Agenda 2030: Readout from the 2023 High Level Political Forum
Picture: Local and Regional Governments’ Day during 2023 HLPF
The High Level Political Forum (HLPF) is the central United Nations platform for the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the global level, which meets annually in July. This year, SDG 11 (‘sustainable cities and communities’) was under review. Below an overview of some of the key highlights:
On the Local and Regional Governments’ Day, the Global Taskforce on Local and Regional Governments released its 7th Report to the HLPF. The report includes 5 thematic papers that zoom in on how local and regional governments (LRGs) advance different dimensions of SDG 11. Cities that joined the Call to Local Action for Migrants and Refugees have been included throughout the different papers, illustrating the crosscutting nature of migration and displacement across local policies on housing, access to health care, environmental justice and participation.
UN Habitat released its SDG 11 Synthesis Report, which considers human mobility as helping to make a ‘transformative shift for a better urban future’, including through the achievement of the Migration and Refugee Compacts. To do so, the report states, LRGs need a role in the design and implementation of responses to human mobility. The report also references the Call to Local Action for Migrants and Refugees as a ‘repository of ready-to-be-scaled solutions to further both Compacts’. (p. 156)
IOM and UNDP hosted an HLPF Side Event:‘ Leveraging Human Mobility to Rescue the 2030 Agenda and Accelerate the SDGs’. At the HLPF, IOM also called on governments and stakeholders to take six “Accelerating Actions” to meet the SDGs, including increasing support for urban development planning and taking action on climate migration.