Civil Society Organisations launch SDG shadow report Civil Society Organisations launch SDG shadow report



 Civil Society Organisations launch SDG shadow report






 The Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) platform on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in partnership with the government, German development agency (GIZ), UN and Implementation Co-ordinating Committee (ICC), has launched its first shadow report to complement government’s Voluntary National Report (VNR).


The VNR is the first review report to be presented by Ghana at the High Level Political Forum at the United Nations on July 17, 2019, as part of the follow up and review arrangements for the SDGs.
Speaking at the launch, Dr Christine Asare, a representative of the Minister for Planning, said that the strong partnership between government and civil society organisations is the key factor for progress in achieving the SDG 2030 agenda. This partnership is to ensure that nobody is left behind.
She noted that “the objective of the VNR is to facilitate sharing of experience and mutual learning, including our successes, our challenges and our lessons learned with the view to accelerating the implementation of the 2030 agenda of sustainable developments”.


She shared government’s expectation of the CSOs’ report to be complementary to the VNR report.
Dr Asare added that, “As Ghana presents its report, they expect that the report will provide information to confirm the main country VNR report and help identify challenges lost at the national level due to the aggregated data based on primary data collected at the sub-national levels.”
She also added that “government sees the report as an opportunity to further engage and scrutinise the VNR Ghana report”.

She acknowledged government’s appreciation on the commitment of the CSOs to the 2030 agenda reflected by the preparation of the shadow report.
Co-Chair from CSOs Platform on SDG, Mrs Beauty Emefa Narteh thanked GIZ, the Ministry of Planning, and ICC for their kind support of the report launch.
The shadow report highlights the contributions and challenges of civil society work on the SDGs.
She said that “we see the findings and recommendations of the report as a critical overview of our strengths as civil society”.

She indicated that civil societies have the mandate to hold government accountable. She encouraged stakeholders to support the attainment of the goals for a more inclusive Ghana.
The GIZ head of governance programme, Raphel Frerking, said they supported the CSOs platform on SDGs technically and financially in their activities because GIZ seeks to ensure that there is an improvement in democratic structures and good governance by transmitting citizens’ interest from the grassroots to the government.
According to him, they will continue to support the CSOs in their activities.

About the report

 The key findings of the shadow report were presented by Dr Esther Offei Aboagye.
She commended the work of the CSOs, which focused on goals that will be discussed at the high level forum 2019. These include Goal 4, 8, 10, 13, 16 and 17.
Some of the issues she raised from the report included the low level of awareness of citizen ownership of the SDGs, the need for CSOs to replicate widely and scale up their significant contribution to the SDG implementation, the strengthening of the vibrant and catalytic network of Civil Society Organisations platform at the sub-national level, the successes and challenges in Ghana’s implementation, the weak CSOs’ engagement in data collection, and so forth.

Review of the report

Dr Offei Aboagye continued with the review of the shadow report, where she compared it with the main VNR report of the government.
It was revealed that almost 60 per cent of CSOs are not collecting SDG-related data, which is because they are constrained by cost and the types of projects being implemented.
It was indicated that the purpose of the report is to complement the government report.
The government report looked at all the SDG goals whereas the CSOs report looked at specific goals that will be discussed at the UN forum.



The government used official statistics effectively, including some qualitative data, whereas the CSOs report used more quantitative data, which is a good complement; CSOs were ethical in their finding, and the report also needs to go beyond generalisations.
She recommended that partnership with the private sector should be more enabling to ensure a long-term relationship, to check the impact of goals, and to proactively provide opportunity to help the government to implement the laws.

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