The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, expire in 2015, and the policy framework that replaces them will likely shape global priorities for human development and poverty alleviation for the next two decades. ASAP is offering opportunities for its members to contribute research, coordination, and policy analysis to the largest civil society campaign seeking to influence the post-MDG framework.

Because of our work on the Global Poverty Consensus Report, our effort to identify consensus amongst academics on what should succeed the MDGs and communicate that position to decision makers in the UN policy process, ASAP has been asked to provide research and consultation to Beyond 2015. Beyond 2015 is a global coalition of more than 380 NGOs building a policy platform on poverty alleviation post-2015, making it the largest civil society organization active on the MDG successors.

In order to provide Beyond 2015 with the best academic input possible, ASAP is forming three teams of member volunteers:

1. The Academic Quick Response Team, which will provide research support to Beyond 2015 and fact check position papers from coalition members.
2. The Campaign Coordination Team, which will solicit and synthesize policy recommendations from development experts and civil society leaders, to be incorporated into ASAP and Beyond 2015\’s platform on development after the MDGs.
3. The Expert Working Group on Participatory Consultation, which will write an alternative agenda for the UNDP\’s thematic consultation with civil society on governance and accountability issues–an agenda that is more open and less presumptive than that put forward by the UNDP.

We are currently recruiting for the Academic Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams.

Members with expertise in participatory consultation, international development, public policy, or international law should consider volunteering for the Academic Quick Response Team. Those with experience in organizational leadership, project management, grassroots campaigns, marketing, and communications are encouraged to volunteer for the Campaign Coordination Team.

If you would like to get involved, please complete this short form describing your skills and experience by Wednesday, October 17. We will follow up with details on how you can get involved.

For additional information, please contact Rachel Payne (rachel@academicsstand.org).

This \’virtual roundtable\’ features interviews with four prominent commentators on development and global poverty:

Varun Gauri is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank; Branko Milanovic is a lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department; Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University; Gustav Ranis is the Frank Altschul Professor Emeritus of International Economics at Yale University

Interviews by Gilad Tanay

Beyond 2015 is a coalition of 380+ CSOs which is seeking to create a civil society consensus around a minimum standard of legitimacy for a post-2015 framework, both in terms of the process and the framework itself.

ASAP has been invited to join Beyond 2015\’s committee developing a position paper on governance and accountability for the post-MDG consultation process. This paper will be presented at the UNDP\’s thematic consultation meeting on governance and accountability to take place in Johannesburg early next year.

Board member Gilad Tanay (Yale) will represent ASAP in the committee. For further information or to provide your input on the process contact Gilad Tanay at gilad.tanay@yale.edu.

For more details on ASAP\’s work on the post-MDG issue see the Global Poverty Consensus Report.

The United Nations Development Programme is holding a series of thematic consultations on the post-MDG framework with academia, media, private sector, employers and trade unions, civil society and decision makers. These consultations will focus on 9 key areas:

• Inequalities (across all dimensions, including gender)
• Health (including issues covered by MDGs 4, 5, 6, plus non communicable diseases)
• Education (primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational)
• Growth and employment (including investment in productive capacities, decent employment, and social protection)
• Environmental sustainability (including access to energy, biodiversity, climate change)
• Food security and nutrition
• Governance (at all levels)
• Conflict and fragility (including post-conflict countries, and those prone to natural disasters)
• Population dynamics (including ageing, international and internal migration, and urbanization)

In addition, the UNDP is convening 50 inclusive national consultations led by the UN\’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) on behalf of the General Assembly (GA).

Beyond 2015, a coalition of 380+ CSOs is coordinating a campaign to generate and present inclusive inputs from civil society into the consultations in order to influence the official UN process and to help build a civil society position on the content of a post-2015 framework.

The GPCR project and ASAP as a whole are urgently mobilizing resources to produce the right kind of outputs from academia to support the civil society effort to impact the consultation process and to do so in time to make a difference.

We will continue to update on the progress of the consultation process on this website. We would also recommend Beyond 2015\’s website as an excellent source of relevant and up-to-date information on the process.

For more information contact Gilad Tanay gilad.tanay@yale.edu

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One of the  areas of agreement that have already emerged through the Global Poverty Consensus Report dialogue process is that the post-MDG framework should include goals for reforming the structure of international institutions.

In response, ASAP is launching a new set of projects aimed at promoting the accountability agenda in the post-MDG framework by developing and advocating concrete and feasible goal that:

• Focus on state agents rather than aid recipients.
• Have outcomes that are defined in terms of changes to the structure of institutionalized practices and rules on the global level.
• Promote those institutional reforms that would have the most significant positive effect on human rights fulfillment and poverty alleviation globally.
• Are grounded in a \”do not harm\” principle, that is, are aimed at ensuring that these practices and rules to not contribute to the persistence or exacerbation of global poverty.

We identify six main areas in which institutional reform goals could have a major impact on human rights fulfillment and poverty alleviation:

• Illicit financial flows
• Labor standards
• Trade protectionism
• Resource and borrowing privileges
• Intellectual property law
• Environmental degradation

Over the next year, in tandem with the UNDP\’s consultation process, ASAP will execute a series of impact projects focusing on illicit financial flows and at least one more of these six issues. Each project will aim to:

• Produce a research-based policy paper articulating and arguing for a set of politically feasible development goals.
• Build a broad coalition of academics, CSOs and corporations supporting them.
• Present and promote them in the upcoming UNDP thematic consultations on the post-MDG framework.

ASAP will carry out each of these projects in collaboration with partner organizations that have relevant expertise and resources.

Parallel to executing these projects, ASAP will continue to develop the Global Poverty Consensus Report (GPCR). The GPCR project aims to build an inclusive consensus among academics from different disciplines, approaches and world-regions on global poverty alleviation and articulating it in a way that is accessible to policy makers and suitable for framing and directly feeding into the MDG replacement process.

For more information contact Gilad Tanay at gilad.tanay@yale.edu

Over the last months we have been interviewing leading experts from different disciplines, approaches and places on their views on what should replace the MDGs.

In the next November these interviews will be published together with an analysis of what they reflect on the state of agreement and disagreement among experts on what should replace the MDGs.