The Regional Planning Advisor for the Pacific Island Forum, Charmina Saili ,says there is a serious need to link human rights reporting to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Ms Saili made this comment in an interview with the Fiji Sun at the final day of the Regional High Level Dialogue on National Mechanisms for Implementation, Reporting and Follow-Up (NMIRF) at the Tanoa International Hotel in Nadi yesterday.

She said currently, human rights and the SDGs were separate.

“There is a need to link the human rights reporting and also the sustainable development reporting because right now they are very much separate,” she said.

“There are parallel processes happening at the national level and also at the regional level and that is the discussion that we had at the end. We need to better link the two processes so that we can reduce the duplication and ensure that SDGs can contribute to the human rights reporting.”

The Director-General for the Ministry of Justice and Community Services of Vanuatu, Dorosday Kenneth, said she supported this because these high level goals were related to realising everyone’s human rights.

“I think countries are now becoming more aware of the linkages that need to be understood and also it enables us to simplify our reporting mechanisms, but before we do

that we need to have some common agreement at the national level when we are negotiating with partners for their assistance,” she said.

“A lot of the SDGs are reflective of the human rights principles and countries would be able to look at what indicators we would have for both rather than different frameworks for SDGs as well as human rights.”

Meanwhile, Ms Saili added that there was emphasis on reporting rather than implementation, which wasn’t a new challenge for the Pacific.

“This is not new. It has been an ongoing challenge in the Pacific for decades and the fact that we are

required to do a lot of reporting against all these global commitments,” she said.

“I think it is important that we report, but it’s also important that we balance with implementations and that we prioritise what we report on and maybe focus more on the attention on the implementation of human rights.

“A lot of time is taken up with the reporting and also what we are trying to do is ask the global level, the UN system to try and simplify the reporting processes so that we don’t spend too much time on the reporting and maybe more time on the implementation.”

Ms Saili said a positive show from the Pacific was that the leaders were determined for the 2030-year agenda.

“We just streamline the reporting so that we don’t have to constantly report and that the support is going to be provided to the countries to strengthen their own country statistic systems so they can be able to report on their national priorities.

“And if that report can be provided to the development partners, but I think the emphasis should really be on national implementation,” she said.

Edited by Jonathan Bryce

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