Accountability has become a key focus of debate about the future direction and shape of the development agenda as the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (“MDGs”) draws closer. Consultations conducted by the United Nations Development Group have revealed widespread popular demand for “[the new post-2015 development] agenda [to] be built on human rights, and universal values of equality, justice and security” and for “a participatory framework for monitoring to ensure accountability during implementation.” Accountability in the post-2015 development agenda can be conceived both narrowly, as accountability for the attainment of all post-2015 goals, and more broadly as part of a need for “open, inclusive, accountable and effective governance” at the global, regional and national levels.
Accountability generally means, at the very least, that when one party makes a commitment or undertakes an obligation for the benefit of another party, the intended beneficiary can effectively call on the commitment-maker to comply with that commitment or obligation. The development landscape, however, involves a multitude of parties, both private and public. Accordingly, an effective post-2015 accountability framework must address all the relevant relationships and commitments. A focus on any single one of these accountability relationships (e.g. state-to-citizen, corporation-to-state, state-to-state, corporation-to-citizen etc.) is both difficult and counterproductive since it ignores the inter-related effects of different accountability relationships. For example, consider a donor-dependent state that must fulfill specific donor-set conditions in order to obtain funds necessary to provide services to its citizens. Although the state is accountableboth to the donor (for use of its money) and to the citizens (to fulfill their rights), it may feel pressure to prioritize donor demands over those of its citizens. Even for middle-income and developed states, the ability to fulfill their commitments to citizens is shaped and constrained by the global political economy in which a variety of non-state actors, whether international organizations or private entities, are influential. Thus, rather than addressing accountability relationships along only one dimension, the post-2015 development agenda must be accompanied by an integrated accountability framework that joins up and improves existing global, regional, national and local accountability mechanisms involving all relevant actors.
Given the many already-existing global, regional and national accountability mechanisms (see e.g. those set out in the Annexes), several of which monitor the implementation by states of commitments which are relevant to the post-2015 development agenda, a key question is whether a new accountability framework for the post-2015 commitments should be designed afresh, or whether it should integrate and improve upon existing regimes. This Report proceeds on the premise that an entirely new mechanism may place an unnecessary burden not only on states, which may already be experiencing an overload of obligations to different review bodies, but also on NGOs and citizen groups that often operate with very constrained resources. Integrating and improving upon existing mechanisms is not only more efficient but also allows for the integration and linkage of information from existing sources, thus increasing the credibility of the overall accountability system.
The UN General Assembly (“UNGA”) in 2013 adopted a resolution at the conclusion of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), which provides for the formation of a High-Level Political Forum (“Forum”). The High Level Forum is envisaged to serve, amongst other things, as an inter-state review of progress toward achieving the new sustainable development goals (“SDGs”). This Report takes the Forum as a starting point to illustrate how existing inter-state, national and sub-national accountability mechanisms could be linked up both to enhance the functioning of the Forum itself, as well as to allow for greater citizen participation in developing and monitoring the implementation of states’ post-2015 commitments. This Report proposes four overlapping principles that should guide the integrated global accountability framework for the post-2015 process: transparency; inclusiveness; deliberation and responsiveness. The report does not focus, at this stage, on national and other redress mechanisms, even though redress mechanisms are an extremely important dimension of accountability.
