The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are at the heart of the CPA's global mission

View from the CPA Secretary-General

A shared commitment to multilateralism lies at the heart of the CPA’s mission. I am delighted to join the Association as the Secretary-General at this critical and challenging time and I look forward to working with Parliamentarians across the Commonwealth in my new role. I am grateful to the members of the CPA Executive Committee for taking part in our first ever virtual meeting in August 2020. It proved very successful with a high level of participation by Parliamentarians from across the Commonwealth. The COVID-19 global pandemic has had a devastating impact on families and communities throughout the world. Our thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones as well as others who are living with or recovering from the virus. Rightly, we applaud the key workers whose hard work and dedication have saved and sustained so many people’slives. Applause, however, is not enough. Our shared challenge is to ensure that ‘Build Back Better’ is not an empty slogan but a genuine call to action.

The United Nations was born at the end of the Second World War with ambitious goals to achieve peace, uphold international law and defend human rights. As we mark the UN’s 75 th anniversary, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to reaffirm our support for multilateralism. Parliaments and Parliamentarians have a crucial part to play as we seek to learn lessons from the past 75 years to help inform us in shaping policies for the years to come.

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development providing a comprehensive and demanding set of targets to tackle poverty, inequality and climate change. UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has called for a ‘Decade of Action’ to deliver the SDGs by 2030. The global pandemic and its impact will make the job even harder, but I hope that this will serve to strengthen our resolve.

Mr Stephen Twigg, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association

In my previous role as Chair of the United Kingdom’s House of Commons International Development Committee, we looked at the role of Parliaments in the implementation of the SDGs. As part of this work we were keen to learn from international best practice. One of the countries which impressed us most was Uganda, including the important work of the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals. I hope we can do more to learn from each other in the months and years ahead so that Parliamentarians across the Commonwealth can be effective champions of the SDGs.

SDG5 is a commitment to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” and is an important tool for Parliamentarians to support them in ensuring a gender perspective in their work. The Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) network provides an invaluable platform reflecting the CPA’s commitment to gender equality. Under the leadership of the CWP Chairperson, Hon. Shandana Gulzar Khan, MNA (Pakistan), we aim to strengthen our work on gender through international partnerships with UN Women and others. Of course, it is incumbent on all Parliamentarians to promote SDG5 - both in their work on policy matters and in their organisational practices. Empowering women and girls is both a crucial goal in itself and is essential to the successful delivery of other Sustainable Development Goals including tackling extreme poverty (Goal One), promoting access to high quality education for all (Goal Four) and achieving peace, justice and strong institutions (Goal 16).

SDG16 includes a commitment to “build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” This chimes well with the core mission of the CPA as we seek to strengthen the important role of Parliaments and Parliamentarians.

In particular, the CPA’s Recommended Benchmarks for Democratic Legislatures have proved themselves a vitally important tool (www.cpahq.org/cpahq/benchmarks). In July 2020, I was delighted to attend the first ever virtual CPA Post-Election Seminar with the newly elected House of Assembly in Anguilla. The Seminar was a huge success and built upon Anguilla’s selfassessment earlier this year using the CPA Benchmarks. Similar assessments have been undertaken, over the past two years, by Parliaments and CPA Branches including Ghana, Malaysia, Pakistan, Grenada, Belize, Kenya and South Africa. I look forward to working with other Parliaments across the Commonwealth to ensure that the CPA family contributes fully to the implementation of Goal 16.

SDG4 aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” For me, education has always been a high priority and I know that this view is shared by Parliamentarians across the Commonwealth. Engagement with young people is a vital element of a healthy democracy – both in preparing children and young people for their future as adult citizens and listening to them now as young citizens. I hope to build upon the work which the CPA has long undertaken to work with young people across the Commonwealth.

SDG13 commits the international community to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.” Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have long been recognised as a priority for sustainable development. It is now almost three decades since the 1992 Rio UN Conference on the Environment and Development at which SIDS were identified as a ‘special case’ as they often bear the brunt of global challenges like climate change and environmental degradation. Earlier this year, in Malta, we saw the Chairperson of the CPA Small Branches Network and Speaker of the Cook Islands, Hon. Niki Rattle, launch the CPA Small Branches Climate Change Toolkit (www.cpahq.org/cpahq/SBclimatechange). It is an impressive piece of work drawing upon collaborations with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi in 2018 and work undertaken by CPA Small Branches Parliamentarians who attended the workshop on climate change at the 37 th CPA Small Branches Conference in Kampala, Uganda in September 2019.

In July 2020, I was pleased to attend one of two webinars hosted jointly by the CPA Small Branches Network and UNESCO on the subject of ‘The Role of SIDS, Legislators and Decision- Makers on Sustainable Development and Agenda 2030: Biodiversity’. I am confident that there is great scope for us to develop this important work further in partnership with the United Nations and others.

The driving purpose of the SDGs is to “leave no-one behind”. People with disabilities face exclusion, discrimination, stigma and prejudice. A good test of the impact of Agenda 2030 will be to look at how far the lives of people with disabilities improve. Disability-inclusion is addressed in several of the Goals including SDG4 on education, SDG8 on inclusive and sustainable economic growth and SDG10 on inequality. 'Nothing about us without us’ is a powerful slogan with a centuries-long tradition which has become a guiding principle of the disability rights movement.

The development of the CPA Parliamentarians with Disabilities (CPwD) network will provide an important platform to ensure that the CPA is truly promoting disability-inclusion, both in how we engage our Members and how we support all Parliamentarians to promote awareness and challenge the exclusion of people with disabilities in politics, the economy and wider society.

In recent months, the Black Lives Matter movement has focussed the world’s attention on the importance of tackling racism. As our CPA Chairperson, Hon. Emilia Monjowa Lifaka, said in her powerful statement on the 2020 International Day of Parliamentarism with reference to Black Lives Matter: “What this has reinforced in me, is that nobody should be left behind, nobody should be silenced because of the colour of their skin, their gender, age, ethnicity, religion, language, culture, sexuality or abilities.”

That commitment to inclusion and diversity lies at the heart of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and it is central to the mission, programmes and governance of the CPA itself. As work begins on the next phase of the CPA’s strategic planning, I welcome the opportunity to work with CPA Branches, Regions, Networks and individual Parliamentarians across the CPA family to help ensure that we make our contribution to the UN’s Agenda 2030.