Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh in association with 11 of its partner organisations is organising a day-long conference titled ‘VNR 2020 of Bangladesh: Positioning Non-State Actors’, on March 11 in Dhaka.
The 11 partners include—ActionAid Bangladesh, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), HEKS/EPER, Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF), Nagorik Uddyog, Plan International Bangladesh, Save the Children in Bangladesh, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), VSO Bangladesh, WaterAid Bangladesh and World Vision Bangladesh.
The conference is being organised with the aim to provide inputs in the Bangladesh Government’s Voluntary National Review (VNR) process which has been initiated in view of the upcoming 2020 session of the UN’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) to be held in New York, in July, 2020.
The VNR is a process that includes reporting by UN member-countries, on a voluntary basis, as regards self-assessment concerning the status of delivering SDG goals and targets. In this connection, it may be noted that this is the second time that Bangladesh is participating in the VNR process; the first time was in 2017. While the Government prepares the national VNR report, the Citizen’s Platform has taken an initiative to highlight the contributions of the NSAs in implementing the SDGs, in view of the VNR 2020.
Since young citizens are a key stakeholder group in attaining the SDGs in Bangladesh, the Platform has identified Youth and Young People as the cross-cutting theme for preparing a set of Policy Briefs in this connection. These Policy Briefs focus on a number of youth-related issues, from SDG lens: gender equality and empowering girls and young women, rights of youth from marginalised communities (dalit and indigenous communities), child rights and violence against children, youth and climate actions, decent employment for the youth, youth participation and representation in development process, youth and extremism, and WASH and youth.
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