4th open working group on sustainable development goals to kick off in New York on Monday!

It is our pleasure to introduce you the IFMSA delegation to the 4th open working group (OWG) on sustainable development goals (SDGs), to kick off at the United-Nations Headquarters in New York, on June 17th 2013. As we draw closer to the meeting, the IFMSA delegation makes final preparations to make sure our participation is valuable and meaningful as well as a good representation for IFMSA and youth everywhere.

Who we are
We are a bunch of enthusiastic IFMSA members from all over the world, with various backgrounds, ready to advocate for health and youth issues, and to ensure that the voice of medical students worldwide is well-heard by stakeholders.

Why a meeting on sustainable development goals
Last June, Rio de Janeiro welcomed the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20. In the outcome document The Future We Want, The present member states agreed on launching a process to develop a set of sustainable development goals (SDGs), while being pretty vague and only stating that those goals should be “limited in number, aspirational and easy to communicate”. Above all, those goals should balanced the three dimensions of sustainable development: society, environment and economy. On paper, sustainable development is pretty cool: it aims to meet the needs of the present, such as poverty reduction and economic growth, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, for example environmental protection and intergenerational equity (Brundtland, 1987). But it gets a bit more challenging when we try to put policies in place. To learn more on sustainable development, we suggest you to take a look at the UN Division for Sustainable Development (DSD) at : http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/.

So after this huge meeting in Rio where IFMSA sent a delegation, an open working group was mandated by the General Assembly to prepare a proposal on the SDGs that would be sensitive of the UN development agenda beyond 2015. After being officially established on January 22nd 2013, the open working group decided of its own innovative modalities to ensure the full involvement of relevant stakeholders and civil society, including the Major Group of Children and Youth (MGCY), with which IFMSA has collaborated many times in the past. So far, the group has met thrice and will meet for a fourth time between June 17th-19th to focus especially on health and population dynamics, social protection, youth, and education.

Why is this meeting important
The general idea of this meeting is that the contributions made in this forum will play a pivotal role in shaping the SDGs and what goes into them for the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons to review. The SDGs will be what we strive towards, tackling various issues in health, climate change, social protection, education, and youth among many others. We want to make sure that important issues we cherish are not missed within these broad topics. A lot has been brought up of concern with other groups also participating in the MGCY. With UNFPA and UNICEF amongst others sending big and strong delegations, this 4th OWG meeting is likely to be the biggest so far.

What we will do
Our group will be representing IFMSA at this meeting, where we are hoping to contribute on interventions regarding health and youth issues. We have also been working on drafting specific statements on different agenda items. We will be using IFMSA various policy statements including the last we adopted in March 2013 on future development goals. We will advocate for what we know best: universal health care, health in all policies, sexual and reproductive rights, non-communicable diseases including mental health, climate change and health co-benefits of sustainable development. Furthermore, we will also participate in MGCY Mini Youth Blast happening today (June 16th) where we will facilitate sessions, contribute to others, strategize for the meeting ahead, as well as in numerous side-events.

Overall, we hope that we will be able to trigger discussions, both within and outside of IFMSA, to play an active role in work on health beyond 2015 and to help shape the future we want. As Richard Horton from the Lancet recently wrote, we have about 30 months to get this right.

We will be sending regular updates on twitter, using the hashtag #IFMSASDG. And we want you to engage with us! Send us a tweet, comment on our IFMSA blog entries, and most of all make sure you get involved in the discussions on the future we want!

Delegation Meeting in Bryant Park on Saturday June 15th

Until next time,

Claudel P-Desrosiers and Rispah Walumbe
On behalf of the delegation: Mike Kalmus-Eliasz, Anneleen Boel, Neil De La Plante, Gerald Makuka, and Kimberly Golding Williams.

For more on the meeting: http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org

Emerging Voices Perspective at the 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion: Health in all Policies–Helsinki, Finland

Our vision for Health Promotion is ensuring that Health in all Policies (HiAP) is the way forward.

We want to take part in creating a world that collaborates across sectors to achieve the health and well being of all people.

I would like to begin by saying that, yes, that’s me–I am one of the flooders of the message board, but I promise to keep off twitter during this session.

Really thank-you to the organizers, Finland and the WHO for creating this space, as many of us felt engaged throughout this meeting because we were able to share our ideas and even have dialogue with the mother of health promotion.

I was invited here to represent my organization—the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations, which collectively represents more than 1.3 million future healthcare professionals on all continents in over 100 countries.

I am therefore standing here today as voice of the youth, the voice of those who will one day be in your shoes, the voice of those who want to be a part of the decisions that are made today, in order to make this world more sustainable.

Before moving forward, I would like to briefly reflect…

What truly resonated with us, the young voices, is that we should not be afraid of making mistakes and that our focus should be on learning, being creative and innovative as we strive for Health in all Policies, especially as we build bridges and collaborate with other sectors—the process will be challenging, requiring great commitment, as well as partnerships to address the obstacles of an uncharted territory, where social determinants of health, corporate interests and subversive politics, are the greatest offenders of health and well-being. 

We have to be bold, but bold together, with all the tools, including the bag of tricks,—to support a long-term action plan for HiAP.

Young people are agents of change in placing HiAP into action – and we want to join hands with you to move into a brighter, healthier future. I wanted to provide a few concrete examples of how we imagine ourselves as part of this process:

1. We’re great advocates—we are both creative, motivated, usually know about the latest gadgets and are unafraid of diving into unknown territory.

Just a three weeks ago, simultaneously to the world health assembly, there was another big event happening in Geneva—the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2013. For the first time in history IFMSA attended with a delegation at this UN-High Level Meeting. We had together with the governments, UN departments, parliamentary’s and NGOs attending a shared goal: A goal of improving health outcomes before, during and after emergencies and disasters. From the over 3500 participants at the Global Platform there were only three students, however by working together with the (WHO) delegation, we raised the fact that health is a human right and it is a nations and the international societies responsibility to ensure and needs to be a primary focus in a post-2015 disaster risk reduction framework.

We plan to worth with other youth groups to increase resilience in our communities.

We can push open windows of opportunities and gather political will for HiAP—through our youth networks and with our partners on increasing awareness and understanding for HiAP.  

2. We want to be further involved and lead by example

Within an enabling environment, young people can lay the foundation for further multi-sectorial collaboration.

Specifically, at our early stages of education and training, there is an opportunity to capacity build for leaders within the health and other sectors on a mindset which is systems oriented, more multi-disciplinary and able to process in an interconnected manner for better social, environmental and health outcomes.

E.g. We held a Pre-workshop for youth for the 66^th WHA that brought together young people that are working on health issues from all disciplines to create a strategy on specific issues in order to be more effective during the WHA—by not only voicing our perspective, but also seeking out opportunities for direct input into the resolutions, reports and processes of the WHA.    During that time we had dialogue with different countries and learned about the process—reached out to every region.

3. We are furthering HiAP.

HiAP is something that is very close to our hearts as young students. IFMSA started working on advocacy and capacity building on the importance of addressing social determinants of health. We began with  passing a policy statement to guide our activities on SDH and then established an IFMSA Global Health Equity Initiative that conducts training for new SDH champions—we have trained more than 100 students on SDH. We also were present at the WC on SDH in Rio in 2001, where we circulated an alternative students’ perspective. We support initiatives of students on SDH, UHC, and HiaP is in our advocacy and educational priorities, as we support multi-sectoral collaboration.

We are able to use our knowledge, network and tools to evaluate and provide feedback to the HiAP process.

In closing, three main recommendations that I would have is:

1. Get young people involved in a meaningful, participatory way in every stage and level (global, regional, national, local) in your multi-sectorial work.

Whether it is the first dialogue that your government has with agriculture or education sector, having a young person on board not only builds capacity, but also their perspective might provide an innovative approach.

2. Provide young people the space to explore complex problems/issues, by challenging institutions and channeling research funding for focusing on more innovative, multi-disciplinary work.

3. Young people have vast networks and are often already exploring these issues—think about how you can create supportive partnerships with youth organizations.

Investing in young people is investing in a more sustainable future for health in all policies.

 

On behalf of the Young People at the 8GCHP!

 

Roopa Dhatt

IFMSA President 2012/13

Link to the video of Emerging Voices:

Emerging Voices at 8GCHP

Link to the Conference Statement: http://www.videonet.fi/who/20130614/2/Statement.pdf

Link to the live streaming record:

http://www.videonet.fi/who/20130614/1/

Reflections on HLP report on post 2015.

Last Friday the much awaited report of the UN High Level Panel on Post 2015 was launched. This report was supposed to set out advice for the UN Secretary General ‘on a bold and at the same time practical development agenda beyond 2015’. Such an ambitious report was always going to spark controversy; we do not envy Dr Homi Kharas (the reports’ lead author) who had to reconcile the interests of the 32 panelists alongside those of the three co-chairs. The report sets out what is call an illustrative framework of goals and targets which aim to eradicate extreme poverty.

Before we go into what there is to like and not like about the report we thought we would provide a quick refresher on the process this far. In July last year Ban Ki Moon announced the creation of a High Level Panel to examine the lessons of the MDGs and set out a framework for a new set of goals.  The panel met a number of times in New York as well as meetings in London and Monrovia focussing on poverty at the household and national levels; with a meeting in Bali focussing on thematic priorities, means of implementation and global partnerships. Each of these meetings produced a communiqué of how the panel saw the report shaping up so far. At each meeting there was civil society outreach and IFMSA took part in both the London and Bali meetings (you can read an intervention from Bali here).

 

So what is actually in the report?

The report was always going to be principles based, therefore on a lot of things there are a lack of detailed proposals. The fact it wishes to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 in the context of Sustainable Development is definitely a positive sign. There were some real fears that it would not pay enough attention to the environment. The messages that came out Rio+20 with regards to Sustainable Development were definitely listened to by the panel, there is even reference to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.  That being said there is still a lack of focus on planetary boundaries and sustained economic growth is given primacy in the report.

The focus on it being data driven and based on disaggregated is also clearly a positive step. Big data needs to drive the future of global development. But there is no clear strategy for obtaining this data, also as we will see some of the goals are not clearly orientated towards setting up adequate surveillance systems.

Illustrative framework

The thematic priority areas definitively have some positive steps, there is a much greater focus on environment than there was with the MDGs. There is also an explicit target on the global climate. So in terms of items to work with as a civil society organisations there is quite a bit here. One glaring omission in terms of thematic priorities is a lack of a specific goal on inequality or inclusion of this within a goal on poverty. Social inequality has a huge impact on health and rising wealth differentials are deeply concerning. Whilst a focus on disaggregated data goes someway to addressing this it is not in itself enough and countries should focus on efforts to make their GINI co-effecients more favourable.

Health

This is probably the weakest area of the report compared to other areas. Where on earth is Universal Health Coverage?  This clearly is a strong component of what was in the Botswana. This section strikes me as the MDGs all over again with NCDs tacked on at the end. The focus purely on outcome targets leads to a re-verticalisation of health, we are missing things such as mental health and other key issues. This is instead of a focus on health systems strengthening and primary care. The lack of a coherent health care system means it will be difficult to gather data on progress towards these goals at all, let alone the disaggregated data we need.

For those in the Sexual and Reproductive health rights community they will probably be happy with a lot of the report, there is also a strong goal on gender equality including things such as ending child marriage. This was never really an issue with the High-Level Panel as these goals always enjoyed a lot of support from the UN Secretary General and all three of the co-chairs, though not by many member states. To really push these goals in the political processes, this community will need to join up with the rest of the health community and act less in isolation. Access to comprehensive sexuality education and contraception are critical to development, but they must be integrated into universally accessible health systems as a whole to avoid slipping back into the MDG trap of siloization.

Means of Implementation

Fortunately this out dated bit on UN Jargon has been dropped from the report, that was a concession to civil society, as during the Bali meeting many people were confused by what it actually means. For those less familiar with the jargon this is the nitty gritty stuff such as how we pay for all this, what role with tech transfer have and how will trade be regulated. Whilst the focus on tax evasion and fossil fuel subsidies is a good start, there is no real focus on new sources of revenue. The report does call for a global conference on financing for sustainable development, in fact there was already a mandate from Rio+20. Clearly there is more work to be done here and the health community have a key role in articulating the impact of these issues on health.

What impact will it have?

This is hard to say with any certainty, and to a certain extent is down to civil society picking up the report and using the parts they like. A number of member states have hinted that they are not keen on the report. Many of those who are not happy with it are annoyed due to the process as much as anything else. The report was developed by a panel of experts, it was not driven by member states, as opposed to the SDG OWG, so it is up to countries to take it or leave it. What is clear is that any future set of goals will have to be owned by countries not just the UN secretariat.

What is next?

The future of post 2015 is hard to say with any 100% certainty, the corridors in the UN are all talking about the Sustainable Development goal open working group. Their next meeting is partially focused on health and IFMSA will be there in force, ready to respond as this process unfolds. This is a chance to put UHC back on the table and educate negotiators about the broad cross cutting nature of health, rather than it just being a number of health related outcome targets focussed primarily on mortality.

We would love to hear your opinions and comments on the HLP report, what do you like and not like.  Please share your opinions below or tweet them to #IFMSAHLP.