Southeast, East and Northeast Asia and the Pacific Parliamentarian and CSO Forum on MDG Acceleration and

the Post 2015 Development Agenda 20-21 November 2012 | Manila, Philippines

Concept Note
Background
The Asia Pacific region has made striking progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the past decade. However, on present trends, many countries are likely to miss a number of targets. The latest global MDG progress report also highlights that despite real progress in many countries, efforts need to be intensified to reach the poorest and the most disadvantaged. As we approach the target year of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), there is an urgent need to review the progress so far and take appropriate steps to accelerate the progress in the remaining years. At the same time, such review exercises of MDG progress would provide critical inputs into shaping a broad-based and comprehensive post-2015 development framework. Several key emerging issues are identified important, such as inequality, vulnerability and exclusion, knowledge challenge, environmental sustainability, peace and security, governance and accountability deficits at all levels, demographic changes, growth and employment, etc. The Rio+20 outcome document also clearly reaffirms the member states commitment to accelerate the MDG achievement and indicates that the sustainable development goals should be coherent with and integrated into the development agenda beyond 2015. Over the next several years, the twenty year Plans of Action of other major international conferences will also be reviewed. The operational review of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action is currently underway which includes a global questionnaire followed by regional analysis feeding in the 6 th Asia and the Pacific Population Conference (APPC). The results of the analysis of ICPD implementation are particularly relevant to the post-2015 process, as they will highlight the key population dynamics that will underpin development work in the decades to come. Participatory approach involving multi-stakeholders and the wider public especially people living in poverty is one of the key to success in formulating widely owned post-2015 development agenda.

Overview of the Initiative

Parliamentarians are uniquely placed to advocate for enhanced concerted efforts to accelerate the progress towards achieving the MDGs due to their (i) legislative role to ensure that the necessary enabling legislations are in place, (ii) oversight role which allows the representative body to hold the government and other stakeholders accountable with regards to policy implementation; (iii) budget scrutiny role to assess whether resources are being prioritized appropriately, and (iv) representation role to ensure that citizens, different stakeholders, and civil society groups have a voice at the national level and involved in governance issues. Apart from these legislative functions, parliamentarians are deemed to be effective public champions of human development issues due to their immediate access to media, capability to articulate, and high level of acceptability among ordinary people.

Southeast, East and Northeast Asia and the Pacific Parliamentarian and CSO Forum on MDG Acceleration and the Post 2015 Development Agenda 20-21 November 2012 | Manila, Philippines
Considering the vital roles in which parliamentarians play in accelerating the MDGs achievement, UN Millennium Campaign and Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) initiated Engaging Parliamentarians in Efforts to Accelerate MDG Achievement in Asia and the Pacific project with the support from the Rockefeller Foundation. As part of this regional project, two-day multi-stakeholder meetings at sub-regional levels will bring together parliamentarians, civil society organizations (CSOs) and other policy makers for discourse on critical development issues for accelerating progress towards meeting the current development targets including the MDGs and ICPD agenda, and for informing the new development agenda beyond 2015. From this perspective, the forum discussions will focus on governance accountability, inequality, sustainable development, sexual and reproductive health rights, and aim to identify priority issues for advocacy. These sub-regional meetings will also promote national level review of the relevance and status of the MDGs and the ICPD among other sectorial issues, the roles of elected representatives in achieving them as well as their roles in developing a post-2015 agenda framework. A forum will be held in Manila, the Philippines on 20-21 November 2012 for the Southeast, East and Northeast Asia and the Pacific regions, and another in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 1011 December 2012 for the South, Southwest, North and Central Asia regions. A tentative list of participating countries is attached in Annex I.

Expected Outcomes
1. Key MDG successes and challenges as well as policies and programs to accelerate progress identified at national and regional levels through broad-based discussions involving parliamentarians and other stakeholders, serving as key inputs for developing a comprehensive post-2015 development framework in both the sub-region and in-country; 2. Strategic partnerships and networks among MPs and between MPs and civil society organizations across countries forged to ensure advocacy for, and effective formation and implementation of policies and programs for acceleration of MDGs/ICPD PoA which will provide guidelines for further policy campaigning in these participating countries; 3. Manila Declaration of South Asian Parliamentarians on the MDG Acceleration and the Post2015 Development Agenda adopted outlining key issues for in-country and the sub-region to feed into the Asia-Pacific regional level discussions among parliamentarians.