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.
