Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has been appointed to serve in the advisory board of the United Nations’ ‘Our Common Agenda,’ a new initiative of Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres, which is geared towards accelerating the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs).
Mrs Sirleaf will co-lead the High-level Advisory Board alongside former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. The duo was named by Secretary General Guterres on Thursday, February 10th, during the First Thematic Consultation on the OurCommonAgenda report.
The UN described the ‘OurCommonAgenda’ as an agenda of action, designed to strengthen and accelerate multilateral agreements – particularly the 2030 Agenda – and make a tangible difference in people’s lives. It also says it represents Mr Guterres’ vision on the future of global cooperation through an inclusive, networked, and effective multilateralism.
The report contains 12 key proposals, all designed to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs, including human rights, healthcare access, global peace, climate change, and youth development.
“Our Common Agenda contains recommendations across 4 broad areas for renewed solidarity between peoples and future generations, a new social contract anchored in human rights, better management of critical global commons, and global public goods that deliver equitably and sustainably for all,” the reports reads in part.
The High-level Advisory Board is charged with implementing recommendations of the report which was first presented to the world at the 76th Session of the General Assembly in September 2021.
The UN chief said the Board will help to identify global public goods and potentially other areas of common interest where governance improvements are most needed, and propose options on how this could be achieved, to be considered by Member States at a future meeting, dubbed the ‘Summit of the Future.’
Mrs Sirleaf welcomed news of her appointment in a tweet calling for collective action to the achieve the SDGs.
“We need unity, solidarity and collective action to achieve the SDGs by 2030. I look forward to working alongside former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven on guiding the implementation of the UN’s Our Common Agenda report recommendations,” she tweeted.
Thursday’s meeting, which brought together representatives of the UN member countries in New York, was held under the theme: “Accelerating and scaling up the Sustainable Development Goals, leaving no-one behind.” It is said to be the beginning of a series of thematic meetings for in-depth discussion between Member States on specific recommendations and ideas in the report.
Addressing the event, Guterres noted that a lot of the proposals in the report were already captured in existing mandates and frameworks in the Agenda 2030, the Paris Agreement and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, among others. He added that with this Agenda, there was no intention to duplicate or replace processes that were already delivering results.
“We must turbocharge our existing processes, so that they can rise to the more complex realities that we face,” he told delegates.
UN deputy Secretary General, Amina J. Mohammed, told the meeting that the “Our Common Agenda aims to provided “an effective booster to help countries recover lost ground, address gaps, and deal with new needs that have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic to achieve the SDGs.
