The meeting was organized by the Universidad Pontificia Comilla, the Benemérita Universidad de Puebla (BUAP) and the Centro para el Aprendizaje en Evaluación y Resultados de América Latina y el Caribe, within the framework of the glocal Evaluation 2020 week, where more than 250 events took place, with the participation of 15 Latin America and the Caribbean countries.
Together with the Governance Coordinator of Cepei, Gemma Santana, 2030 Agenda Coordinator of the Presidency of the Republic of Mexico; Felipe Castro, Deputy Director of the Center for Sustainable Development Goals for Latin America (CODS); Carol Rask, Advisor on Human Rights and Development at the Danish Institute for Human Rights; Analilia Huitrón, Researcher at Comillas and BUAP University, and Juan Pablo Prado, Professor and Researcher at BUAP University, as a commentator, also participated in the session.
The crisis generated by COVID-19 increased the challenges to implement the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The pandemic has highlighted the inability of the current global governance structure to respond to global problems. Likewise, it has shown the failure of the economic model, which has not been able to reduce inequalities between or within countries. Due to this, the mitigation of the negative effects of COVID-19 gets harder.
The pandemic makes an urgent call for social, economic and institutional transformation. This is why, more than ever, it is important to continue with the SDGs implementation efforts, which will allow us to redesign a more inclusive, participatory and sustainable post-COVID-19 world.
The virtual seminar aimed to analyze the implications that COVID-19 has had on the evaluation and achievement of the SDGs, identifying the main challenges and presenting relevant evaluation experiences to mitigate its effects to accelerate and accomplish the Global Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Cepei’s Contribution
During his speech, Javier Surasky, Governance Coordinator of Cepei, offered a perspective on the implications of COVID-19 in the implementation of the SDGs, highlighting the main challenges the pandemic is leaving and will leave.
He assured that the 2030 Agenda must be understood and implemented as an integrated whole to define post-pandemic political strategies aligned with it, that allow to establish synergies with the Decade of Action and Delivery.
Likewise, he emphasized that the current crisis has demonstrated that economic and technical capacities are essential but are useless if we don´t have mechanisms that allow timely responses or actions.
For Surasky, we are on time to rethink sustainable development by allowing the 2030 Agenda to be its guide.
He also assured that in the current context, we must rethink the value of culture, and give greater relevance to multilateralism.
Regarding the importance of the 2030 Agenda to face the current health, social and economic ravages caused by COVID-19, the Governance Coordinator confessed he doesn’t know what the future will be like, but he is certain that the post-COVID-19 world must be much more supportive and must have the 2030 Agenda on the horizon.