ESCWA, in cooperation with the members of Regional Coordination Mechanism (RCM) and the League of Arab States (LAS), will organize the 2016 Arab Forum for Sustainable Development, in hotel Kempinski, Amman, from 29 to 30 May 2016.
The Forum opens at 10:00 AM, Sunday 29 May 2016, with speeches by Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf, Deputy Secretary General, League of Arab States Ahmed Ben Helli, Jordanian Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, H.E. Imad N. Fakhoury.
The Forum is a high-level meeting that will bring together ministers and senior government officials, regional organizations, civil society and private sector representatives, UN agencies and other international organizations.
The meeting is intended as a primary regional platform to discuss cohesive and coordinated implementation and follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the Arab region. The 2016 Forum is structured into four segments as follows:
Session I. unpacks the Agenda to ensure an in-depth understanding of complementarity and interdependency of the four components of Agenda 2030, crucial to defining priorities and adopting an integrated approach to development planning, implementation and follow-up and review.
Session II. provides a step-by-step overview of the process of implementing, reviewing and monitoring the new Agenda at national level with an aim to identify challenges in terms of SDG implementation and priority setting, follow up and review, as well as the tools to address these challenges.
Session III. discusses the modalities of a regional approach to complement national policy setting and planning in order to accelerate the achievement of SDGs.
Session IV. focuses on challenges and opportunities for implementation and monitoring of Agenda 2030 in the Arab region. The topics discussed will form core of the feedback provided to the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). The session will also focus on the future operational modalities of the AFSD.
The findings and recommendations, conveying key messages from the region, will be submitted to, and presented at, the HLPF (11-20 July 2016, New York) convened under the auspices of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), ensuring that Arab countries have a voice at global level. The report of the Forum will also be submitted to the ESCWA twenty-ninth Ministerial Session.
