Open Working Group Research Articles

Offline: Why the Sustainable Development Goals will fail

Where are we now? The Open Working Group, a chaotic and unruly committee of nations (chaired by the Governments of Kenya and Hungary), has proposed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its June 2 “zero draft” for the post-2015 era. It begins: “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”. Sustainable development? No. Try utopia instead. The SDGs are fairy tales, dressed in the bureaucratese of intergovernmental narcissism, adorned with the robes of multilateral paralysis, and poisoned by the acid of nation-state failure. Yet this is served up as our future. The health goal—”Attain healthy life for all at all ages”—is a mixture of business-as-usual (the MDGs rebooted), non-communicable diseases and universal health coverage (deservedly new entrants), and a strange assortment of promises about healthy life expectancy, essential medicines, and air pollution. Is this negotiated wish-list really the best we can do?

A Commentary on the Final Outcome Document of the Open Working Group on SDGs

This paper will assess the final outcome document of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Following a brief history of the process, it evaluates how proposed OWG goals and targets reflect the three pillars of sustainable development, examines to what extent the document serves the overarching transformative development agenda, and assesses the content of the candidate goals and targets with a view to further consolidate the post-2015 framework. This paper identifies areas where there exists further scope to fine-tune the goals and targets, including categorization, numerical figures, accountability, and a conclusive consensus on transformation.

Rule of Law and the Sustainable Development Goals

2015 is the year when the Millennium Development Goals are due to be achieved. Deliberations about a post-2015 agenda have been ongoing for years, with multiple un agencies, ngos, and other stakeholders participating. The Open Working Group (owg) of the General Assembly in 2014, after a complex procedure, presented a proposal on the sdgs that will serve as the basis for Member State negotiations in 2015. The paper seeks to outline the organizational challenges of a process that was intended to be inclusive like none before, but that seems to have proved overwhelming, even detrimental to the objective. It does so by showing how, in the case of the rule of law concept, hopes were raised and then disappointed.

The position of health in sustainable development negotiations: a survey of negotiators and review of post-Rio+20 processes

BackgroundSustainable development is central to the post-2015 development agenda after the establishment of the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals at the Rio+20 conference. Negotiations about sustainable development, including the Working Group, are typically undertaken by foreign or environmental ministries and traditionally involve little input from health ministries. We reviewed the negotiations to assess the role of health. MethodsWe assessed changes to the Rio+20 negotiation text. We surveyed negotiators at the 4th session of the Working Group and reviewed their discussions. We reviewed and analysed the position of health in Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and the methods of the new High Level Political Forum for sustainable development. FindingsThe initial draft of the Rio+20 outcome document mentioned health twice; however, the final document included a section on health and population dynamics and committed countries to achievement of universal health coverage and use of health indicators for sustainable development. Most governments discussed the links between health and sustained development. The delegates surveyed agreed that health should be integrated into other areas of sustainable development—eg, energy, education, and employment. The objective of the most recent MEA—the Minimata Convention on Mercury—was to protect human health; which was also the aim of many other MEAs. The High Level Political Forum does not explicitly refer to health in its methods but includes a review of environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainable development commitments similar to the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council. InterpretationHealth is central to sustainable development and governments recognise its cross-cutting nature. The inclusion of health to date is the result of active engagement by the health community, which must be sustained to keep health at the centre of the post-2015 development agenda. Improved health data, collected more often, could improve accountability in the periodic review process of the High Level Political Forum and for the non-health sustainable development goals. FundingInternational Federation of Medical Students Associations.

The world we want: an end to child marriage

With discussions underway about a post-2015 development framework, we have a unique opportunity to envisage the world we want by 2030. Recommendations made to date by the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) and the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and in the discussions of the open working group, have emphasised the need to ensure the empowerment, wellbeing, and social protection of the world's most vulnerable people.

Building the powerful 10-minute office visit: Part II. Beginning a critical literature review.

This is the second part in a series of sequential Tutorials in Clinical Research. The objective of this tutorial is to introduce methods of searching the vast stores of information now available, to review some of the computer resources available, to reintroduce the concept of an a priori design for the search, and to reveal the need for assessment of the clinical importance and validity of each pertinent article found. Tutorial. An open working group has been formed with the specific aim of surveying and translating the large volume of complex information on research design and statistics into easily understood, useable, and non-threatening tutorials for the busy practitioner. The hypotheses under which this work is conducted are highly intelligent, but extremely busy, surgeons are interested in evidence-based medicine and will increase personal participation in critical reading of the literature, pending an expanded familiarity with clinical research design and statistics. Available resources for literature searching, methods of quick personal overviews, and quick question-specific reviews are discussed. Additionally, the methods, with examples, of beginning a critical literature review are presented. Rapid, personal, critical literature review requires succinct formulation of the question, efficient search for the best available evidence, and critical appraisal of the pertinent individual articles to determine if sufficient evidence exists to support a clinical contention.

COSPAR holds Eighteenth Meeting and Symposia in Bulgaria

The Eighteenth Cospar Meeting and Symposia were held from May 29 to June 7, 1975, in the Palace of Culture and Sports in Varna, Bulgaria, at the invitation of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The meeting was under the patronage of Stanko Todorov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Bulgaria.Accommodations for attendees were in Golden Sands, a seaside resort 17 km from Varna. Shuttle bus transportation was furnished between the hotels and the meeting site. The meeting and symposia were attended by 584 individuals from 36 countries, and more than 400 papers were presented at the open working group sessions, the panels, and the symposia.

Isotopes in the mantle— Open Working Group Session

The Working Group on Radiogenic Isotopes and Their Geophysical Implications of the International Association of Volcanology and the Chemistry of the Earth's Interior will hold an open technical session on September 1, 1975, in Grenoble, France. The topic of the session will be ‘Lead and Strontium Isotopes in the Mantle.’The past several years have seen major advancements in both analytical and interpretive aspects of radiogenic isotope study. Increasing interest in mantle dynamics and interactionbetween the asthenosphere and lithosphere has prompted an intensive investigation of materials directly and indirectly bearing on the earth's interior regions. Consequently, lead and strontium isotopes now place important constraints on chemical composition, exchange pathways, and residence time for deep reservoirs.