Some of Participants during youth consultation engagement on Voluntary National Review Report-VRN held at Kyambogo University
In July this year, Uganda is among the countries that have volunteered to report to the United Nations about its progress towards the attainment of the SDGs.
This is revealed by the Secretary General of United Nations Association of Uganda-UNAU, Richard Baguma while speaking to press at Kyambogo University during the youth consultation engagement on Voluntary National Review Report-VRN.
The consultation engagement aimed at assessing the progress of implementation of SDGs in the country and the young people’s involvement.
The meeting was organized by United Nations Association of Uganda UNAU and its partners under the theme ‘’Engaging Uganda youth: catalyzing SDGs implementation’’.
Mr. Baguma explained that when SDGs are being measured, a national review is carried out to measure the progress.
‘’Uganda is among the countries that have volunteered to report to the United Nations about its progress towards the attainment of the SDGs and this will happen in July 2024’’ He said.
“UNAU is among other organizations that are involved in the work of reviewing and reporting about Uganda’s steps towards attaining the SDGs and our particular interest is towards the youths. What are their voices, views, positions about the country and where we have reached in the development processes in regard to SDGs’’. He stated.
Baguma, who is also a member of the Global Executive of the World Federation of the United Nations Associations noted that because youth constitutes the big population, their views in all the processes of development, implementation and acceleration of the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs and other development initiatives maters.
During Panel Discussion
‘’We have gathered youths representatives from different parts of the country and institutions of learning to tell us their own perspectives and experiences on how the country is performing towards implementing the global development agenda which is aligned to our national development plan. The views then will be captured into the VNR report which to be presented together with reports from the government to the UN meeting in New York this July” said Mr. Baguma.
He also revealed that the other parts of the reporting from government departments, Civil Societies are being done to have a conclusive report on how the country is performing, and what are the challenges that are still affecting the implementation and way forward.
On her part, Aminah Nassali, the president for Uganda Youth Coalition for SDGs said that they must assess what youths are doing, their success stories, and challenges and how to help them achieve the SDGs.
Nassali mentioned out lack of finances as the major challenge affecting the implementation SDGs hence calling upon Uganda government to find innovative ways of funding adding that the country can’t always only rely on donor funding.
The consultation youth engagement aimed at assessing the progress of implementation of SDGs in the country and the young people’s involvement.
She further emphasized that the stakeholders must avoid isolation implementation processes adding that working in isolation will cause problems.
Meanwhile, Jemercy Melody a UN Youth Fellow under UNAU said more efforts are still needed to scale up education about SDGS among youth to make them understand and their role in implementation processes.
‘’We hope that the young people in the country are given platforms not just to talk about these things but also to actively participate in the implantation processes” she said.
She however noted that in some areas Uganda shall achieve some of SDGs by 2030 citing out the areas of health, education and gender.
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