15 Year UN Development Scheme by the End of the Week?

It took the United Nations a whole week to conduct a first reading of just over half the draft scheme to replace the Millienium Development Goals next year. But countries expressed optimism this morning that they will be able to finish up the first reading by tomorrow and complete a second reading by Friday.

The Chairs expended significant efforts this morning warning countries to stop making new proposals and start taking out redundancies and repetitiveness from the draft. ” Resist urge of changing anything at the 11^th hour” said the Kenyan ambassador who is co-chairing the negotiations with Hungary.

The Kenyan ambassador gave mixed messages about where things stand for “sexual and reproductive health” and “reproductive rights.” He never mentioned this explicitly, but as always, this subject is on everyone’s mind as negotiations come to a close. Unfortunately those terms are often euphemisms for abortion and draw opposition from U.N. member states. The only time they have been defined in the UN context was in in 1994 at the ICPD conference and they include abortion in that text, even though the ICPD recognizes that countries may prohibit abortion if they choose.

On the one hand, the urgency of having to resolve negotiations by the end of the week could prompt the chairs to revert to the language from the Rio+20 UN Conference in 2012. That document omits “reproductive rights” but mentions “sexual and reproductive health”. The chairs could also revert to a simple mention of “reproductive health” as in the MDG scheme. Even better, if these policies go without mention in the Sustainable Development Goals. C-FAM’s recent paper gives several reasons why this is a desirable outcome.

The co-chairs of the negotiations struck a note of warning also for NGOs after delegates last week complained that they were being aggressively lobbied in the U.N. halls, among them also abortion groups.  The chairs touted NGO involvement in the negotiations as unprecedented and a success, but also warned NGOs that they could outstay their welcome.  The Hungarian pleaded that NGOs abide by the “unwritten rules of the game”, and the Kenyan warned about reporting on the negotiations ongoing in the General Assembly.  “We cannot allow the bridge of trust to be broken” he warned.

As of this writing, the Open Working Group has read through only 1 of 17 goals. Completing the draft by Friday is going to be a tall order indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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