General News
Preparing the ground for the post-2015 Millennium Development Goal consultations in Vietnam, December 2012
Diane Mulligan, Deputy Director of Advocacy and Alliances for CBM International supported the CBM Vietnam office during the week of 17 December 2012 to prepare for the United Nations post-2015 consultations on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The United Nations in Vietnam are undertaking a vast consultation process. It began on the 13th November 2012 and will run until 25th January 2013. Vietnam has 13 UN agencies are covering eight thematic areas: Young people, the private sector, ethnic minorities, people living with HIV, poor people in rural and urban areas, elderly people and people with disabilities. Other countries are consulting on just one or a few thematic areas. What is important is that all lead UN agencies have to submit their consolidated report to the UN Task force by 31st January 2013. Hence the need for speed. Originally the UN envisaged a period of six months to conduct national consultations, but the UN national office in Vietnam were only informed in November, giving the country less than three months to undertake this mammoth task.
Diane Mulligan was invited to participate in the preparatory meeting ahead of the main consultation process for people with disabilities hosted by the UN agency, the International Labour Organization (ILO)in Ha Noi. The ILO explained how useful the CBM position paper on the post-2015 MDGs was in understanding the importance of disability in future frameworks for poverty reduction and sustainable development.
National umbrella Disabled People's Organisations and impairment-specific national organisations for deaf and blind people participated, and were given background briefings on the content and purpose of the post-2015 consultations. Many organisations had limited knowledge of the current MDGs and no knowledge of the UN consultation process on the framework to replace the MDGs after 2015. Diane Mulligan gave on overview of how CBM is contributing to all the different UN consultation processes for the MDGs currently underway, including the High Level Panel, the global online consultations, national and regional consultations. Vietnam will also be conducting its own online consultation in January to capture the voices of people not able to join the face-to-face consultations.
The key objectives of the preparatory meeting were to identify participants and facilitators with the capacity to take part in the provincial consultations taking place in January 2013, and to provide sufficient background information for the process. The overarching questions the UN wants to answer are:
What changes would you like to see in your life after 2015? What do you think will stop you/ your community from achieving these changes? What will you need to make these changes happen? What changes do you think most need to happen in Vietnam after 2015? What needs to happen for those changes to take place?
The discussion about how these very broad questions could be translated into a language and context that relates to the real lived experiences of people with disabilities was debated at length.
Three other UN agencies, UNICEF, UN women and the UN Special Advisor's office also participated in the event. There will be between five and seven consultations with people with disabilities in three provinces in Vietnam starting in January 2013. Diane Mulligan will return to take part in one of the last consultations at a provincial level on 23 January.
All the consultations in Vietnam will be consolidated and a national report submitted to the United Nations by the end of March 2013. This is essential if it is to inform the UN Secretary General's report due to be delivered to the High Level Panel on MDGs by May 2013.
"This is a real chance for people with disabilities to get involved and make the next framework for global poverty reduction reflect a disability inclusive agenda. We will then have a mandate that cannot ignore the rights of one billion people with disabilities" Diane Mulligan, Deputy Director, International Advocacy and Alliances, CBM.
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Source: Diane Mulligan Deputy Director of International Advocacy and Alliances
When: 26/12/2012
