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

NFN has been implementing a project with support from Forus, in collaboration with the 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. 

National and province level capacity building and advocacy workshops were planned as part of the project interventions. NFN has always pursued a broader outreach and multi-stakeholder approach but recent capacity building workshops have helped to further broaden this. At the provincial levels, the provincial level policy and planning commission officials were present and have facilitated the information sharing, review and frank discussion on SDGs with the civil society representatives. They rightly realized that the policy and planning commissions should have themselves initiated the capacity development training for CSOs but were happy to be part of NFN’s initiatives. 

At the national level as well, NFN has created multi stakeholder forums for open deliberations and dialogue. Some recent events are worth mentioning. National Multi-stakeholder Forum on SDG Localization in Kathmandu in June 2022 was held in the presence of the Chairperson of the National Assembly – Parliament of Nepal, National Planning Commission, and two province level planning commission members. In this forum, private sector, cooperative, development partners and CSO networks actively participated. Another event organized during the Global Goals Week 2022 was significant for similar reasons. Participation, commitment and support of the Chair and Secretary of the SDG and Good Governance Committee of the National Assembly (Parliament), and the member of the National Planning Commission, Ambassador of the European Union to Nepal along with cooperative federation, CSOs and development partners have brought the actors together to collaborate for the SDGs and, learning and recovering from Covid-19.    

While continuing creating such forums in future by increasing their effectiveness and actions, such initiatives will be organized at the subnational level making the province and local level governments, civil society and other actors more informed, transparent and accountable for achieving the SDGs. Partnership and joint initiatives will be the priority so that ownership and effectiveness is increased.