Habitat Voices at HLPF 2021: Calling for a Socially and Environmentally Just Response to COVID-19

This year’s meeting of the HLPF (6 – 15 July 2021), will take place under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council, discussing ways to ensure a sustainable and resilient recovery from COVID-19 in order to realize the 2030 Agenda. 

The theme is “Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”. 

In this side-event HIC will present and launch a collective manifesto that highlights how responses to COVID-19 and its consequences can and need to uphold habitat-related human rights and build a socially and environmentally just present and future. 

HIC Side-Event at HLPF 2021 

The Habitat Voices Manifesto

The manifesto brings together the voices of civil society organisations worldwide – HIC Members active as social movements, grassroots organizations, NGOs, academia and more – those who have been at the forefront of taking rapid and bold responses to the coronavirus crisis.

The manifesto aligns multiple and seemingly diverse policy commitments into a post-pandemic vision that rallies civic, public and private-sector efforts around the 2030 Agenda. Panelists will represent civil society in Latin America, Europe, Middle East/North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa to speak with one voice on how to integrate current commitments, as well as states’ human rights obligations to build a better post-pandemic future.

Linking the Manifesto, SDGs and Voluntary National Reviews

The speakers will elaborate on the manifesto’s core messages and link these to essential principles and state obligations for transformative and redistributive recovery, with actions and commitments going beyond “resilience” by remedying pre-existing and emerging inequalities through equitable and sustainable development. These principles will be presented and linked to the commitments of the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda.

The speakers will invite participants to discuss a cross-SDG approach of that coincides also with the UN Food System Summit, the review of New Urban Agenda implementation, the current UN Decades for Family Farming and the Eradication of Colonialism, and the promises of the 2030 Agenda and the longer-term positioning of the UN Development System.

Programme

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