posted by Jolene McCall
In our ongoing coverage of the move from the MDGs to SDGs, including our recent “In the News” piece, “MDGs to SDGs – New Goals, Similar Failings?”, we aim to raise questions about the ability of development initiatives to address poverty. In a recent article featured in Pambazuka News titled, “Financing for Development: A Pan-African perspective”, the author, Odomaro Mubangizi, highlights a number of development issues the SDGs will seek to address while also asking, “Will the SDGs be another list of goals for the next 15 years?”
Additionally, following the third UN Financing for Development (FFD3) summit in Addis Ababa, and in anticipation of next year’s World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), other publications have raised questions regarding the purpose, if any, summits serve, and the global structure of aid and development work, including how a group calling themselves the G77 (“developing” states) are asking the UN to revise the codes that allow multinationals from “developed” states to pay no taxes when doing business in their countries. Such an initiative, if carried through with effective tax reform, could obviously have a great impact on the work and purpose of the humanitarian aid industry vis-a-vis states (see also our recent post on inequalities in the aid industry). Such issues are critical to understand in the context of the move from the MDGs to the SDGs, because fairness in tax codes is critical to “sustainability.”