Parliaments working without borders on the global goals
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a blueprint for ensuring a better and sustainable future for everyone. Parliaments play a crucial role in driving that agenda and ensuring progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the global goals.
Parliaments have been engaging with the SDGs more than with their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals. They have also recognized that many SDGs, for example those concerned with the environment, require going beyond national borders and seeking regional cooperation.
The IPU, as the global convener of parliaments, has held almost 20 regional SDG seminars over the last few years, as well as several national ones. The next regional seminar in this series takes place in Jerusalem from 20 to 22 November 2018. The seminar, organized by the IPU and the Knesset, brings together parliaments from 17 countries from the IPU’s Twelve Plus Geopolitical Group and East Asia. The seminar will focus on innovation and strengthening the innovation “ecosystem” within and between countries. During the seminar, the IPU will present some of the preliminary findings based on a recent survey of SDG parliamentary action and best practice.
To mobilize parliaments around the SDGs, the IPU and the United Nations Development Programme have produced an SDG self-assessment toolkit. The toolkit helps MPs evaluate what actions they need to take to implement and monitor progress on the SDGs.
The IPU has also produced ten videos with MPs, from both North and South, discussing what action their parliaments are taking. Watch them on the IPU website.
