agenda. In 2015, The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by the United Nations as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

The g7+ is deeply committed to implementing the Agenda 2030. In the outcome statement of its 4th Ministerial Meeting held in Kabul, Afghanistan, in March 2016, the g7+ countries welcomed the launch of the new Agenda and committed to contextually implementing the SDGs. On that occasion, the g7+ also committed to prioritising and jointly reporting on progress against an agreed list of twenty priority SDG indicators (Table 1). These priority indicators, which were discussed and fine-tuned as of subsequent technical meetings in 2015, 2016 and 2017, are meant to provide a more focused picture of the specific challenges and progresses made in the g7+ countries, instead of those progresses and challenges becoming clouded in the global process of measuring progress

The key criterion for inclusion in the list of priority indicators was that they should closely relate to these countries’ priority concerns, as discussed and decided by the member countries themselves. Fourteen of these twenty indicators are part of the UN list of official SDG indicators comprised in the Agenda 2030. The remaining six are not a part of that list, but were selected by the g7+ member countries as important dimensions for tracking progress towards their respective Goals. In the case of some of these indicators, comprehensive, comparable data are not yet available – these should constitute a priority focus for governments and donors alike when it comes to improving statistical systems, and data on them will be included in future g7+ SDG reports as they become available.