Members of the Committee for Development Policy (CDP) participated in the 2022 HLPF that took place from 5 to 18 July 2022. The HLPF annual meeting, under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council, is the core United Nations platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

VNR Lab 1. “What are the VNRs (not) telling us?”
The Lab, organized by DESA EAPD/Development Policy Branch, was held virtually on 5 July and included speakers from the Committee for Development Policy (CDP), the UN system, civil society and selected countries.
The CDP analysis is an assessment of the VNRs and the VNR process, not a review of progress on achievement of development goals. It is a study of how the VNRs presented each year have considered, or failed to consider, selected cross-cutting principles, goals or targets.
Building on the work that the CDP has done on VNRs since 2017, this year’s review analyzed reporting on the principle of leave no one behind, inequality, pandemic preparedness, gender inequality, environment, and ‘orphan targets’ (not covered). CDP members provided an overview of their analysis and shared their findings and recommendations. Representatives of Member States and civil society commented on these findings and recommendations, and how the VNRs can be strengthened as an effective instrument in accelerating SDG implementation.
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Taffere Tesfachew: “The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us how far we have come in technological and scientific knowledge accumulation, demonstrated by the speed in which vaccines were developed and the role played by digital technology in sustaining economic and social interactions and vaccine rollout. At the same time, it has also revealed the deep-seated technological divide and inequality that still exist between high and low-income economies, particularly LDCs.” At the 4th meeting of the HLPF: “African countries, Least Developed Countries and Landlocked Developing Countries - Ensuring equal access to vaccines and resources in the poorest countries” on 6 July 2022, Taffere Tesfachew, CDP Subgroup Leader on LDCs, pointed out that if target 9.c: ‘Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020’ would have been met by 2020 than LDCs would have been enabled to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, cope with the logistics of vaccine rollout and kickstart the process of recovery earlier. Without the immediate action by the international community to address such persistent challenges in LDCs, he stated, the SGS will not be achieved by 2030. He further stressed that the use in LDCs should be the driving force for digital transformation, meaning that governments need to give priority to invest in the skills of the future, broadening the opportunity for digital literacy among their young population and encouraging lifelong learning. To enable the young generation to lift the LDCs out of poverty and underdevelopment it is imperative to expose them to the skills of the future by starting at an early age in parallel with basic education in technology, engineering, math and science, he explained. Mr. Tesfachew emphasized that international organizations should assist LDCs to close the digital gap by facilitating opportunities for technological transfer, including through South-South cooperation and drawing lessons from countries that have an advanced digital ecosystem. Finally, providing an example of effective South-South cooperation developed by the UN Technology Bank, Mr. Tesfachew referred to the ‘UNTB Technology Makers Lab’, a center that provides workshops for students to learn skills in cutting-edge technologies, such as design and production, robotics, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, mobile application development and coding. Niger, he explained, has been chosen to be the pilot least developed country and the project aims to be expanded to 9 other least developed countries in the medium-term.
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Sakiko Fukuda-Parr: “The SDG agenda is undermined by the crises of climate, pandemic and the war. These crises come on top of an increasingly unequal world”. At an HLPF side event on “The SDGs at a turning point: Ensuring progress amid recurrent crises” on 12 July 2022, Professor Fukuda-Parr, CDP Subgroup Leader on VNRs, reflected on the impact of the crisis of inequality. Inequality is a crisis in itself, she stated, it goes on top of these other crises and interacts with them in a vicious circle. She highlighted that besides inequality between countries there are non-income inequalities, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated health, social, gender and racial inequality within countries. Identifying structural drivers of inequality, Prof. Fukuda-Parr pointed out that the pandemic exposed the persistent vulnerability of low-wage workers, raising questions about the viability of the global value chain model as a pathway to sustainable development and decent job creation and stressed the need for a more radical strategy to implement the SDGs. Citing findings of the CDP analysis of the VNRs, she warned of a disconnect between the transformative agenda and the actual implementation. Small initiatives are going on, but don’t add up to a game changing implementation, she said. As an example, she pointed out that the response to the commitment of leaving no one behind in relation to the unequal impact of the pandemic was to provide social safety nets instead of addressing some of the structural causes of inequality. Prof. Fukuda-Parr concluded that critical areas of the SDGs are going in the wrong direction and means of implementation targets are barely discussed and deserve more focus.
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José Antonio Ocampo: The role of a new generation of industrial policy on a path towards structural transformation. On 18 July 2022, Jose Antonio Ocampo, Chair of the CDP presented the central messages of the CDP's report to the High-Level Segment of ECOSOC. On behalf of the Committee, he stressed the importance of industrial policies in advancing the kind of transformation developing countries need to face the current crises and persistent structural challenges. A new generation of industrial policies, he said, would need to learn from the past and take into account the new realities, challenges and opportunities, including those associated with the green and blue economies, digitalization, the need to build resilience to shocks and adapt to climate change, as well as the imperatives of equality, including gender equality, and leaving no one behind. The Chair also referred to the CDP's work on the voluntary national reviews (VNRs), which have shown improvement over time but can be further enhanced in order to be fully effective as instruments to advance the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. On LDCs, Mr. Ocampo said the CDP welcomed significant progress toward graduation from the LDC category, but also expressed its concern at the limited capacity of LDCs to address the diverse challenges in terms of short-term recovery and long-term sustainable development. He also reported on the Committee's continued work on improving the monitoring and support of graduating and recently graduated countries. In line with the Doha Programme of Action, LDCs require support from the international community, particularly to enhance productive capacities, strengthen public health systems, build climate resilience and ensure the sustainability of external debt.
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