 What's happening with human rights around our world on Think Tech Live, broadcasting from a downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, in Moana, New York. Today we're looking at ending poverty, the UN Global Goals and Rights, Article 22, indispensable dignity for all. What we're looking at is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides the power of ideas to initiate change in the world and the UDHR outlines opportunities for a new direction rooted in inherent dignity in enable rights for dynamic sustainable development and social democracy. The UN SDG starts with four economic, social, and cultural rights establishing a framework for freedoms and the realization of rights through national effort and international cooperation. Today we'll be meeting with two amazing advocates organizing around the UN high level political forum focusing on the UN Global Goals. I'd like to first introduce our colleague from Civicus and ask him to share just a little bit on what issue is so important to UN international law and what inspires you to first care about this and some important first campaigns you were involved with. Wonderful, Joshua, it's a pleasure to be here and thank you very much for organizing this conversation today. So you asked me what inspires me. In fact, Agenda 2030 inspires me. It's arguably the greatest ever human endeavor to create just, equal, and sustainable societies. In fact, it's an agenda that is comprehensive in its scope, the 169 targets that are part of the 17 sustainable development goals are immense in their scope. Together they can help create better societies, more fairer societies for all of us. And the part of the goals that inspires me the most is goal 16 on peace, justice, and strong institutions. That's really the heart of Agenda 2030 because within it guarantees commitments on responsive, inclusive, participatory, decision making, commitments on access to information and fundamental freedoms, which are absolutely critical for people and civil society organizations to ensure the realization of this important agenda for all of humanity. Thank you so much, Mandeep. Iglo, can you share with us a bit of why the issue of this, Jesus, is so important in international human rights law? And also what inspired you to care about the issue and some of the first campaigns you're involved with? Hello, so I got actually inspired by my time in Bangladesh with working with people in the villages in Bangladesh, especially with women who were really able to change their situation, to organize themselves and to fight for their rights. And there was a tremendous change from the 1980s to the last years in the life of people in Bangladesh. And that is actually my background. And with this, I came to the process of development of the sustainable development goals. And here we have all the different elements of no poverty, no hunger, gender equality, and also reduced inequalities, just to name a few important. So this is actually a very good global framework, which is actually based on human rights. But yeah, we are here now at the UN and with the seven and a half years, it's a halfway point. And we also see a lot of frustration. It's a good point. If we're here at the UN High-Level Political Forum, and we know in a couple of months, it'll be the UN Sustainable Development Goals Summit. And the theme is this is sort of halftime. If you look at a football match, if you look at anything, we're at halfway. And there's many things that people have said that were maybe 12% is on track, that we're not doing as well as we could. And if we look at Article 22 of the UDHR, it says everyone that's member of society has a right and is entitled to the realization through national efforts and international cooperation with the organization and resource of each state for the economic, social, and cultural rights that are indispensable for one's dignity and the free development of one's personality. As we look at that, how do you think and who do you think are really the champions so far, Mandeep, to actualize this article? And what are some of the actions we've seen that people are involved with to achieve the 2030 agenda and make sure that this isn't just, as they say, promises on paper, but more of a reality in policy? So the champions for the goals are certainly people, active citizens, and civil society organizations that promote the principles that are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which draws from the principles enshrined in the UN Charter. Now, the people who owe the responsibility for achievement of the agenda 2030 are governments, because governments hold the agency to implement the agenda. They have primary responsibility to ensure that the agenda is carried out in its entirety, while other sectors of society, whether it's academia, whether it's civil society, whether it's elements of the private sector, we are all bound to implement the agenda, to promote its values, and ultimately to help work with governments as partners in realization of the agenda, but also to hold governments to account. So civil society organizations help ensure inclusive decision-making, when agenda 2030 commitments are carried through, they help ensure policy-making and service delivery to the most excluded people. And importantly, they act as watchdogs to ensure that the money that is dispersed is used for the purposes that they were intended. But as Ingo pointed out, we are at the half point of agenda 2030, and it's not looking good. It's not looking good because of several reasons. It's not looking good because governments in many countries don't care about the aspiration of the people because we have corrupt oligarchs in many parts of the world. We have authoritarian governments that privilege a few of their citizens, as opposed to others. And we have a broken global multilateral system where countries are pursuing naked self-interest rather than the joint international interest and working in solidarity towards all of humanity with each other, towards those who are most deprived. And that is the biggest strategy of our times. Thank you so much. Ingo, if you could add a bit on how we can actualize this article better and what actions you see that are involved to promote and protect this important human rights. Yeah, first of all, I do agree with Mandib so that the people organizing themselves, that's something very strong at local and national level. But even at the UN, we can see more and more groups being here and speaking for themselves, like persons with disabilities, communities discriminated by work and dissent, women in general. I think that makes it much stronger. Yeah, so one concrete point and very central for the SDG agenda is social protection. In 2007-08, during the financial crisis, there were only 20% of the global population covered by social protection in one form or the other. And until 2020, that changed a lot to 45%, which is a very good progress. But of course, it's definitely not enough. So during the COVID crisis, governments tried to support people, but they had limited budgets, like for three months, maybe for six months. And afterwards, they could not continue. And this is a big question. So we can achieve the sustainable development goals only if we have really social protection flaws for all. And that would be possible. It would cost 79 million, sorry, billion US dollars per year for the least developed countries. That's 15% of their gross national product. That's too much for them alone. So they need to get support at least for some years until they can fully cover themselves. And middle-income countries would need to pay around 3%. So that's possible to create this right to food, right to survival for everybody. And that's even possible in the next 10 years. So, but there's not the political will. Well, that's an extra point. And it also shows that it's possible. I also like the way you're pointing that we have the amount of resources. It's just that we're not spending it in the right way. So there's too much on consumption, too much on militarization. But maybe you can share with us with Civicus how you're looking at changing things. And also I really like indeed what you said earlier. In a way, we are human rights defenders, but now we also have to be the enforcers as well. We demand the rights that are guaranteed under international law. But then we have to make sure that the governments live up to that. Can you share a bit, maybe the most recent Civicus report that outlines really the trends of where we're at and what we're up against, but how civil society is being able to be an agent of change and actually keep us in the game for the global goals at this halftime juncture for justice. So at Civicus, we produce two annual reports which are of extreme importance to the achievement of agenda 2030. Our first report measures civic freedoms, the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, without which civil society cannot push for transformative change. It enables people to come out of the streets to demand their rights. It enables people to organize, to participate, to communicate without hindrance. So civic space is absolutely critical. Our report which is on the Civicus monitor which is a participatory platform to measure civic freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly finds that at this point of time, in 117 countries and territories around the world in which 85% of the world's population live, they have very, very serious restrictions in law, policy and practice on exercise of civic freedoms without which we can't demand accountability, without which we can't shape the priorities of our decision makers, without which we can't point to the fault lines that are there within the achievement of agenda 2030. So that's a huge challenge. And conversely, we find that just 3.2% of the world's population live in countries where there's open and in neighbor civic space that is where civil society can have actually good partnerships with governments and it's usually challenging. In fact, our report on the Civicus monitor finds that there are some serious kinds of impediments that are placed on activists, journalists and organizations to impede them from the human rights work. And agenda 2030 is largely a human rights agenda. In fact, there's been some studies amongst organizations that over 90% of the agenda 2030 commitments are enshrined in the international bill of rights that is the universal declaration of human rights along with the common economic social and cultural rights and common civil and political rights. So this is remains a huge, huge challenge. We also find that in many parts of the world, protesters are being persecuted and detained to prevent them from coming out peacefully into the streets. Now, we know that transmogrative change around the world was achieved through the right to peaceful protest, whether it was decolonization, whether it is the civil rights movement, whether it's movements for gender justice and equality for LGBTQI plus rights or for young people who have highlighted the climate emergency. This has all happened through the right to peaceful protest where people have urged decision makers to act. So the right to peaceful protest continues to be impeded. And lastly and importantly, there's lots of laws that many governments have introduced where civil society organizations are not able to receive funding for credible international sources. They use the terms such as foreign agents laws or foreign donations laws, whereas private sector is able to receive funding freely but civil society organizations that focus on transparency, accountability and participation are unable to receive funding. And then we have our second report which is the state of civil society reports which we publish every year. That finds that our global governance institutions are failing. They are failing to stop conflict around the world because of great power struggles that are taking place in these institutions and the United Nations was formed, firstly with the primary purpose of saving future generations from the scourge of war and that remains a huge challenge. There are also more newer challenges such as disinformation that is spread through the social media, through hate speech and the basic erosion of democratic values even in countries where we thought that the argument for democracy had been won. So that remains a huge challenge for the achievement of Agenda 2030 to rising authoritarianism and to populist leaders who care more about their own political priorities rather than the interests of the people they are supposed to serve. Marlon Mandeep and those reports that come out annually are so important to take the temperature really of the global body politic and provide some direction of what we as civil society can do to then help one another, to identify the issues but then really initiate insights to be able to create new initiatives that change these international institutions. And we know, Engel, you're very active with people's assemblies that are coordinated usually around the UN General Assembly and these important means. Can you share with us what the people's assemblies are, how those are being planned and how they'll be able to contribute to the 2030 Agenda and making sure that we can actually achieve those 17 global goals on the ground? So the basic idea of the people's assemblies is that the people who are affected by injustice and poverty should themselves speak for their interests, for their rights. So they come together at community level, at grassroots level and analyze their situation and what kind of demands they have to achieve the Agenda 2030 in their country. So they organize national people's assemblies where they, all the different marginalized groups or excluded groups come together, persons with disabilities, indigenous people, women's group, youth groups, older people and formulate their demands to the governments and then they send this to the governments in the form of a letter, they do a press conference before the presidents or heads of states go to New York to the UN Summit. So they give their message to their governments and to the media and then they bring the message to the Global People's Assembly which we meet on 17th and 18th September in New York to bring all these perspectives from 35 countries from around the world into the global meeting here at the UN and to bring this also to the UN Summit. So maybe if I mentioned one example or two examples of topics which came up in the last months, so the debt crisis is affecting many countries. There were countries like Zambia which defaulted, some more countries like Sri Lanka, but there are many countries actually in the debt distress that is called. So they pay a lot of their resources like 25% or more of their tax income for debt services. That is many times more they pay for the debt services than for social protection, for health, for education. And governments have to cut those social services to pay the debts. And that's a really big problem and it's not taken care of. And this is one of the key issues coming from the People's Assemblies. And so they demand actually at global level to find a better solution. So the UN can and should play a role, but yeah, that's also one of the problems that many of the G20 countries actually don't allow the UN to play this role. That's really good. And maybe you can share also just a short follow-up. There are, it's an ability for individuals to apply and groups to apply for action for 2030 agenda leading up to those 10 days in September. If they have a program or a project that they can apply for small grants to be able to be involved with action for 2030. Yes, so there's this global week to act for SDGs from 15th to 25th September. And people are organizing all kinds of different actions around the world. And there's this funding opportunity to get $500 for these actions. So yeah, it would be good to get many proposals. Thank you so much. And we're here at the UN High-Level Political Forum. It's the final gathering before the UN SDG summit in September. Could you share, Mandeep, some highlights of what you've seen either in the first week of what's happened at the HLPF or during the weekend workshop or what you're looking forward to this second week with many of the voluntary national reviews taking place of many countries to see people coming together to make sure that these 17 goals are realized. So voluntary national reviews, as they name it, indicates are basically reviews that countries undertake voluntarily to report on the achievement of certain sustainable development goals which are under review every year. And civil society organizations have joined government delegations in some instances and have been part of the voluntary national review process and others over the course of this past week. And we'll continue to advocate going forward. Now, the experience of civil society organizations is often mixed. So if the state of democracy in a country is strong, if the government of the day and the democratic institutions and structures are supportive, then civil society is able to shine a spotlight on what is happening. And we heard about some good examples like from Ireland where civil society presented a report alongside the government report and their report was able to provide a critical assessment on what's going on. But in other instances, the civil society found themselves excluded from the process and they believe that the government report presented an overly positive picture on the state of achievement or the sustainable development goals and see more like a public relations exercise rather than a true assessment or a review of what the state of achievement or sustainable development goals was. So there are these different kinds of experiences and challenges that civil society continue to experience. In some countries where they are good state civil society relationships, this can be a really constructive and strong process. And it has been for some states, but in other places it's also an opportunity for civil society to put together a shadow report which presents a perhaps true picture of what the state of achievement of the sustainable development goals is. Now going forward to the sustainable development goals, the STG summit in September later this year and in the coming conversations, there's a lot of conversation as you go highlighted a little bit earlier is about the STG action and stimulus plan by focusing on debt restructuring and debt cancellation because it's become unsustainable for several countries to be able to pay their debts because of the interest rates and the challenges of how the global economy is structured. Now these conversations are going to be absolutely critical because they're going to free up resources for governments to ensure that they can actually meet their commitments under agenda 2030. They can create better lives for their people. They can protect the most vulnerable, but it's going to be absolutely critical while these conversations are happening that we ensure that civil society is involved in the process that civil society is treated as equal partners in these countries. Republic resources will be freed up so that they are not used to strengthen in networks of patronage. They are not used to strengthen repressive state apparatuses that oftentimes exist in countries to shut down journalists who expose corruption, for instance, and that they are not used to further strengthen military infrastructures and those who profit from them. So we really need to ensure that social protection flows that Ingo talked about, they're used to support social protection flows, that they're used to strengthen democratic institutions, and they're used to actually achieve agenda 2030 goals in their entirety. And governments have a really important responsibility to do this and we as a society will be watching them. But it's also important to the UN's own leadership to be strong on these issues, to emphasize the value of civil society partnership, to emphasize the rights-based approach of the Sustainable Development Goals. They are a vast improvement of the Millennium Development Goals because they're comprehensive in their framework and they look at the three pillars of sustainable development, economic justice, social development, and environmental sustainability. So that's going to be absolutely critical going forward and those conversations are going to unfold in the coming days and in the run up to the STD Summit in September. Really great point and also pointing out in many ways the improvements to have furthest behind first in this 2030 agenda, also leave one, no one behind. Absolutely two important steps as opposed to the Millennium Development Goals that were more of putting everything into half. Maybe, Inko, you can share with us a bit as well how you see what's important going forward and what's important that we can stress looking at the future of this right. Okay, so I think the one point we have stressed already is that we really have concrete improvements like social protection, but the other point which is the other part of the coin that there are structural changes in the global economic system or the financial architecture. So we have a system nowadays which was built in 1944 still during the Second World War where the rich nations basically have the control on the International Monitoring Fund and the World Bank and yeah, so also on the UN Security Council. So yeah, that's actually a system which is not anymore fitting to the world nowadays and it's not creating the solutions. So I think it's a good moment to make progress on this because there's a general understanding. Of course, the UN Security Council, that's very difficult as the 580 powers will not accept. But for the other, for the international financial institutions I believe we need leadership from the global south governments but we need also pressure from civil society to change this system. And I mean, there are some very simple things. For example, the G20, the African Union needs to be part of the G20. I think that's totally evident. But still this didn't happen until now. So but yeah, the other things, I mean, those are only examples or symbols but still they are important. It is like the IMF head is always coming from Europe and the World Bank from the United States and that doesn't work anymore. No, it's important as we look and see where we're at on the 75th anniversary of the UDHR and the halfway point of the UN SDGs. I think the theme of course in the conversation was halfway there yet so far away at the same time. So in our final moments, Mandeep, could you share with us some final thoughts on a vision for the future of Article 22 and potential paths to respect, protect, fulfill this right? I would say that we all have a responsibility to uphold human rights, to advocate for human rights, to stand up for justice and equality and sustainability. And that's really is the vision I would like to share. And tomorrow is Nelson Mandela Day on Tuesday, 18th of July. And I just wanted to emphasize that on this day, as even in today's day and age, there are thousands of Nelson Mandela's languishing in prisons around the world, civil society, colleagues like us. And there are others who've been assassinated like the Honduran civil society activist, Bertha Casares, who was seeking environmental justice. And let's spare a thought for them. Let's see how we can support those to ensure that those who represent the finest values of humanity in civil society are not assassinated and those who are languishing in prison are released forthwith. Great point. It's also, of course, International Mandela Day honoring his legacy of pushing for advocacy, accountability, and democracy for all. Inklo, your final thoughts on Vision for the Future? So I think we really need to come to more solidarity global. I mean, this is what I really sense here at the UN, coming together with so many great activists from all over the world. And that's one of the good things I really like to see. What do people do all over the world in the different fields, whether it's environment, climate, women's rights. So that is really motivating, and that gives me hope for the future. Great point. And it's actually true. That's probably the strength of the voluntary national review. We know the UNHLP unites humanity around these BNRs because the civil society share peer programs and projects on how they're working and inspire one another. And that allows us to then hopefully achieve Article 22, where the resources of each state recognizes economic, social, and cultural rights, expressed also in the UN global goals. And we know these are indispensable for dignity and free development. Thank you both for your time and we'll continue the struggle here at the UN. Mahalo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.