Trade unions in Benin set up a Committee of Experts on the SDGs

CSA-Benin and the UNSTB have set up a Committee of Experts on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Committee intends to work closely with the Directorate General in charge of SDG implementation at the PLAN Ministry.

In order to contribute to the process of implementation of the SDGs in Benin, this trade union working group of the CSA-Benin and the UNSTB has been installed for three months. And so it is for a mid-term review and to equip themselves with more effective strategies that the members of the Committee organized on Thursday, December 8, 2022 a debate on the theme: "Status of implementation of the SDGs in Benin. This exchange session took place at the Cotonou Labor Exchange.

During the event, the participants took stock of the progress made by Benin, together with the Directorate General for SDG implementation. They also reviewed the key actions carried out in 2021-2022, to jointly determine the extent to which trade union centres can contribute to progress towards the SDGs.

In his welcome address, the general secretary of UNSTB, Apollinaire Affewe, underlined that the trade union movement requires a high level of knowledge, given that the mission of trade union representatives is to defend workers on many fronts. This is why, he insisted, “we need to refine our strategies and update our knowledge and, above all, ensure that we are not left out of the nation’s major development programmes”.

The general secretary of CSA-Benin, Anselme Amoussou, expressed his deep gratitude to the Directorate General for the SDGs in Benin, especially to the expert Toussaint TODEGNON, for having agreed to share his experience and expertise in the field of the SDGs with the members. He then went on to observe the importance of active social dialogue in the process of planning the implementation of the SDGs. “There has been a lot of vacillation and since it is the governments that have to implement the goals, the social dialogue that should accompany them has been lacking in Benin. The absence of a large part of the actors concerned by the goals has somewhat hampered the implementation of everything that had been so well written. This dialogue has regained momentum at every stage and has even led to the evaluation of the SDGs,” he added.
General Secretary Amoussoua also pointed out that the Committee of Experts established by CSA-Benin and the UNSTB was designed to develop a better understanding of the issues surrounding the SDGs in Benin, to enable them to better contribute to the discussions on the subject at both national and international level. “Dear participants, I urge you to make relevant recommendations to enable the trade union confederations to engage with the relevant bodies to alter the course of the policy currently in place in Benin,” he concluded.

Finally, the Committee was asked to produce a report on alternatives for the implementation of the SDGs, reflecting the position of the trade union organisations, to be published by the Committee on a yearly basis.