Photo:  UN Photo/Kibae Park

With a focus on eradicating extreme poverty and achieving sustainability and equality for all, the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda delivered its long anticipated report that sets out a new vision and framework for international development.

At a ceremony attended by Panel co-Chair President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasized that sustainability is not just an environmental matter, but an approach that would integrate the economic, social and environmental dimensions of development.

The report, entitled "A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development", puts job creation at the heart of the sustainable development agenda and recognizes the role of social protection in eradicating poverty and ensuring that no one will be left behind in the new development agenda. The report calls for the new post-2015 goals to drive five major transformational shifts:

• move from “reducing” to ending extreme poverty;
• putting sustainable development at the core of the development agenda;
• transforming economies for good jobs and inclusive growth;
• building accountable institutions, open to all, that will ensure good governance and peaceful societies, and;
• forging a new global partnership based on cooperation, equity and human rights.

It proposes a goal to “Create Jobs, Sustainable Livelihoods and Equitable Growth” and to include national targets measuring increases in decent jobs and in coverage of social protection systems.

The deliberations of the High-Level Panel’s report, while building on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Rio +20 process, also benefited from a broad consultative process which included the UN agencies, funds and programmes and more than 5,000 civil society organisations and 250 CEO’s of major corporations who shared their valuable ideas and suggestions.

In discussing the consultative process that resulted in the report, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stated that “besides capturing inputs from as many sources as possible, the most remarkable fact of this report is that we, the panelists and co-Chairs alike, were able to rise above national interests and address the Global Partnership and Sustainable Development issues with a true universal perspective”. 

For more information on the Post-2015 development agenda, please visit the following UN link.