By Javier Surasky-
Note: After this blog was published, South Sudan decided not to present its VNR. That means the total number of VNR countries in 2024 dropped to 36. South Sudan was a first-time reporter, so the list of countries that never submitted a VNR includes 5 states
In a few
days, on July 12, the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) of the 37 countries
that have decided to present their progress in implementing the Sustainable
Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda to the United Nations High-Level
Political Forum (HLPF) will begin.
VNRs are
fundamental to the design of the follow-up and monitoring system agreed upon in
the 2030 Agenda. The national level is central, and reports and analyses at
regional and global levels are built on the data and information presented by
countries.
The first
VNR was presented to the 2016 HLPF, more precisely on July 19,
when Mexico became the first reporting country. Montenegro, Morocco, Sierra
Leone, and Switzerland were also in that first VNR submissions session.
They were part of a group of 22 countries that presented their reports in 2016.
The
attraction generated by the 2030 Agenda led to a rapid increase in the number
of countries presenting VNRs, reaching a peak of 47 reports presented to the
HLPF in 2019 and 2020, shortly before and after the Covid-19 pandemic
was declared. However, one of the impacts of this global health crisis was
disappointment with multilateralism, which proved incapable of building a
unified and coherent response to the pandemic, resulting in a loss of attraction
to the 2030 Agenda and leaving weaker countries highly indebted due to the
economic effort made. There were then fewer incentives and less public money to
implement the SDGs in much of the world.
Thus, the
number of countries that presented VNRs in 2021 fell for the first time to a
still significant group of 42 states, with a slight rebound in 2022 (44)
followed by a drop in subsequent years: 39 VNRs in 2023 and 37 in 2024, a year
in which, among others, Israel and Palestine had offered to present reports
but, for obvious reasons, withdrew their offers. So, counting the 2024 VNRs, we
will have 367 national reports presented to the HLPF over nine years
(an average of 40.7 VNRs per year).
Total Number of VNRs submitted to the HLPF (by year)
Of these
367 reports, 191 are first reports. Comparing the list of countries that have
presented at least one report with that of United Nations members, we find that
only Haiti, Iran, Myanmar, and the United States have not yet submitted any
national progress report on the SDGs. The reasons for each case are quite
different, and I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
“The
numbers don’t add up,” an informed reader might say: The UN has 193 member
states, and if 191 have presented at least one report, there cannot be four
countries that haven’t made presentations. If you noticed this,
congratulations! However, Palestine, which is not formally a full member of the
organization, has presented a VNR (in 2018), and so has the European Union (in
2023). Of course, technically, the latter is not a “national” report.
Several
countries have already presented more than one report. In fact, in 2021, the
number of second reports exceeded that of first reports for the first time, and
2024 will be the first year in which the number of third reports will be the
largest.
Evolution of VNRs first, second, and subsequent presentations (by year)
Countries from all regions have joined the national reporting effort. Although the comparison is not entirely correct, given that the number of countries that make up each region is different, as an approximation, we can see the following information, which takes as a reference the regions used by the United Nations statistical classification system (Standard M49), presenting the net number and the regional average of VNRs presented (net number/number of countries) as an organizer of their position in the list.
- Africa (54 countries): 109 - Average = 2.01
- Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC, 33 countries): 65 - Average = 1.97
- Asia (48 countries, including Palestine): 94 - Average = 1.95
- Europe (43 countries + EU): 77 - Average = 1.75
- Oceania (14 countries): 20 - Average = 1.43
- North America (2 countries. Mexico is considered part of LAC): 2 - Average = 1.00
Can we
infer from this information that low and middle-income countries are reporting
the most? There is no need to make inferences. Let us repeat the table,
ordering the VNRs by the income level of the reporting country according to theclassification made by the World Bank for the 2024 fiscal year. This list does
not include the EU or Venezuela, which was temporarily declassified in 2021 due
to inconsistencies in its data.
- Low-income countries (26 countries): 52 VNRs - Average = 2.0
- Upper-middle-income countries (53 countries): 104 VNRs. - Average = 1.96
- Lower-middle-income countries (55 countries): 101 VNRs. - Average = 1.85
- High-income countries (59 countries): 108 VNRs. - Average = 1.83
The distribution doesn’t show significant differences when considering income level, but interestingly, countries with fewer economic resources have reported the most. This ends the excuse of not reporting due to “economic restrictions.” Moreover, let's consider the group of least developed countries. We see that, even though two of its members (Haiti and Myanmar) have not presented any report for reasons that are not economic, they present a higher average of reporting than the members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (among which the United States is the only one that has not yet presented any VNR).
- Least developed countries (48 countries): 91 VNRs - Average: 1.90
- DAC-OECD member countries (29 countries): 53 VNRs - Average: 1.83
Of course, these numbers tell us nothing about the quality of the reports presented, an
essential element that, until today, only Cepei has sought to measure, and only
for Latin American and Caribbean countries, through its VNR Quality Index, an
effort that should be supported and replicated to know not only who reports,
but how aligned the reports are with the reporting commitments made by
countries in the 2030 Agenda and to what extent they receive the key issues
that emerged after its adoption, such as post-pandemic recovery, from a
sustainable development perspective.
Next year,
we will reach a decade of national reports on the progress of the SDGs and the
2030 Agenda. If today’s international consensus clearly tells us that to
accelerate the path towards sustainable development, we must act based on
evidence, VNRs should receive more attention and analysis.
After all,
as my statistician friends often say, “What isn’t measured can’t be improved,”
to which I like to respond with a phrase attributed to American singer Chris
Hart: “All the statistics in the world can’t measure the warmth of a smile.” Let’s
not forget that...
