By Kabuye Ronald
Multi sectorial stakeholders have called for the localization of all aspects that concern the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs and the full implementation of the policies that accelerate its achievement by the year 2030.
The resolutions were reached at during the United Nations Association Uganda (UNAUganda) Multi stakeholder engagement hold on Monday in Kampala on accelerating SDGs especially SDG 5, on Gender Equality and SDG 13, on climate action.
Richard Baguma Tinkansimire, UNAUganda Secretary General said that they have realized that there is huge gap in data and research in the country and within the regional about the priority areas they must go to in order to accelerate the implementation of SDGs.
Baguma said that the country’s data and research is not either being collected or what is being collected is not being disseminated to those who do policy, program and who allocate budget hence they need to quickly translate the research they have into easy to understand but also easy to implement decisions, programs and policies.
The meeting also adopted the idea of taking the agenda of development from the Centre and boardrooms to the grassroots, targeting the formal and informal sectors which have the largest numbers of population.
They further called for inclusion of the women, youth and people with special needs much closer to the planning, processing, reporting, implementation and evaluation processes.
Hon. Ssalongo, Kakembo Mike Mbwatekamwa, a member of parliament representing Entebbe Municipality called for the political will in implementation of the available laws and policies asserting that it’s one of the major thing failing the achievements of SDGs especially on Climate action.
“We need government political will in action. I want to see the president biting. We have government agencies mandated to protect the environment but when you assess them you find that it’s them aiding the destruction of forests and the polluting of the environment yet they are directly under president supervision since it’s him who appoints the heads.
We have enough laws but the implementation is poor and it’s the president to implement thus we only lack political will.” Said Hon. Kakembo
Sam Gombya, the counselor representing People with Disability at Kampala Central Division said that achievement of the SDGs requires to bring on board each and everybody irrespective of their gender or status.
Wanyana Irene Ssali, the project manager on Climate Action at Makerere University School of Public Health said that they must collaborate with everyone especially on implementation. And also identify the positive linkages and negative impacts before implementation since some SDGs connect to one another giving an example of ending Poverty and ending hunger.
It should be noted that the SDGs are the world’s blueprint to ending poverty, hunger, climate change and putting everybody to the best level of development by 2030. However, the world is moving at a slow speed in the area of development, development financing, climate stabilization, developing and balancing gender which leaves a questions of whether what is aimed at will be achieved by the end of the remaining seven years.
