Virtual seminar on implementation of the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development was held on December 14, 2020. The 2030 Agenda
calls for countries to undertake Voluntary National Reviews (hereinafter
- VNR) to assess progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development
Goals (hereinafter - SDGs) at the national level.
Virtual
seminar began with a welcome speech by Mr. Amson Sibanda, Chief of the
National Strategies and Capacity Building Branch in the Division for
Sustainable Development Goals, DESA, and Mr. Nikolay Pomoshnikov, Acting
Head of the ESCAP Sub-Regional Office for North and Central Asia.
Representatives
of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and other countries spoke in a panel
discussion aimed at mutual learning and forming a common understanding
of implementation of the SDGs from the VNR perspective.
Thereby,
Ms. Natia Tsikaradze (National Coordinator for SDGs in Georgia) noted
that Georgia is committed to implementing sustainable development for
the period up to 2030 for all 17 SDGs. It was also noted that policy and
priorities of the Georgian Government are well aligned with the SDGs,
which makes them a solid basis for policy reforms in the country.
Integration level of nationalized documents with the SDGs is 96% in 36
sectoral strategies. Given the significant progress of the SDGs, Georgia
has prepared two SDG-related VNRs since 2015 and is considering to
prepare the 3rd VNR.
In turn, Mr. Elnur
Ibrahimov (Expert on Social-Economic Issues, Secretariat of National
Coordination Council on Sustainable Development of Azerbaijan) spoke
about Azerbaijan's achievements in implementation of the SDGs in the
country. Thanks to constant efforts to create a model of sustainable
development, the Government of Azerbaijan has approved Strategic Road
Map on socio-economic development of key sectors with short-term (until
2020), medium-term (until 2025) and long-term goals (after 2025).
According to the speaker, Azerbaijan was one of the first countries in
the region to undertake the MAPS mission (Mainstreaming, Acceleration
and Policy Support for the 2030 Agenda), aimed at creating a roadmap
that sets out concrete steps to accelerate implementation of the SDGs.
Azerbaijan has managed to prepare and present 2 VNRs, and plans to
present the 3rd VNR in 2021.
Representative of
Uzbekistan also shared his experience in development of SDGs. Mr.
Anvarkhon Umarkhodjaev (Head of the SDG Department, Ministry of Economic
Development and Poverty Reduction of Uzbekistan) spoke about the main
points of implementation of the SDGs. In 2015, the Government of
Uzbekistan committed itself to implementing the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development. In 2018, 16 national sustainable development
goals (SDGs) and 125 related targets were selected. In addition,
Interagency Coordination Council for implementation of the national SDG
roadmap was established. Web portal http://nsdg.stat.uz was launched,
where work t.organize the collection of SDG indicator data is underway.
During
panel discussions, each participating country actively shared their
cases and plans for the near future. For Kazakhstan, this platform
provided necessary information for development of the 2nd VNR, which
will be prepared at the end of 2022.
