NGO Watch®

Opinion: Global Governance Can Implement “Universal” SDGs

September 14, 2017

Emilie Poisson of the nongovernmental organization Convergences has argued that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a “universal agenda” around which partnership-based global governance can develop in furtherance of an idealized global future.
Report Considers New Global Governance Structures

September 13, 2017

An extensive report from the Council on Foreign Relations examines how transnational institutions might sidestep the reassertion of nationalism in Western democracies to create a new order of global governance arising out of flexible structures influencing policy on human rights, the climate, the internet, and other global issues.
NGOs Rate G20 Countries' Progress on Climate Deal

September 01, 2017

A group of nongovernmental organizations recently released an index purporting to show the progress of individual countries in the Group of 20 (G20) in fulfilling the UN's 2015 Paris climate deal and finding that a substantial G20-backed shift in funding from fossil fuels to "clean" energy projects is needed to meet the Paris climate goals.
NGO Stresses Role of "Rights" Promotion in SDGs

August 31, 2017

Citing the role of "human rights defenders" in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by "defending the human rights of all people to live free from fear and free from want without discrimination," Amnesty International has called on governments to pass legislation protecting and supporting efforts by such actors.
Paper Seeks Rights-Focused Global Internet Governance

August 24, 2017

A paper from the Global Commission on Internet Governance, a body established by think tanks the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chatham House, explores how the future global governance of the internet must incorporate the international human rights agenda.
NGO: Trump Border Policies Violate Rights

August 21, 2017

Amnesty International has published a report asserting that US President Donald Trump's executive order establishing "hard line border control policies, including by building a wall along the border with Mexico, violates international laws on human rights and refugee protection by preventing asylum seekers fleeing "violence and persecution" from entering the country.
NGO: Fulfill Abortion "Rights" Under SDG Framework

August 17, 2017

The nongovernmental organization Amnesty International delivered an oral statement to the UN Human Rights Council in June calling on the body to push governments to contribute to the fulfillment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by recognizing women's "sexual and reproductive health" rights, which it interprets to include the right to an abortion.
NGO Warns of Risks in "Externalizing" Migration Policies

August 17, 2017

Amnesty International has published a briefing paper asserting that governments that "externalize" their migration policies, in partnership with other countries, risk violating a variety of global rights obligations and tend "to exacerbate the current unfair distribution of responsibility for protecting refugees between developed and developing countries."
NGO: US Climate Deal Withdrawal Violates Rights

August 10, 2017

In the lead-up to US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the UN's 2015 Paris climate deal, Amnesty International published a press release asserting that the President's planned withdrawal would precipiate a "human rights catastrophe of epic proportions," violating global "rights to life, to health, food, water and housing."
WWF: G7 Should Exceed Paris Climate Commitments

August 09, 2017

Manuel Pulgar-Vidal of the environmental activist organization WWF has called on Group of 7 countries (G7) to treat the agreed targets of the UN's 2015 Paris climate agreement as a baseline for ambitious, "immediate" action toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ramping up "climate finance" for poor countries.