Month: September 2017

Thanks to the invitation of Fundación Directorio Legislativo, RACI participated in the third debate within the Civil Society Participation Project at the Summit of the Americas.

The PASCA Project emerged from the Summit of the Americas in 2015, where Civil Society proposed “to create, without limitation of participation and with guarantee of inclusion of all people, the Inter-American Permanent Forum of Civil Society and social actors, so that there is a continuous process of consultations, recommendations and proposals, as well as the follow-up to compliance with the agreements.”

In this context, Fundación Directorio Legislativo, as the focal point of this project, set out to hold a series of four events in which the Summit commitments were debated and different approaches were proposed by the institutions themselves.

In order to ensure the greatest possible participation and diversity, on Thursday, September 7, the third meeting was held in Rosario, Santa Fe, where the following four commitments were addressed: Democratic Governance (good governance, civil registry and anti-corruption); Citizen participation (Equity and social inclusion, citizen participation and cultural heritage); Solidary Hemispheric Cooperation (Financing of Human Development) and Enabling Environment (freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression). The four commitments are common to all countries within the framework of the Organization of American States (OAS).

The event was attended by actors from the private, public, academic and third sectors, which made the necessary contributions that will be part of the report to be presented at the next Summit, in Lima, 2018.

Fundación Directorio Legislativo, Nueva Generación and RACI were the organizations in charge of opening the panel that resulted in a debate full of proposals and opportunities of work in partnership.

For more information on the PASCA project, visit https://proyectopasca.org/.

Civil Society Organizations interested in learning about different institutional strengthening mechanisms and the creation of links with strategic actors gathered in the Beccar Varela Study Auditorium in occasion of the 7^th RACI workshop of the year.

Thanks to the support of Banco Galicia and in partnership with Thompson Reuters and the Beccar Varela Study, the Argentinean Network for International Cooperation held a meeting in Buenos Aires with organizations that work on different topics to offer them the training course “Increasing the impact of Civil Society Organizations: Fostering networking and institutional strengthening.”

For six hours, the RACI team trained the organizations on the importance of strengthening the links between the areas of the institution, focusing especially in the area of Institutional Development: their responsibilities, commitments and continuous interaction with all team members.

Among the contents, the workshop offered new resource search strategies, access to key strategic actors to generate institutional alliances, and relevant information sources where organizations can map opportunities for sustainable alliances according to the activity they carry out.

Thanks to the help of RACI’s partners, the training counted with a Legal Clinic that dealt with issues of Labor Law, the UIF, Intellectual Property, and personal data from a useful perspective for organizations. This clinic was run by the Thompson Reuters Foundation in the context of its TrustLaw project, and by the Beccar Varela Study.

If you couldn’t attend this workshop, follow us on social networks and our website! There you will find the next dates of all the trainings.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raciarg/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/raciargentina

Website: https://raci.org.ar/

The Dialogue of Emerging Market and Developing Countries took place the 5^th of September, at the 2017 BRICS Summit in China. Held at the Xianmen International Conference Center, The Dialogue adopted the implementation of Agenda 2030 as its main line and focused on strengthening mutual cooperation for development.

In addition to the five heads of state that make up the BRICS (Michel Temer of Brazil, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Narendra Modi of India, Xi Jinping of China, and Jacob Zuma of South Africa), five other developing countries were invited: Egypt, Guinea, Mexico, Tajikistan and Thailand. This was a first step towards what has been called the “BRICS Plus” model, an initiative that aims to bring other developing countries closer together to form a more extensive alliance network in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals.

During the event, views were exchanged on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda, the building of strategic development alliances, plans for international development cooperation, and South-South Cooperation. In his speech, President Xi Jinping, who presided over the Dialogue, stressed that in the last decade the emerging markets and developing countries have been collectively rising, and that at the present stage it is necessary to join forces to promote greater development and growth at a global level.

To achieve this, President Jinping proposed four points which he considers necessary to work on. He spoke firstly of building a more open, inclusive and equitable global economy, by promoting a greater representation of developing countries in global economic governance. In his second and third points, he considered important to implement national development strategies in the context of SDGs; finding a path of sustainable development by coordinating economic, social and ecological progress; accelerating the implementation of the Agenda through the United Nations; urging developed countries to honor their commitments and increase their aid to developing countries; and to strengthen good practice cooperation and capacity building to support joint economic development. Finally, he called for building broad development partnerships to multiply the impact, using BRICS, G77 or other similar mechanisms, and broadening South-South Cooperation.

He also stressed that to promote international development, China will provide 500 million US dollars for the Assistance Fund for South-South Cooperation, which will be used to address challenges such as famine, refugees, climate change and public health, among others. It will also promote experience-sharing and capacity-building cooperation with other countries.

The rest of the leaders also had an opportunity to speak, and important consensuses were reached. They all agreed to form more extensive partnerships, strengthen international development cooperation, implement the Agenda 2030 in its entirety, support the central role of the United Nations and deepen South-South Cooperation.

For more information, as well as the Summit’s official documents, go to https://www.brics2017.org.

On 25th September, 2017, it will be two years since the establishment of the new Development Agenda 2015-2030.

The new Agenda was officially discussed at the Sustainable Development Summit, held between September 25 and 27, 2015, as the central event of the United Nations General assembly in New York. There, 196 world leaders generated a proposal for 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with their 169 targets to be up to 2030.

The SDGs are, in some way, the continuation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs were eight human development goals set in the year 2000 that the then 189 UN member countries agreed to uphold until 2015. In order to give continuity to these already established objectives, and to make the necessary modifications, the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2015 approved this Agenda, to be met until 2030.

Civil Society Organizations, as well as state and citizens, are the key players committed to comply with the ODS in order to carry out the challenges imposed by the new development Agenda.
Is in this way that RACI (who works towards objective 17), as well as many CSOs, have framed their work to contribute to the fulfillment of the SDGs. Consequently, RACI has undertaken events and projects such as Action/2015, the Dialogue tables on SDG 16, #DONTLEAVEANYONEBEHIND and the Platform SDG. The last one in particular aims to give visibility to the work carried out by Civil Society Organizations within the framework of the fulfilment of the Objectives of Sustainable Development.

If your organization works with SDG themes such as eradicating poverty and hunger, improving health and education, building more sustainable cities, combating climate change and protecting forests and oceans and wants to be part of to the platform, you can do it here.

Also in the context of the second anniversary of the SDGs, the United Nations launched the “My world 2030” survey, that directly links each citizen’s responses to the monitoring efforts of the United Nations and the governments on the progress of the SDGs, and seeks to draw attention to the most relevant issues from the point of view of citizens in real time. To complete the survey and participate in the campaign enter here, take a photo completing the survey and upload it to your networks with the hashtag #Act4SDGs and #ActXtheSDG.

For more than a year so far, RACI decided to visit one of the organizations of its Network every month, to share a day of exchange and to know in first person the work they do. In this case, on Friday 25th August, the RACI team visited the headquarters of the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA), in the neighborhood of San Telmo, Capital Federal.

MAMBA was founded in 1956 as an avant-garde space to spread and promote Modern and Contemporary Art in all its expressions. Its mission is not simply to preserve and disseminate its cultural heritage, but to generate debate and create a nexus between the public and the problems expressed by the new artistic manifestations.

The Museum has grown over the years. On the one hand, its heritage has grown, mainly through donations, among which are the ones made by famous artists such as Alberto Heredia, Antonio Seguí, and León Ferrari. On the other hand, while in the beginning the Museum operated in different locations; in 1986 it obtained its own place, an old building that previously belonged to the tobacco company Nobleza Piccardo. An adjoining building was added later on, and currently works are being carried out to join the two of them.

After entering the red brick, English architectural style building where the Museum is located, the RACI team was welcomed by Verena Schobinger y Chantal Casaerdozain, both members of the Association of Friends of the Museum of Modern Art, with the breakfast and ready to start a pleasant talk. They explained the history if the museum, the association, the challenges they face, and what they currently offer and hope they can continue to offer the community.

After the exchange, the RACI Team took a guided tour of the museum, where the two exhibitions taking place could be appreciated.

The first exhibition was that of Tomás Saraceno: “How to catch the universe in a web”. It consists of two rooms: the first one is on the second floor, it’s large and mostly occupied by cobwebs (the largest built and displayed so far) formed by thousands of spiders for six months. Framed in different shapes, cobwebs form structures similar to nebulae and galaxies, inviting to think the universe as a network of interconnections. The second one combines this same idea (arachnology and astrophysics) with sound and vision, focusing on them. In almost total darkness, a beam of light makes visible the dust inside the room, and transforms it into image and sound according to its movement. At the back of the room is the projection of these particles, and there are comfortable places to sit in the dark and enjoy the experience.

The second exhibition is a retrospective of the work of Liliana Maresca, an Argentine visual arts artist emblematic of the 80s and 90s. The installation covered her works over a period of 12 years, so their diversity is big.

From RACI we deeply thank the entire MAMBA team for having received us and made it possible to get to know the organization more closely, and invite everyone to approach the museum and experience everything it has to offer.

For more information on MAMBA, go to http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/museoartemoderno.

Since July of this year the SDG Index and Dashboards Report, jointly published by Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), is available. The report contains available data on the progress of the SDGs in each country, and in this way aims to assist countries to identify priority actions to achieve them.

Each one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda relies on a set of precise indicators elaborated by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), created by the UN Statistical Commission and composed by Member States and regional and international agencies. There are 232 official indicators, but only some of them have data for all the UN member states. In addition, countries can present voluntary national reviews of their progress (Argentina presented it this year). But while these reviews are thorough on socioeconomic SDGs, they are particularly weak on the international partnership and the environmental ones.

The Bertelsman Stiftung and SDSN Report includes 83 out of the 232 indicators, those that meet five criteria: global relevance, statistical adequacy, timeliness, data quality, and coverage for at least 80% of the countries. While the Report indicators are as aligned as possible with the official ones, SDG Index and Dashboards fills the data gaps with other reputable sources. This doesn’t mean they replace (nor they are intended to replace) the official SDG monitoring; they aim to complement it by presenting the data in an informative and interesting way for policy makers, stakeholders and the public in general.

This year’s report is far from the 2016 one in terms of data and methodology, even to the point of making them not comparable. Perhaps the most important change is the inclusion of indicators on international spillovers. The development patterns of some countries, especially the rich ones, impact others. Even if there are some positive effects, like the one of international development finance, most of them are adverse and tend to hinder the ability of poorer countries to achieve the SDGs. Examples of this are high consumption levels, tax heavens, and weapon exports.

Three Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, and Finland) lead the Index this year, but none of them are near the maximum score. Even the best ranked countries have great problems in at least one SDG. The OECD countries dashboard shows that the goals 12, 13, 14, and to some extent the 15 (all related to the environment), score poorly. In contrast, most of Sub-Saharan African countries have overwhelmingly low scores on the socioeconomic indicators, but their environmental indicators are better than those of most OECD countries. It is important to highlight that the addition of spillover indicators has lowered the score for many rich countries, especially Switzerland, the United States, and several Gulf States.

As for Argentina, in comparative terms it’s well positioned. An overall score of 72.5 has ranked the country 41 at the global level, above some OECD countries like the United States (72.4) and Israel (70.1), but below most European countries. At the regional level it’s ranked second, with only Cuba above it, and well over the regional average of 65.8.

Its main strengths lie in goals 1 (No Poverty), and 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation). The first one, in which Argentina has a score of 99.8, is measured in terms of the amount of people that live with more than 1.90 dollars per day. In the second one Argentina leads the global raking with a score of 98.5. It is composed of indicators on access to improved water sources, access to improved sanitation facilities, fresh water withdrawals as a percentage of renewable water sources, and underwater depletion.

On the other hand, its major challenges are goals 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions). The 10^th goal has the GINI coefficient as its indicator, which measures the distribution of income among a population. Argentina, in this case, has a score of 51, where 0 is total equality and 100 total inequality in income distribution; to achieve the level expected by the 2030 Agenda it should reach 30 or less. As for the second goal mentioned, Argentina’s score is 51.7. It is composed by 9 indicators, of which the most worrying are the amount of homicides, the insecurity perception, the government efficiency, and the corruption perception. It’s worth noting that these goals are problematic not only in Argentina, all the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have low scores in both of them.

This report allows for a rapid assessment of how much a country approaches to achieving the development goals, and for comparing progress made with peer countries. Thus, it seeks to help draw attention to SDGs and their role as practical tools for mobilizing governments, academia, civil society and private sector; to ensure accountability; and ultimately to guide national policies and long-term strategies for sustainable development

For more information about the Index and downloading the full report, go to http://www.sdgindex.org/.