Department of Strategic Affairs
Permanent Mission of Ecuador to the United Nations
July 31 2015
Ecuador proposals of concrete amendments to the outcome document for the UN Summit to adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda: Text for Adoption - "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development”.
As a follow up to the comments expressed by my delegation yesterday at the G77 ambassadorial meeting and on the sides of the evening plenary and today at the plenary, please find below the new paragraph that unfortunately crosses a very important red-line to my Government and that we need therefore to be deleted or at least amended as it is mentioned in the next sentence in bold and underlined, in order to be able to join consensus at the closure of such an important intergovernmental negotiation process:
62. Private business activity, investment and innovation are major drivers of productivity, inclusive economic growth and job creation. We acknowledge the diversity of the private sector, ranging from micro-enterprises to cooperatives to multinationals. We call on all businesses to apply their creativity and innovation to solving sustainable development challenges. We will foster a dynamic and well-functioning business sector, while protecting labour rights and environmental and health standards in accordance with relevant international standards and agreements, such as the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and other ongoing initiatives in this regard, the labour standards of ILO, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and key multilateral environmental agreements, for parties to those agreements.
Another possible alternative to this issue, would be to stop the paragraph at the sixth line "...while protecting labour rights and environmental and health standards.
We acknowledge that this paragraph was agreed in Addis Ababa, but this is indeed a new process and this issue and this paragraph was introduced to the negotiation of the Post 2015 Development Agenda only yesterday, which makes it impossible for my Government to accept it.
Finally, I take the opportunity to send you a few other suggestions of amendments to the draft, considered as a priority to my delegation:
- Strong preference for version 2 of the Preamble, capturing however the last sentence under the subtitle "People" of the original version, "and well-being for all; and secure the participation of all people and groups, including children and youth, persons with disabilities, migrants and indigenous peoples"; as well as the reference "Mother Earth" under the subtitle "Planet" of the original version.
- In the third paragraph of the preamble and in paragraph. 19 add the two words “and MOIs” after the sentence “17 SDGs and 169 targets…”
- In paragraph 20, deletion of the phrase between brackets "all internationally recognized"
- In paragraph 39, introduce the phrase "supported by" after the sentence "bringing together Governments".
-In paragraph. 41 insert at the end of the paragraph the following sentence “we commit to establish a Plan of Action for Middle Income Countries.”
- Re-insert former paragraph. 45 related to "policy space of each country"
Concerning the Goals and Targets, we suggest to correct Target 17.2 including a clear reference to developing countries.
Finally, we would like to thank for paragraph 33 and transmit our strong preference to keep the text of paragraph 33 as it was presented in the final version, with the reference to the upcoming UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development - Habitat III, taking into account that it scope extends for the next 20 years, much larger than other conferences and very close to the horizon of this Agenda.
