Strengthening Partnerships with SIDS: Driving Social Progress and Inclusion

Requested in the outcome of the 2014 Third International Conference on SIDS, the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Partnership Framework was established in 2015 with its three interlinked components: the UN Steering Committee on Partnerships for SIDS, the SIDS Partnership Reporting and Monitoring Mechanism, and the Global Multi-Stakeholder SIDS Partnership Dialogue. Together, the Framework ensures that SIDS issues remain high on the UN’s agenda, provides a broad multi-stakeholder platform for reviewing progress of SIDS partnerships, and shares good practices and lessons learned among all relevant stakeholders, and launches new initiatives devoted to SIDS.

The Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS), adopted in 2024, reinforces and calls for the strengthening of this Framework with a large focus on ensuring social progress is being made as a part of their new 10-year agenda. In particular, ABAS emphasizes:

• Youth empowerment: meaningfully involving youth in decision-making, including through youth councils and advisory committees, supporting youth-led initiatives, and creating opportunities for young people to actively contribute to sustainable development.
• Youth economic participation: harnessing the demographic dividend by equipping young people with education and skills, and supporting youth-driven startups to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Inclusive social protection: strengthening adaptive social protection systems and expanding coverage for those in vulnerable situations, including women, children, youth, persons with disabilities and older persons.
• Digital inclusion: harnessing digital technologies by developing digital infrastructure, bridging digital divides and ensuring an open and inclusive digital future for all.
• Education and skills development: enhancing entrepreneurship, education and training, including in cultural and heritage management, and investing in policies and programmes that build productive capacities and lifelong skills.
• Poverty eradication and inequality reduction: acknowledging and supporting the efforts of SIDS to reduce poverty, unemployment, inequality and exclusion.

Given the particular vulnerabilities of small island developing States, the consolidation and strengthening of these social commitments within SIDS themselves will be especially important. As the international community gathers in Doha this November for the Second World Summit for Social Development, ensuring that these priorities are advanced by SIDS and supported globally will be vital to achieving resilient prosperity.

For more information, read the full Agenda here.