18.05.2015
Turkey’s Statement
in Follow up & Review Session
of Post 2015 Development Agenda Intergovernmental Negotiations
(18 May 2015, New York)
Distinguished Co-facilitators,
We all know that an efficient follow up and review mechanism is vital for ensuring full success in implementation of post 2015 development agenda.
We should first of all agree on guiding principles for follow up and review framework. Turkey supports the general principles laid down in the discussion paper distributed by co-facilitators. We want to highlight some additional points and try to bring answers to some questions raised in this paper.
The success in achieving post 2015 development agenda will depend on effectively embedding these goals into national development plans and strategies. Each country will set their own national post-2015 development goals, guided by the aspirational global SDGs but obviously by taking into account national circumstances as well. The methodology for this process may vary according to the decision making structures of countries. We believe that national prioritization will form the basis for national implementation process. Therefore, countries may not necessarily need to develop additional implementation strategies.
National level reviews of implementation will be the basis for and feed into regional and global level monitoring. That’s why strong national reviews will be the key to the success of the whole follow up framework. But we know that countries have different circumstances, capacities and priorities. Therefore the challenge ahead of us is to ensure that all countries are in a position to carry out strong national follow up and reviews and get enough financial and technical support for monitoring if and when they need it. If we want the follow up mechanism to be as universal in coverage as the SDGs themselves, we need to think on how best to build and strengthen national capacities with regard to monitoring and data collection.
We believe that reviewing implementation at the national level should be state led. Various stakeholders such as local authorities, private sector, civil society, academia should be encouraged to participate in this process as well. National level review should be data driven, based on indicators and supported with relevant regulations, institutional arrangements and projects.
Reporting of the national reviews should be voluntary. But we should encourage all states to submit their national reports on a regular basis. Periodicity of national reports should be determined at the national level.
The best way to encourage states to engage actively in follow up and review and to submit their national reports is to give necessary support in undertaking this task. We can consider using voluntary “twinning” mechanisms to help countries in strengthening capacity for follow up and review at the national level. UN entities, including the Statistical Commission, have a role to play in this process. Countries can be supported to prepare national review reports every four year for the HLPF to be held at the Heads of State level under the auspices of General Assembly.
We believe that reporting the progress in implementation is a useful tool to keep political ownership of post 2015 agenda high at the national levels.
Lastly, we want to reiterate that follow up and review framework should be an integral part of the outcome document to be adopted in September Summit.
Thank you.
