By Hum Bhandari, Executive Director, NGO Federation of Nepal (NFN) 

In 2022, NFN implemented a project with support from Forus in cooperation with AFD, particularly in the organizational capacity building and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

NFN has been coordinating the civil society initiatives for SDGs in Nepal as the secretariat of Nepal SDGs Forum which is an open forum of CSOs working for the SDGs in Nepal.  The aim is to increase the role, recognition, visibility and impact of the CSOs for the SDGs.  NFN has been working to bridge multiple stakeholders together and strengthen the civil society voice. 

As a recently federated country, Nepal is still developing institutions, policies and capacities at the subnational level. In this context, the localization of the SDGs has been more challenging and lagging behind. In the meantime, with a view to supporting the local governments and making them more accountable, NFN facilitated the Voluntary Local Review (VLR) of SDGs in two local governments. This was not only an opportunity to do piloting of the VLR toolkit developed by NFN but also to learn from the cases. 

It was obvious that the local governments had a very weak integration of the SDGs, data and reporting system. Rather than planning and budgeting in harmony with the SDG goals and indicators, the local governments were found to have planned and implemented their programmes in a conventional way without much regard for the SDGs. Through such interventions, some goals and indicators were randomly addressed but they lacked a conscious framework, budget allocation and reporting. They faced some challenges including lack of human resource capacities, procedures and guidelines in integrating the SDGs, reporting frameworks, and financial gaps. Besides, they were guided by their own priorities and interests rather than the SDG frameworks. However, they were receptive to the support and feedback and committed to addressing the local challenges. 

NFN’s support was appreciated by the local governments, and NFN has taken it as an opportunity to expand its engagement, build accountability of local governments for SDG implementation and increase civil society role. Improving the VLR toolkit, expanding and replicating the VLR facilitation in more local governments, and supporting to achieve the SDGs would be NFN’s priorities in future.