Readiness Assessment of Parliaments to engage with the Sustainable Development Goals: Application of the Self-Assessment Toolkit

Abstract

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a ground breaking global commitment to end poverty and set the world on the sustainable path to inclusive development. It was endorsed by government leaders at the United Nations Summit in September 2015. A set of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 actionable targets lies at the core of this ambitious agenda. The 2030 Agenda places people at the centre of the development process. It calls on governments, Parliaments and other stakeholders to design and deliver laws and programmes that meet needs of the people, breakdown policy silos, uphold human rights, and leave no one behind. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyse the readiness of Parliaments to engage with SDGs. Based on the literature analysis and author’s practical experiences, a review of the self-assessment toolkit on SDGs for Parliaments and a list of readiness assessment factors were done and presented in this paper. The discussions in this paper can support researchers and practitioners in effectively applying the self-assessment tool.