The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Goals for Sustainable Development are a global call for action to end extreme poverty, ensure a sustainable future and the development of our planet, and enable all people to enjoy equality in peace, justice and prosperity.
Development Goal 16.3 – Promoting the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensuring access to justice for all is a central element of the Sixteenth Development Goal and recognizes the link between access to justice, poverty reduction and inclusive sustainable development. This goal provides a unique opportunity to reflect on how national governments can ensure that economic growth and development and poverty alleviation strategies include access to justice and legal empowerment initiatives as an integral part of achieving these goals.
The transformation of Sustainable Development Goals at the national level means the preparation of Strategies and Action Plans for sustainable development in the short, medium and long term until 2030. For this process at the national level, states prepare a Voluntary National Review (VNR), a mechanism for reporting on how countries are implementing Goals. In anticipation of the High Level Political Forum / HLPF, in July 2020, the Republic of North Macedonia prepared a report to be considered during the Forum, and the Coalition Margins and the ESE Association, as organizations that have been working for many years to improve the access to justice for marginalized communities, released a Spotlight report highlighting identified shortcomings in Implementing Goal 16.3 and proposing concrete actions to improve access to justice.
The Sustainable Development Goals should create partnerships for cooperation, exchange of experiences and knowledge, financial and technical assistance between governments and the involvement of the business community, donors, academia and civil society in their implementation. In this regard, the Spotlight report will be a catalyst for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals at the national level, by strengthening cooperation and coordination between the Government, associations and other stakeholders.
See the findings and recommendations at the following LINK
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27 May 2020