Progressing national SDGs implementation: an independent assessment of the voluntary national review reports submitted to the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2018
The year 2019 is an important one for the international community working on the SDGs: it not only marks the “minus one” year deadline for achieving the 2020 targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, but it is also characterized by various high-level intergovernmental meetings that should keep the momentum going on the 2030 Agenda’s implementation. In this context, and with a view to provide useful insights and suggestions to guide improved implementation and reporting on the SDGs, a coalition of stakeholders led by the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC) has issued an independent assessment of the 46 Voluntary National Review (VNR) reports and of a sample of civil society reports that were submitted to the July 2018 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The report titled, ‘Progressing National SDGs Implementation: An Independent Assessment of the Voluntary National Review Reports Submitted to the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2018,’ assesses the 2018 VNR reports on components that are needed to make progress on the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs, namely governance and institutional mechanisms, policies, and means of implementation. It also examines VNRs against the UN Secretary General’s voluntary common reporting guidelines, and assesses how VNR reporting is evolving over time through a comparative analysis of the review reports in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
