PHM-Exch> UN conference hears resounding call for human rights-based governance post-2015

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Luke Holland <lholland at cesr.org>

A major meeting on the post-2015 agenda has heard that human rights and
accountability must be placed at the heart of governance at the national
and global levels. Global civil society’s desire for more just forms of
political and economic governance took center-stage as the final meeting of
the United Nations Thematic Consultation on Governance and the Post-2015
Framework was held in Johannesburg last week.

Organized by the United Nations Development Program and the Office of the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the meeting brought together some
170 participants from all corners of the planet, ranging from
parliamentarians and academics to grassroots activists and civil society
leaders, to discuss the role governance and accountability should play in a
future development paradigm.
A new vision of governance, grounded in principles of human rights,
equality, participation, transparency, access to justice and
accountability,  should be a cornerstone of the post-2105 sustainable
development agenda, it was concluded.

A high point of the meeting was the address by High Level Panel member
Graça Machel, who spoke of the panel´s commitment to ensuring that issues
of governance, human rights and inequality were central to the new
framework. There was wide consensus at the meeting that weak and
unaccountable governance, including at the global level, is one of the key
issues that must be addressed in a future framework, and that democratic
governance must be predicated on respect for the full range of human
rights.

A newly-published position paper (see:
http://cesr.org/downloads/Beyond%202015_Governance_position_paper.pdffromBeyond-2015)
sets out the core dimensions of "just governance" that should
be incorporated into more equitable and human rights-centred vision of
governance post-2015. The document represents the consensus of over 500
organizations that are members of the worldwide campaign.

Ultimately, it will be up to the international community to decide the
parameters of the successor framework when it gathers for the MDG Review
Summit in New York next September. It is imperative that the worldwide
civil society clamour for rights-based governance is heeded in the run up
to this important event, which is likely to prove pivotal for the future of
international development, and hence for the human rights of ordinary
people everywhere.

To learn more about CESR’s work on the post-2015 development agenda, see:
http://cesr.org/article.php?list=type&type=157

-- 
Center for Economic and Social Rights
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