Sikander Sabeer: Final Consultation meeting of the Post-2015 Thematic Consultation on Governance

Friday, March 8, 2013

Final Consultation meeting of the Post-2015 Thematic Consultation on Governance

The final meeting of the Post-2015 Thematic Consultation on Governance took place from 28 February to 1 March 2013 in Midrand, South Africa. The consultation, which was co-led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), aimed to build consensus and recommend how to integrate global, regional, national and sub-national governance and accountability with the intergovernmental process on the UN’s post-2015 development agenda.

During the meeting, participants discussed a variety of issues relating to governance and accountability, emphasizing, among other things, the need to: address the challenges of poverty and inequality; empower indigenous peoples; improve the accountability of UN agencies; empower women; promote democratic governance; improve citizens’ awareness of their right to hold their leaders accountable; increase public participation and involvement; and combat corruption. The outcomes of the meeting will feed into an overall report, which will be used to engage with the HLP, the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other key processes in preparation for the General Assembly’s Special Event on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September 2013 and beyond.

This report summarizes the plenary and panel discussions, and some of the roundtable sessions held during the final meeting.

The Summary of this meeting is now available

in PDF format at http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/sd/crsvol208num3e.pdf

and in HTML format at http://www.iisd.ca/post2015/governance/html/crsvol208num3e.html

The President of the Pan-African Parliament, Bethel Amadi, Nigeria, welcomed participants to the final meeting of the post-2015 Global Thematic Consultations on Governance.

Olav Kjørven, Assistant Secretary General, UN Development Programme; Graça Machel, the Secretary-General's High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda; and Zanele Mbeki, former First Lady, South Africa.

Participants raised issues concerning accountability and transparency.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Sikander Sabeer is a product of Isipathana College and holding a first class with distinction Bachelors of Science (BSc) degree on Biotechnology, Biochemistry and Microbiology from Spectrum Institute of Science and Technology (Sri Lanka), an outreach campus of University of Mysore (India). Presently reading for his Masters of Science (MSc) on Business Management at National School of Business Management (Sri Lanka), an outreach post-graduate institute of University of Dublin (Ireland).

Sikanders’ development work can be categorized into three avenues, namely community service and community development; youth empowerment and professional development; climate change and sustainable development. Meanwhile his development work is two phased, firstly action oriented, secondly strategic and advocacy. In the action oriented phase, he gets in to the field and implements his ideas. He works very closely with multi-stakeholders such as children, school students, youth, corporates & business firms, UN agencies, non-governmental and government organizations on diversified projects at different levels and on different capacities. With his strong grass-root level initiatives and experience, he invests equal time on advocacy, mentorship and youth policy framework, which is a unique, and a strategic bottom up approach.

Sikanders’ voluntary action oriented initiatives and his strategic thinking has given him numerous opportunities to be a guest speaker and youth facilitator; to share his experiences, best practices to motivate and inspire youth at number of National and International youth conferences. He has represented his country and fellow youth (1/4th of Sri Lankan population) at high profile youth conferences and high level UN summits/conferences, at some of the UN meetings I have served as an ‘Official Youth Delegate’ of the National Delegation team headed by HE president. Half of the world’s population is made up of young people and as a youth representative and a major stakeholder he had made several interventions on behalf of Global Youth and Sri Lankan youth at some of the UN conferences.

He has held several key positions in organizing several national and international events/programmes and he is one of the co-creators of the YOUTH is the word –Guinness World Record, where 1500 Sri Lankan youth stood to gather to form the largest human mosaic in the world.

His local, national and international initiatives on youth led community development, Climate Change; youth empowerment and youth advocacy led him to earn the most prestigious “Commonwealth Youth Awards (CYA)” for Excellence in Development Work (2012), The CYA’s celebrate and recognize extraordinary young people among one billion audiences from 54 member states of Commonwealth who are making a positive difference to the lives of others through development initiatives ranging from poverty alleviation to education and protection of the environment. This is awarded by Commonwealth Secretariat (CYP) headed by HM Queen Elizabeth II. He earned the "Global Changemaker" title of British Council Youth Empowerment Programme on 2010 for outstanding contribution for Voluntary Activities. He serves as a Youth Ambassadorial role for climate change and serves as a Youth Facilitator for climate sustainability under British Council International Climate Champion program. Apart from these major recognitions his team earned U.S. Department of States Federal Assistant Award Grant for “Green the Home” project and Global Changemakers Community Action Project (CAP) and Regional Action Project (RAP) grants for Youth Empowerment Initiatives.

Presently Sikander is serving as an Assistant Manager for Business Development and Project Officer for recycling solutions for Neptune Recyclers (Neptune Papers [Pvt.] Ltd) in Sri Lanka, a member of multinational corporate Expolanka Holdings PLC. He works very closely with multi- stakeholders, especially with school students, Industries and Corporates on recycling solutions which create an additional income from the trash while minimizing the environmental pollution.

"Do as much as voluntary activities, because volunteers Inspire in Action, they make a real change in their community, they talk less and work a lot, but never expect any personal benefits from their action, Indeed one day they will earn the rewards, that’s confirmed; Install this in your mind “I will do the best I can”

-Sikander Sabeer-