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The High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), the largest annual gathering on SDG implementation, commenced on 9 July and will run until 18 July. The event is expected to gather over 2,000 participants, including 100 ministers and business and civil society leaders, to assess the progress on the SDGs. Additionally, 47 countries have volunteered to present national voluntary reviews of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
This year’s theme is “Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality”. Addressing inequality is a central theme of the 2030 Agenda and a high priority for national policy agendas. At the Opening Session of the HLPF, the audience of Member State representatives and other stakeholders rated inequality as the top policy priority.
On 16 July, UN DESA and UNDP held a side event titled "The UN Tackles Inequality in the 21st Century". The event included a dialogue with Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, Elliott Harris, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and Chief Economist of UN DESA, and Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office of UNDP on new ways of looking at inequality in the 21st century. The side event included a presentation of some of the emerging messages of the recent or forthcoming flagship publications including UN DESA’ World Social Report and UNDP’s Human Development Report.
The side event addressed the multidimensional strategies and efforts that UN DESA and UNDP are using to combat inequality. As Elliott Harris stated, “Addressing inequality is ultimately about what kind of world we are building. We must see reducing inequality as one of the core benchmarks by which the success of the 2030 Agenda will be measured.”
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Source: UNSDN