Jakarta, 16 October 2014—Civil society actors, including the Human Rights Resource Centre, attended the AICHR Follow-Up Workshop on Post Millennium Development Goals 2015 and Human Rights at Four Seasons Hotel, Jakarta, on 15-16 October 2014. The workshop was conducted by the AICHR and hosted by Pak Rafendi Djamin to develop common approaches to the newly emerging Sustainable Development Goals which replace the Millennium Development Goals in guiding the UN’s overall approach to development post-2015.
During the two-day workshop, discussions centred on how the 17 proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could be translated into the ASEAN context, and vice versa. In particular, participants exchanged views on how ASEAN can engage and influence the post 2015 development agenda based on the Post 2015 ASEAN Vision that are now being formulated led by ASEAN Coordinating Council (ACC).
The workshop recommended, among other things, that the Post-2015 Development Agenda be anchored in human rights principles and standards and that transparency, accountability, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms at local, national, and Regional/ASEAN level should be adopted. In this regard, Michelle Staggs Kelsall of the Human Rights Resource Centre noted that understanding development through the lens of human rights was key to ensuring sustainable growth, but that more work needed to be done to secure a common vision of how those rights could be realized. Participants also noted the need to develop human rights indicators to measure compliance with the SDGs and that the new SDGs should include a participatory mechanism or system to develop these indicators.
