What is Post-2015 now again?

The Millennium Development goals
In 2000 the United Nations hosted a big meeting to discuss some common goals and priorities for the coming 15 years. The result of this process was the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2015 these goals will expire. The UN has launched a process of elaborating the Post 2015 development framework that will replace the MDGs. The new framework is likely to be a new set of development goals, but their focus, scope and accountability mechanisms are still to be defined. This process has so far consisted of a number of complementary initiatives, ranging from thematic consultations, for example on Growth and Employment, to national level consultations attempting identify country priorities for a new development framework.

The High Level Panel
In addition to these consultations, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appointed a 27 member High Level Panel of Eminent Persons for the Post 2015 UN International Development Agenda (HLP) to produce a report of recommendations for consideration by UN Member States when agreeing the post-MDG framework. Worth noting also, is that these efforts are taking place in parallel to the efforts of the Open Working Group (OWG) to develop a set of recommendations for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as mandated by the Rio+20 (link to the ITUC Rio+20 website) Conference for UN Member States deliberations. The trade union movement has contributed across nearly all of the efforts surrounding the Post 2015 process, giving special attention at the global level to the HLP and OWG processes.

Influencing the decisions
The trade union movement has actively tried to influence the HLP process since London, in order to try to ensure that the Post 2015 framework responds to the demands of workers around the world, in particular the need for commitments to Full Employment and Decent Work for All, Green Jobs and Universal Social Protection.

This has been through participation in the official outreach engagements and also through informal channels. The HLP delivered its report to the UN Secretary General on 30 May 2013, who will now consider these recommendations along with the outcomes of the other consultations (though not including the OWG process which is still underway) to produce a Secretary General’s Report.

Sustainable Development Goals
More recently the OWG process to provide recommends for the Sustainable Development Goals has commenced its deliberations. The OWG operates more like an intergovernmental process among UN Member States, but will ultimately have a similar mandate as the HLP, which is to deliver a set of recommendations by September 2014. The OWG will meet several times over this period to discuss thematic priorities for the SDGs. Among the priorities for the OWG discussions are Full Employment and Decent Work, which will be discussed in June 2013.

Though it seems likely that the recommendations from the two processes will ultimately merge into a single tract it is yet to be concretely defined how the two sets of recommendations and the ultimately the two processes will converge. In this light, the MDG Summit to be held in September 2013 is expected to be a milestone for the Post 2015 Process especially for identifying an early roadmap of the process forward.