The European Union is doing a Voluntary Review on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
The first ever EU-level Voluntary Review of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will take stock of EU’s internal and external implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Such reviews are one of the main follow-up and review mechanisms for the 2030 Agenda at global level. The EU’s Voluntary Review will be presented at the 2023 UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
This call for evidence is open for feedback until 1st December 2022, and ELFAC has already sent its opinion to the European Commission. Here is:
“Europeans don’t seem to trust SDGs that much: the 2030 Agenda is maybe utopian, but it represents a possibility anyway. As European Large Families Confederation (ELFAC), we wish that the researchers would consider more the family dimension “of” and “in” the SDGs. We believe that it is “through” and “with” the families that almost all SDGs could be reached. Just consider n.1 (end poverty) or n.3 (health and wellbeing), n.4 (quality education) or n.5 (gender equality), 5.4 (value invisible care work)… not to mention n.12 (sustainable consumption) and n.16 (peace and strong institutions). And, of course, n. 11 (sustainable cities): a city is sustainable and has a future only if it is a good place to live for every family, including the most vulnerable.
In our opinion, the European SDG local review should take into account the perspective of families with children as units when reviewing how local territories and cities tackle poverty (in all its form, including housing and social/cultual poverty), health and wellbeing, gender equality and so on. ELFAC is ready to share its competence and experience in order to build a local review that take families into account, collect data and check results.
This is particularly important for ELFAC’s main project, the European network of family friendly municipalities: we would like to give cities tools to improve and monitor their SDGs achievements as they set family friendly policies.”
