Change the System, Shift the Power!
Reclaiming the Development Agenda for the People,
Advancing Development Justice in Asia and the Pacific

Position Paper of the Asia Pacific Regional CSO Engagement Mechanism (APRCEM)
on the theme of the High Level Political Forum 2025

 

  1. Chapeau  

 

We, the representatives of civil society and peoples’ organisations, organised as 17 constituencies and 5 subregions from 38 countries in Asia and the Pacific, united in our commitment to Development Justice, urge member states to seize this moment of political and economic rupture to deliver the system change necessary for a more just and sustainable future.

As the 2025 Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) meets, the vision of Sustainable Development, adopted a decade ago, is in tatters. No goals are on track and many targets, particularly in relation to the climate crisis, decent work, inequality, peace, gender equality, governance and partnerships have regressed. In recent weeks we have witnessed an assault on international solidarity, peoples’ rights, women’s human rights, and civic spaces for democratic dialogue and accountability. Many of the targets that are on track either increase the profitability of multinational corporations (like mobile phone and internet access, aid for trade, adults with bank accounts), or are low in ambition (like poverty levels). It’s no surprise that the only goal where all targets have made progress is Goal 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.

The barriers to progressing on the SDGs are not the lack of knowledge, data, or even lack of available finances. The problem is a complete lack of political will, perpetuating the business-as-usual model, and an unshakeable commitment to further the interests of multinational corporations and billionaires at the expense of people and the planet. While it has taken a decade to make miniscule progress on the SDGs, it took only a few days to rip up the existing international rules – perversely proving that radical policy shifts are possible when there is political will. Corporations that willingly signed on to the UN Global Compact have rapidly discarded gender and diversity commitments for political and economic expediency. Unregulated AI and data monopolisation will further deepen inequalities and present existential threats. 

Some governments have recognised that the neoliberal rules masquerading as development for the past 30 years are deeply unpopular. Yet the alternative they have presented is a form of economic nationalism that puts profits before people and the planet. We accept that tariffs, quotas and duties can play a beneficial role in industrial policy. Yet we demand industrial policies designed to foster unionised jobs and redistribute wealth, power and resources more equitably. We demand global rules that recognise the particular needs of low income countries to develop industries and sectors that can benefit their economies. We demand a redistributive global tax system that eliminates tax avoidance, curbs all forms of illicit financial flows, and delivers sufficient resources to build the quality public services needed for all to enjoy universal public health and social protection, public education, clean water, renewable energies, transport, and other essential services for all to eliminate gender and social inequalities while enhancing climate resilience. We applaud the countries that championed a UN Tax Body and Convention and see this as significant progress towards a progressive future. 

We refuse to let another decade go by where political and economic power converge, robbing people of their human rights, dignity, diversity, democratic space and potential to live safely on this planet. Now is the time for international solidarity, the time to defend democracy and human rights, the time to create economies centered around care, not profits, the time to dismantle patriarchy and to commit to peace, the time for a global digital order that is democratic, participatory, inclusive, humane, and ecologically just and the time to redistribute global power for a more just and responsive multilateralism.

It’s time for Development Justice. Join Us.

 

  1. Regional Implementation and Progress

 

With only five years left until the 2030 timeline, achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remains elusive. UNESCAP’s SDG Progress Report 2025 shows that only 16 out of the 117 targets with data are on track to be achieved by 2030, while 18 show regressive trends requiring urgent reversal. It also states the continuing regression in SDG 13, with insufficient data to measure the progress on SDGs 5 and 16, and lagging behind the rest of the world in SDGs 4, 8, 13, 14 and 17 pose a precarious scenario. 

 

The report also reflects that half of the targets are behind while the other half is difficult to measure due to insufficient data, notwithstanding the post-COVID and other emergent crises. The lack of data two-thirds into the timeline is a stark reflection of the level of governmental commitment, marred by lack of capacity and political will,  to monitor the SDGs. Insufficient data to measure progress in critical areas such as Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (SDG 16) ignores structural and systemic barriers despite the recent multilateral consensus on the need for global governance reforms in the Pact for the Future. 

 

Goals under review depict a bleak picture. SDG 3 continues to lackluster on indicator 3.8.2 Household expenditures on health despite showing some progress in the aftermath of COVID 19. Increased privatization of healthcare has escalated the out-of-pocket expenditures while reducing accessibility of the poorest and most vulnerable. Reduced public spending in healthcare has worsened the progress on Indicator 3.c.1 Health worker density and distribution, where skilled professionals often prioritize migration to global north for better compensations and working countries in the care work industries creating shortage in the south.  

 

In SDG 5, half of the targets continue to be immeasurable due to insufficient data particularly in assessing unpaid care work and addressing violence against women and early marriage. Low progress on indicator 5.1.1 Gender parity in labour force participation is a result of more women dropping from the workforce to perform care duties at home. This has also increased gender-based violence among women mostly stuck with their abusers at home due to economic dependence. 

 

The regression in SDG 8 is also alarming with little progress on indicator 8.5.2 Unemployment Rate, and regressions in indicators 8.8.2 Compliance with labour rights, 8.8.1 Occupational injuries and 8.4.1 Material footprint. In the region, we have observed the increasing informalization of work, especially among young and older women, has exposed them to precarious working conditions, unstable income and even violence in the absence of safety nets. The persistent job crisis among vulnerable communities, including persons with disabilities, is a stark reminder of systemic exclusion and unequal opportunities. 

 

SDG 14 is also in regression with negative trends in indicator 14.7.1 Sustainable fisheries as a percentage of GDP, disproportionately affecting many economies relying on fisheries with the incidence of illegal and unsustainable fishing. In the region, small fisherfolks are the most underserved and underlooked sector, at odds with the big fishers, and often ignored by national as well as multilateral policies concerned with governing aquaculture, coastlines and territorial waters leaving millions behind. 

 

SDG 17 continues to regress on several indicators including ODA, domestic resource mobilization, debt resolution, and data governance. There is progress on 17.8.1 indicator focusing on internet users but it does not cover the digital divide of marginalized sectors or governance of technologies across borders. Asian Pacific countries’ debt reaching almost $22 trillion in 2024 is a critical indicator of lack of progress in the SDGs in the absence of adequate fiscal space or a comprehensive debt resolution mechanism. Shrinking democratic spaces as well as the securitization narratives continue to impede civil society’s crucial contribution to partnerships for sustainable development in the region. 

 

UNESCAP’s SDG Progress Report 2025 does not project an achievement timeline but with only a percentage point increase in data availability, from 53% in 2024 to 54% in 2025, depicts a sobering picture with the SDGs achievement not in sight before 2060 without factoring the emergent crises. 

 

  • Goals under review


  • SDG 3: Health and Well-being

 

Progress towards SDG 3 on good health and well-being, continues to be stunted in the Asia Pacific region, with almost all targets not on track across all major health priorities including reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health; communicable and noncommunicable diseases; universal health coverage; and access for all to safe, effective, quality and affordable medicines and vaccines. Despite the claims of progress towards maternal mortality reduction, there has been no significant progress since 2015 in the region. The impact of COVID-19 recovery, the rise of anti-rights and anti-gender ideologies, the most recent trend of defunding development assistance for gender equality and health, the impact of austerity measures in debt-ridden countries, deprioritizing health spending, and poor domestic resource allocation on health, adding to health systems,  are critical factors impeding the region’s progress towards good health and well-being for all.

 

Recommendations:

  1. Ensure the right to health is recognized as a fundamental human right across countries in the region, focusing timely and appropriate health care, and the underlying determinants of health in line with the principles of policy coherence and leaving no one behind.
  2. Ensure universal public health coverage is people centered, rights based, gender transformative, and scientifically evidenced, for all without any condition or exclusion. The essential health services package should be comprehensive, covering health services, including sexual and reproductive health services, as well as  mental health services, across the life course, with particular attention to women in reproductive age, older women, adolescent girls, persons with disability, indigenous peoples, community discriminated on work and descent,gender diverse communities, older people, young people, migrant workers, undocumented migrants, refugees, women living with HIV, sex workers , people who use drugs, people in closed settings, among others. 
  3. Governments should ensure access to safe and comprehensive abortion care and post abortion care, including self-managed medical abortion, as part of health policy, ensuring that commodities on the Essential Medicines list are available and are of quality, and that women have access to quality accurate information. 
  4. Governments should ensure that services and resources are available and accessible for victims and/or survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) while ensuring that SGBV services are included in the ‘essential services’ category, such as food, hygiene and health services.
  5. Ensure increased public investments in the health sector, through reforms in corporate tax, simplification of income tax and reducing indirect taxes for people engaged in the informal sector. Governments should introduce wealth, inheritance and gift taxes to redistribute wealth and increase public health expenditures in line with Abuja Declaration of OAU, 2000. 
  6. Fulfilment of ODA commitments focused on healthcare is critical, especially for NCD, AIDS, TB and Malaria, reckoning the embargos adversely affecting healthcare outcomes. 
  7. Mobilize multilateral will to prevent antimicrobial resistance using the One Health approach. All people must receive early and accurate diagnosis and prompt and correct treatment for communicable and non- communicable diseases, along with health and social support, without any exception – in a rights-based manner. 
  8. All forms of industry interference in and corporate capture of public health policy must end, especially Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS) of the WTO on all medicines, medical devices and other medical products to suspend future and current patents on all such products, for universal healthcare coverage. 
  9. Through social dialogue with health worker unions, create national health worker policies designed to attract and retain a public health workforce that includes agreed health worker to patient ratios, addresses the gender pay gap in the health and care sectors resulting from the historic devaluation of care work, recognises community health workers as public health workers entitled to regular wages and social protection and includes measures to reduce overwork, stress, discrimination and occupational health and safety risks. 
  10. Implement chemical safety standards and monitoring systems for toxic chemicals, including pesticide use and emission, plastic production and waste, air and water quality.
  11. Ensure health equity for persons with disabilities and other vulnerable populations by fostering inclusive policies, strengthening healthcare systems, and ensuring universal access to essential services. 

 

  • SDG 5: Gender Equality 

 

Gender inequality is widespread in Asia and the Pacific. Large gaps remain in protecting the rights of women and girls in all their diversity in all areas of law and across the lifecourse. Only one country guarantees equal rights to land ownership. Many women and girls and gender diverse people do not enjoy full sexual and reproductive health care, rights and agency. Violence against women in all their diversity and gender-diverse people remains pervasive. Harmful traditional practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) severely impacting women and girls, with UNICEF 2023 estimates suggesting that nearly half of all child brides live in South Asia (45 per cent) and UNFPA estimating that FGM/C affects an estimated 80 million. Women and girls continue to bear a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work. This affects access to education, and underpins women’s significantly lower labour force participation rates compared to men, with Asia and the Pacific the only region where women’s labor force participation is decreasing. This drives gendered poverty and inequality, with older women experiencing the cumulative impact of disadvantage over the lifecourse. Climate change and other economic and social shocks, including the escalation of wars and conflict, are likely to worsen this picture. Shifting political and funding attention to address these realities is constrained by women’s under-representation in parliament – 21.4 percent in 2024 vs. the global average of 27 percent and far from the target of parity by 2030, especially in the Pacific where representation is the lowest globally at 8.4 percent. Yet with limited data on SDG 5, and wide gaps in gender data generally, much is unknown about gender inequalities. Lived realities are too often invisible in the data informing priorities, policies, decision-making and resourcing. Gender equality funding remains vastly less than required to realise commitments. The 2024 OECD Development Financing for Gender Equality showed the first decline in funding for gender equality in a decade, before the most recent announcements of cuts to gender equality, with real and significant implications for rights and lives. As authoritarian power holders seek to unravel gains in gender equality, urgent action is needed.

 

Recommendations: 

 

  1. Establish comprehensive legal frameworks with effective implementation systems and robust accountability mechanisms to drive tangible gender equality outcomes.
  2. Governments, regional organizations, intergovernmental agencies, and civil society must actively counter attempts to reverse progress on gender equality, and safeguard international and regional conventions, agreements, frameworks, and laws that affirm equal rights and dignity for all. 
  3. Governments should give particular attention to safeguarding the rights and dignity of all workers, decriminalising sex work, enacting or strengthening labor laws to guarantee fair living wages, job security, and paid parental and family leave, as well as enhancing women’s equal access to land and productive resources.
  4. Governments should protect and promote civic space, ensure freedom of expression and association and right to organize, and prevent the criminalization of women and SOGIESC human rights defenders activists. 
  5. Governments should expand gender quotas to ensure equitable political representation and meaningful participation of diverse women and girls and gender-diverse people in shaping decisions that affect their lives at all levels of decision making to ensure that policies, strategies and programs are reflective of their lived realities. 
  6. Government should ensure gender-responsive budgeting, end austerity measures and prioritise, expand and connect public investments that address the unpaid care burden of women and girls, providing comprehensive social protection systems that reach informal, migrant, refugee and domestic workers, and ensuring equitable access to essential services including  affordable accessible and culturally appropriate public childcare. 
  7. Governments and organisations of all kinds must take immediate, sustained action to eliminate harmful practices such as child, early, and forced marriage, female genital mutilation, sexual violence during armed conflict, marital rape, corrective rape, and conversion therapy. 
  8. Government should promote gender transformative education including comprehensive sexuality education, in both formal and non formal settings, and a comprehensive and confidential referral and support services accessible to all survivors of gender-based violence, with long-term recovery support through housing, education and job training. 
  9. Government must enhance policy frameworks to mandate disability inclusion in all health services, including a comprehensive sexual and reproductive and health rights (SRHR) policy, given women with disabilities are two to four times at higher risk of Intimate Partner Violence and other sexual violence. 
  10. Governments should provide core, flexible, long-term funding to feminist organisations and networks working for, and led-by, women in all their diversity, non-binary, trans, SOGIESC and, community discriminated on work and Descent Indigenous communities, at all levels, as crucial drivers of transformative change in systemic inequalities and advancing gender equality.
  11. All providers of development cooperation must increase funding for gender equality across all sectors, including in humanitarian and emergency situations, to realise their global, regional and national commitments, and reverse recent catastrophic cuts to resourcing for rights and equality work.
  12. Governments must actively work to end invisibility of trans and queer individuals, their histories, and ensure universal access to gender-affirming healthcare, policies, and legal protections that uphold the dignity and rights of all sexual and gender-diverse people. 
  13. Governments should implement strategies to address sociocultural norms and stereotypes underpinning gender inequalities, employing inclusive, gender transformative approaches that engage men and boys, community and religious leaders and other influencers. 
  14. Improve digital access by expanding internet infrastructure, confronting misinformation and disinformation and hate speech, promoting digital literacy, and enforcing laws against online harassment and surveillance targeting women and girls in their diversity, gender-diverse people and activists.
  15. Governments and all development partners should strengthen and fund the collection and use of gender-sensitive data including individual-level data on multidimensional poverty and inequality, and on gender and environment, ensuring visibility of gender, caste, age, disability, location, class and other intersecting factors, complemented by qualitative data on marginalized groups through participatory and community-led data initiatives for evidence-based inclusive, responsive and efficient policy action. 

 

  • SDG 8: Decent Work 

Countries in the Asia-Pacific struggle to meet SDG 8 with nearly all indicators either regressing or progressing very slowly. This failure stems from persistent erosion of  trade union rights, leading to a decline in trade union density, merged with neoliberal monetary policies, high debt servicing, geopolitical conflicts, uneven post-pandemic recovery, and a worsening climate crisis. Unemployment, at 87.8 million, remains a major issue and women and young people are hit the hardest. Informal employment is rampant, with 66% of the workforce in 2023, lacking decent work protections, majority from women and youth. The rise in digital platform, outsourcing, and contract work has further eroded job security, wages, and benefits. Serious health and safety issues persist, with high rates of occupational fatalities and injuries, and workers in the region endure some of the world’s longest working hours. The slow and low progress in increasing minimum wages amidst inflation and economic stagnation continues to further impoverish marginalized sectors. Labour migration exposes vulnerable workers to risks such as trafficking, illegal recruitment, and detention. Overall, the Asia-Pacific ranks as the second-worst region for workers’ rights, with widespread violations of trade union rights, collective bargaining, and basic labour protections, including murders of trade unionists with impunity (ITUC Global Rights Index, 2024).

Recommendations: 

  1. Develop national employment policies to create unionized, decent jobs (including in care and green sectors), particularly through an increase in public services, ending precarious work.
  2. Adopt trade union density and collective bargaining coverage data on national accounts as gender disaggregated composite indicator of compliance with labour rights (8.8.2) inequality (10.4.1), and poverty (1.1, 1.2, 1.3).  
  3. Ratify and enforce ILO standards to guarantee the fundamental rights of all workers, including those in digital labour markets, migrant workers,  workers in informal economy and precarious situations.
  4. Ensure living wages and equal pay for work of equal value through effective social dialogue and wage-setting processes that ensure trade unions’ involvement and decision making. 
  5. Enforce strict adherence to fundamental standards of Occupational And Environmental Safety and Health, including provision of free and quality personal protective equipment. Criminalize non-compliance on worker endangerment, particularly on precarious and vulnerable workplaces, including industrial homicide.
  6. Protect fundamental rights at work – including freedom of association, collective bargaining, and the right to strike without fear of reprisal by reversing anti-union policies.
  7. Take urgent steps towards the formalisation of informal workers by implementing integrated policy frameworks, in line with ILO Recommendation 204. 
  8. Eliminate caste based discrimination and modern slavery by supporting unionisation of sanitation, brick kiln and domestic workers and increase labour inspectors responsible for the elimination of modern slavery.
  9. Strengthen social protection systems to cover the often-excluded  informal, migrant, digital/platform, and unpaid care workers, and to address climate change impacts.
  10. Ensure a Just and equitable Transition that is inclusive and worker-centred where workers have a say in shaping digital and climate transition policies. Formulate and review Just Transition programs to focus on building public and community-led public renewables, reversing the trend of increasingly privatized public energy. 
  11. Invest in the continuing skills and livelihood training and development, as well as education for decent work and livelihoods of marginalized and socially vulnerable women  and youth groups, including women and young people with disabilities, including technical and vocational education and training (TVET), adult learning and education (ALE), and reskilling and upskilling programs. 
  12. Proactively dedicate resources to achieve target 8.5 of SDG 8 to provide decent work for all, ensuring vulnerable groups’, including persons with disabilities, access to meaningful training to gain decent work in both public and private sectors, adopting employment quotas, along with subsidies and removal of barriers to micro-financing mechanisms.
  13. Ratify and implement ILO Convention 190 to end violence and harassment in the world of work through gender-transformative and intersectional reforms in national law, policies and collective agreements, and workplace policies that address the root causes of gender-based violence and harassment. 
  14. Close the gender pay gap by establishing living wages, enforcing pay transparency and anti-discrimination laws, and supporting targeted initiatives, such as ILO’s 5R framework on care work focusing on recognize, reduce, redistribute, reward and represent care workers.
  15. Enforce disability-inclusive labor laws, mandating reasonable accommodations and fair compensation, recognizing disability & diversity not as a limitation but as a driver of innovation and resilience, for inclusive, just and fair economies. 
  16. Eradicate forced labor, child labor, wage theft, and other abuses through stronger enforcement of labor laws and enhanced inspections.
  17. Support the ILO’s standard-setting process to protect workers’ rights in the digital economy and include measures to guarantee platform workers are regularised as employees, workers data rights are protected, the right to algorithmic transparency is protected and workers are entitled to human review of any automated decision making in relation to work entitlements or social protection. 

 

  • SDG 14: Life Under Water 

The progress on SDG 14 is in decline despite inextricable links between the health of our oceans and the well-being of fisherfolk communities. It is imperative to adopt a comprehensive framework for safeguarding both, emphasizing the critical need for a holistic people-planet approach that moves beyond mere resource management, encompassing policy advocacy, grassroots empowerment, international collaboration, and a fundamental commitment to gender equality. The climate crisis, a pervasive and escalating threat, casts a long shadow over these interconnected issues, demanding urgent and adaptive strategies to safeguard the pivotal role of fisherfolk in general and women in particular to prioritize both people and the planet over profits. 

Recommendations:

  1. Implement the FAO’s Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines as a paramount framework in providing a blueprint for equitable and responsible governance. 
  2. Secure land and water rights for traditional fishing communities, and protection of Community-led Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as a policy priority. National and local governments should include provisions of sustainable fishery subsidies in their climate adaptation policies to mitigate the adverse impacts of the climate crisis.
  3. Ensure grassroots communities are empowered by building robust fisherfolk cooperatives that are essential for collective bargaining and advocacy; capacitating communities, especially women, through leadership trainings that are crucial in fostering an inclusive and participatory decision-making process and; mobilizing fisherfolks through protest actions that build awareness and public support to propel policy changes and harness collective fisherfolk movement.
  4. Promote income generation through sustainable fisheries and aquaculture to strengthen economic resiliency among fisherfolk communities. 
  5. Conduct national disaster risk reduction programs and robust insurance schemes to mitigate the long-term impacts of climate-related disasters. Engage with local communities in developing adaptation strategies, based in centuries long indigenous wisdom, which are culturally appropriate, sustainable, and climate-resilient.
  6. Curtail the use of destructive fishing gear and disruptive industrial fishing practices by implementing stringent regulations to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems.
  7. Enforcement of marine pollution laws, inclusion and participation of communities in coastal development, and implementation of sustainable fishing techniques, including no-take zones, should be prioritized to preserve coastal integrity and maintain healthy fish populations.

 

  1. SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals 

In the recent 2024 SDG Report, only one of the 21 SDG 17 indicators is on track, and five have regressed since 2015. Despite significant economic growth in parts of the Asia Pacific region, disparities remain prevalent and have increased. Trade and investment flows have been notably impacted by resource extraction, geopolitical rivalry, and wars and conflicts. Technological advancements are failing to address existing digital divides. In fact, digitalization is further used to attack civic spaces, generate more profit, and capture energy transition amid scramble for critical minerals. Illicit financial flows persist and are facilitated further by defective policies and regulatory frameworks that institutionalise such flows. Billionaires continue to avoid and evade due taxes, amassing unprecedented wealth, consolidating political power, and pursuing labor exploitation and tax evasion with impunity. Financing for sustainable development remains weak and uncertain as donor countries renege on their ODA commitments even as they push for privatization that undermines development, generating mounting debt for developing countries. 

Recommendations:

  1. Scale up financing for development ensuring that donor countries fulfill and exceed their 0.7% GNI commitments focusing on the quality of aid. 
  2. Reform the international financial architecture by establishing the UN Convention on International Development Cooperation to democratize global governance. 
  3. Encourage the mobilization of and accessibility to public finance and hold multilateral institutions accountable for their conditionalities divesting from key development sectors and basic social services such as health, education and social protection.
  4. Address digital gaps within countries and between high and low-income countries through UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism, and best practices in governance of technologies ensuring that peoples’ governments are in control, and not the corporate at the national as well as multilateral level. 
  5. Safeguard the digital rights of the people, and ensure that digital and other emerging technologies are designed and deployed in ways that adhere to peoples’ rights to development, privacy and freedom of expression.
  6. Push for progressive taxation including wealth taxes and the adoption of equitable tax policies to eliminate tax evasion and harmful tax incentives accorded to multinational corporations. Prioritize the adoption of the UN Tax Convention to address corporate tax avoidance, profit shifting, trade mispricing and asset stealth. Regressive taxation measures should be reversed, as well as tax incentives and harmful subsidies to avoid a race to the bottom on corporate taxation or labor and environmental standards. 
  7. Commit to enhancing national regulatory apparatus, guided by regional and global frameworks, to help curb Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs). Ensure that these laws and mechanisms on IFFs, including money laundering and terrorism financing, are not abused by authoritarian states to quell dissent and civic spaces under the pretext of securitization.
  8. Global and regional trade agreements should ensure fair access to minerals allowing the developing countries to process minerals domestically for local jobs creation, tax revenue generation, and real sustainable development. Environmental protection and human rights must be prioritized across trade deals, especially extractive projects such as mining, energy and large dam projects should be subject to mandatory social and environmental impact assessments to ensure they do not harm communities or ecosystems. 
  9. Trade agreements must be people-centered, exclude investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses and intellectual property stipulations, and regularly assessed by oversight and independent monitoring committees. Investments should be regulated by designating sectors as public ownership-only (e.g., social services & sectors, raw materials) and foreign investment incentives should be reviewed (e.g., in mining laws, special economic zones, etc) to avoid policy incoherent corporate manoeuvring. 
  10. Cancel all unsustainable, odious and illegitimate debts, and demand transparency, accountability, reparations, and debt-free support for public and social services, including loss and damage. Ensure a binding and transparent UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt as a new approach to Debt Sustainability Framework Analyses (DSAs) aligned with human rights, climate, sustainable development and gendered needs. 
  11. Strengthen public financing for data infrastructure, SDG monitoring, and citizen-generated data, and capacity building of civil society and marginalized communities to collect and analyze disaggregated data by gender, age, and other factors along with transparent, symmetric data collection, secured digital storage, and improved data accessibility and analysis to address the 46% data gaps in the SDGs.
  12. Uphold people’s rights by strengthening review & accountability mechanisms through meaningful CSOs participation, recognizing local and people-led development practices, civil initiatives, and independent CSO-led monitoring of human rights commitments and declarations to complement progress on the SDGs. 
  13. Countries must protect civic space, uphold democratic values, and foster inclusive international cooperation by discouraging retrogressive measures, restrictive laws and stipulations that endanger our collective aspirations for democracy and human rights.  

 

  • Beyond the Goals Under Review

 

Cross cutting development issues underpin the implementation and realisation of the goals. They impact on peoples’ rights and the environment and have reverberating effects across institutions, actors, and societies. Paradoxically, little attention is paid to these issues either by convenient ignorance or limited review mechanisms ignoring these systemic barriers.  Militarism, conflict and wars, corporate capture, and the climate crisis are interrelated and reinforce one another, and demand to be addressed in a deep-going and comprehensive manner if genuine sustainable development is to be achieved in the region. 

 

  • Militarism, Conflict and Wars 

 

Intensifying war, militarism and conflict are unfolding across the Asia Pacific Region generating devastating wars of aggression, extreme plunder of natural resources and national industries, and has given rise to fascist and authoritarian regimes. Brutal campaigns of aggression strive to expand economic influence and secure control over land and natural resources in various parts of the region with utmost disregard for fundamental rights and international humanitarian law.

 

Recommendation:

 

  1. End all military interventions and end all emergency laws used to increase the power of the military and police forces under securitization pretexts.
  2. Establish an effective regional human rights mechanism that delivers justice to all victims of war, militarism, and violence in a timely manner.
  3. Address conflicts in the region in a meaningful way through multilateral resolve for demilitarization and divestments from military expenditure. 
  4. Protect communities especially indigenous peoples, women, children and youth from military exercises and arms testing.
  5. Increase the support and capacity of local communities and people’s organizations to address root causes of conflict through peacebuilding initiatives. 
  6. Mainstream Human rights and peace education throughout academia and lifelong learning processes to foster global citizenship, peace and justice while ensuring that schools, teachers and students, especially women and other vulnerable groups, are protected from conflicts and wars in line with the International Humanitarian Law. 
  7. Protect human rights, anti-war, and peace activists from red tagging and counter-insurgency programs of the governments. 
  8. Seek accountability from government, military and other state institutions for enforced disappearances of activists and other state-perpetuated human rights violations.
  9. Reallocate budgets of governments from military spending to basic social services such as education, health and social protection to prioritize bread and books over bombs.
  10. End all the proxy wars and nuclear race based on the deterrence theory in the region. 

 

  • Corporate Capture 

International financial institutions have notoriously perpetuated neoliberal regimes in the Asia Pacific region. This neoliberal framework has facilitated corporate exploitation of public resources at the expense of people’s rights and development, and even the halls of the United Nations have not been spared from this corporate grip. Corporatization has been clearly intensified in the areas of education, agriculture and food, infrastructure and health, which has not only increased poverty, hunger, inequality, lack of access to basic public services, social security etc. but also undermined democracy and civil liberties and rights of the majority of the people in the region. 

Recommendations:

  1. Corporations with direct and irreconcilable conflict of interest with any of the Agenda 2030 priorities must not be allowed to interfere with public policy making at the international, regional, national or sub-national level through stronger safeguards to clampdown on conflict of interest and stop industry interference in policy making.
  2. International financial institutions or other international institutions or mechanisms that are riddled with corporate influence must be held accountable for policy incoherent manoeuvres impeding sustainable development. 
  3. Corporations must be held accountable for the damage they cause to any of the goals or targets enshrined in the Agenda 2030 through legal and financial measures.  
  4. National laws must put in place regulatory frameworks,  not merely as guidelines but enforceable measures to hold the corporations accountable for violations of human rights, labor and environmental standards.
  5. Enact protocols to restrict big transnational corporations and IFIs’ interference in public policy making spaces by infiltrating into government delegations, or other delegations, or any other means.
  6. The principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all the projects must be implemented, and corporations must be made accountable to the farmers, local and indigenous communities.
  7. All the natural and productive resources must be owned and controlled by the farmers and local communities, and not by the corporations as in the case of land, seed, water among others, through TRIPS, SPS and other intellectual property instruments. 
  8. Policy emphasis on digitization, data and technological advancements must ensure that it benefits society at large rather than elites and their access and control should be open to assessment through thorough review of the potential adverse effects on livelihoods, the economy, environment, society, culture, and civil & political rights of the people.
  9. The UN technology facilitation mechanism established in the 2030 Agenda needs to be strengthened to provide policy guidance in participatory assessment of actual and potential impacts of new technologies including digital technologies introduced and developed by big transnational corporations.
  10. Governments must protect and guarantee the rights of people to quality social services such as health, education, drinking  water, irrigation  and other infrastructure.  This  responsibility must not be relinquished  to the private sector, even with the shrinking domestic resources mostly depleted by corporate subsidies.

 

  • Climate Crisis 


Poor and underdeveloped countries in Asia Pacific remain the most vulnerable to climate change despite historically having contributed the least to the crisis. With global average temperatures exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2024, a number of countries  in the region experienced devastating heatwaves,  the impacts of which were borne by the economically and socially marginalised. The urgent climate finance for adaptation and mitigation actions, and for addressing climate-induced loss and damage remains scant, unpredictable, debt-driven, inaccessible to frontline communities, and primarily channelled towards false solutions and distractions. With the ascendancy of right wing governments and climate deniers in the global North, big polluting countries are expected to further fall short on their emissions reduction targets and climate finance obligations to the South.

The just transition policy agenda and practice has been captured by big fossil fuel corporations, multilateral development banks, and local comprador elites – the very same actors culpable for climate change. Countries that intend to utilise for their own sustainable development needs minerals critical for the energy transition face policy challenges from global North countries who want to secure these resources for their own industries and corporations. Human rights violations, militarisation, and dispossession are also rampant in critical minerals value chains. 

 

Recommendations:

 

  1. Global North countries and corporations must take the lead in deep, rapid, and sustained GHG emissions reductions. This includes placing a moratorium on new oil and gas projects, establishing a definite timeline to phase them out, and clamping down on subsidies, tax breaks, and financial incentives for the fossil fuel industry. 
  2. Emerging economies in the region must also meet their fair share but will require the means of implementation, and/or other international support according to their respective circumstances to implement additional reductions.
  3. Global North countries must provide new, adequate, additional, predictable, and grants-based climate finance for Asia Pacific developing countries for their adaptation and mitigation needs, and to address loss and damage. It should be accessible to frontline communities, supporting people-led, feminist, real solutions that address the fundamental roots of the crisis and progressively realises human rights. This also includes building the capacity of stakeholders to monitor commitments of governments and hold them accountable.
  4. Rather than promoting false and market-based ‘solutions,’ governments should support rights-based and community-led climate responses that take into account communities’ struggles, experiences, and indigenous knowledge. These solutions include the promotion of agro-ecological farming systems and food sovereignty, community conservation of biodiverse ecosystems, and recognising the status of Indigenous Peoples and their land tenure rights including for forest dwellers, landless peasants, and local communities.
  5. Energy systems should be publicly owned, wherein the people are allowed to exercise democratic control based on their contexts, priorities, and development needs. By decentralising energy systems, countries, and communities have more leverage to rationally manage energy production and distribution, giving thorough consideration to gender equity, the use and allocation of resources, and overall environmental impact, with a view to ensuring long-term economic sustainability.
  6. Trade agreements should allow developing countries to process minerals domestically. Governments should invest in research and development for mineral processing to build indigenous technological capacity and reduce dependence on imported technologies. Additionally, export restrictions such as taxes, quotas, or licensing requirements should be implemented where local processing infrastructures exist to retain domestic control over critical mineral resources. This would maximise economic benefits to foster industrial growth and self-sufficiency by ensuring that value-added processes occur within the country rather than being outsourced.
  7. Direct support, including funding and resources, to CSOs to create awareness on the importance of climate-resilient health care services that are affordable, accessible and easily available to women and girls in all their diversities. This includes ensuring the provision of food, adequate shelter and medical aid facilities, as well as SRH products, services, and information.
  8. There must be support mechanisms for environmental and human rights defenders, through legal protection and fostering an environment conducive to open dialogue.
  9. Mainstream and integrate education for sustainable development (ESD), climate change education (CCE) within a climate justice framework, and education in emergencies (EiE) into the curricula and in formal and nonformal education. Governments should fund climate-smart education systems

 

  • Accountability 

Multilateralism, a hallmark of the post-cold war liberal era, premised on international solidarity to champion democratic ideals of liberties, freedoms and rights, continues to lose its credibility with glaring cracks in the normative foundations of the international society amid the emergence of hyper nationalist and regionalist tendencies. The United Nations, characterizing the essence of multilateralism, envisaged to maintain peace, reaffirm human dignity & rights, respect international law and promote social wellbeing and freedoms for all, is under increasing scrutiny for legitimacy and efficiency. 

The lack of progress on Sustainable Development, compounded by emergent multidimensional crises, requires an action-oriented, bold and convincing multilateralism to translate transformation in both ambition and outcomes. Billions in the Global South look at the upcoming processes, including the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, World Social Development Summit, and the implementation of the Pact for the Future, to deliver on the commitments for restoring trust in our multilateral collective. Moreover, the accountability mechanisms across these processes need to be strengthened, reckoning unmet ODA commitments and SDGs shortcomings, as a critical measure to enhance the efficiency of multilateral outcomes. 

Recommendations: 

  1. The scale of ambition in development financing needs to be raised from the $500 billion stimulus package and the current ODA ratios around $250 billion, almost 20 times less than the $4.2 trillion financing shortfall per year. 
  2. Illicit financial flows, estimated to extract over $1 trillion per year from the global south in tax evasion, trade mispricing, asset stealth and profit shifting, outweighing ODA by almost five times, need to be curbed through efficient tracking utilizing the UNCTAD/UNODC measurement tool vis a vis the implementation of the UN Tax Convention.  
  3. Permanent cancellation of sovereign debt, through a UN-led multilateral debt workout mechanism, undoing the current ad-hoc, creditor-centric, fragmented process, paving way for the UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt to ensure a comprehensive, inclusive, just, human rights and sustainability compliant restructuring mechanism.
  4. In line with the Secretary General’s vision for the WSSD to reconceptualize the social contract between governments and people of the world, embrace a comprehensive vision of human rights to ensure universal social protection, universal healthcare coverage, adequate housing, jobs and education for all, eradication of poverty and reduction of inequalities within and among countries.   
  5. COP 29 and subsequent processes need to raise the bar from $300 billion (from all sources) compared to the demands for $1.3 trillion (largely from public sources) in line with the historical responsibility and CBDR clause of the Paris Agreement.  
  6. Corporate capture of multilateral processes in the name of private financing, innovation or efficiency needs to be reversed to safeguard the democratic character of our multilateralism in line with the UN Charter. 
  7. Mobilize multilateral political will to reform the international financial and trade architecture vis a vis human rights and SDGs compatibility impact assessment of the corporate ventures for robust regulatory and accountability mechanisms protecting the interests of both people and the planet.    

 

  • Rights Holders’ Engagement and Voluntary National Review Process 

 

The Voluntary National Review (VNR) is a process through which countries assess and present national progress made in implementing the 2030 Agenda. The VNR aims to facilitate the sharing of experiences, including successes, challenges and lessons learned, with a view to accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.. In 2025, the following countries in the Asia-Pacific region will be presenting their VNRs: (1) Bangladesh (2) Bhutan (3) India (4) Indonesia (5) Iraq (6) Japan (7) Jordan (8) Kazakhstan (9) Kyrgyzstan (10) Malaysia (11) Micronesia (12) Papua New Guinea (13) Philippines  and  (14) Thailand.

 

A meaningful Voluntary National Review (VNR) must go beyond progress reporting and integrate a Development Justice lens to assess how policies and programs address systemic inequalities and power imbalances. Development Justice, as a framework, emphasizes five interlinked pillars: Redistributive Justice, Economic Justice, Environmental Justice, Social and Gender Justice, and Accountability to the Peoples. 

 

Recommendations:

 

  1. Prioritize Equity and Justice: Shift VNRs away from GDP growth narratives and focus on how economic gains contribute to poverty reduction and address systemic inequalities. Highlight marginalized communities and ensure their needs and progress are not overshadowed by overarching statistics, revitalizing the essence of the LNOB principle by prioritizing the furthest left behind first.
  2. Create rightful civic spaces by adopting human rights-based approaches, and ensuring that marginalized voices are heard. Strengthen Civil Society Participation  meaningfully in every stage of the VNR process, from planning and data collection to analysis and implementation. Establish national-level processes for stakeholder engagement and feedback, ensuring open spaces for civil society participation.
  3. Embrace data democracy by promoting greater transparency and access to data, emphasizing disaggregated data by gender, ethnicity, location, and income to expose disparities. Incorporate citizens’ led data, including qualitative input from surveys, focus groups, interviews, and site visits, to capture ground realities and improve data availability and quality at both national and local levels.
  4. Ensure the Localization of SDGs: Localize SDGs not just at the national level but also at the subnational and local levels. Integrate SDGs into local and national strategies to ensure their meaningful application. Use available resources, including past VNRs and existing data, to reflect on lessons learned, identify gaps, and improve implementation at all levels.
  5. Amplify Marginalized Voices by engaging deeply with a diverse range of stakeholders, including women, children, youth, Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with disabilities. Integrate their concerns and aspirations into the development process to ensure that development is inclusive.
  6. Strengthen Civil Society Participation  meaningfully in every stage of the VNR process, from planning and data collection to analysis and implementation. Establish national-level processes for stakeholder engagement and feedback, ensuring open spaces for civil society participation.
  7. Ensure Accountability and Action by transforming VNRs into concrete action plans with measurable targets and allocated resources. Establish accountability mechanisms to track progress and ensure transparent governance institutions to improve public service delivery.
  8. Institutionalize Multi-Stakeholder Participation: Ensure continuous and genuine engagement with CSOs, trade unions, and marginalized communities in SDG reporting and policy formulation. Facilitate regular consultations and public input into the SDG process.

 

  • Development Justice at the core of macroeconomic transformations and systems change

More than ten years after its inception, Development Justice has been more relevant than ever. With the widening multiple crises, we are affirmed that the 17 Sustainable Development Goals could not be achieved given the current state of affairs, and more because structural barriers are not addressed. The absence of emphasis on addressing systemic barriers undermines the fundamental principles of the Right to Development – envisioned to recognise the human rights to economic, social, cultural and political development – without which sustainable development, peace and justice cannot be achieved. 

In this way forward, we elevate the call for Development Justice as the only solution to usher macroeconomic transformation that is transformative, just, reparative with care for the people and the planet at the center. 

  1. Redistribute resources, wealth, power and opportunities equitably across countries and among people in the countries, dismantle existing systems that channel resources and wealth from developing countries to the developed countries, and from people to corporations. 
  2. Enable economic justice that ensures dignified lives for all, with social protection floors in place, and economies enabling dignified lives, and decent wages for all, and recognise unpaid care work and democratise access to resources. We call for a complete stop to the exploitation of people and the planet, and make the economies work for people, and their well being.
  3. Ensure meaningful engagement of people in all their diversities, and the elimination of all forms of discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion of people on the basis of gender, ethnicity, caste, sexual orientation, and gender identity.  We call for structural and systemic reforms that will eliminate institutionalised patriarchy across state and societal institutions  and deliver on gender and social justice.
  4. The historical responsibilities of countries, and elites within those countries, who have advanced extractive patterns of production and consumption leading to violations of human rights and planetary considerations. We call for those responsible to account and pay reparations for those who suffer the most including farmers, indigenous peoples, and marginalised groups parallel with immediate stop and accountability of repression against environmental defenders.
  5. Democratic and just governance is crucial to enable people to make informed decisions over their lives, communities and futures. Shifting power to the people and informed decision-making and holding governments accountable is crucial for the survival and sustainability of democracies.We demand Development Justice as the framework of the future for people and the planet and future generations.

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