We note a disconcerting disconnect at the annual SDG meet at the UN between what governments say in New York and that they do at home.
The German government is a prime example. Its 2025 SDG report is good, covers many themes and is honest on shortcomings (it was actually penned by the preceding government which had feminist foreign policy, rights-based development cooperation, a commitment to renewable energies, and social justice in its programme).
The motto and the message in the German SDG presentation was participation, and indeed: the government delegation included many civil society organisations, trade unions and business representatives – this of course a welcome signal vis-a-vis the many autocratic governments in the HLPF room who have dismantled civil society outright.
Civil society had two speaking slots to respond to the German government and used them effectively to speak truth to power. One presentation pointed to the positive but also negative spillovers of German economic policy, and the other asked whether the supply chain due diligence law would really be undermined and how Germany sees the call for debt cancellation in distressed countries – rhetorical questions laying the finger in chafing wounds.
These interventions were crucial and need to be magnified because: On most of the SDG targets, the current German government is dismantling previous (slow) SDG-related progress, genuine participation is sidelined, and good governance is under attack. Some random examples:
Regarding SDG commitments:
The welfare state – a German post-war accomplishment, facilitated, ironically by the US via its generous Marshall Plan – is being hollowed out: fiscal budget expenditures are shifting to remilitarization, and proposals for progressive taxation on excessive wealth or large inheritances or high-income pensions are ridiculed or maligned. Renewable energy policies are displaced by talk of reverting to nuclear energy generation, or back-to-coal-and-gas, including unprecedented exploration for mining on lake and seaside shores. National and EU-level due diligence legislation to make companies adhere to human rights, labour and gender equality standards, and environment and climate commitments – fought for by progressive ministers of preceding governments – are retracted.
Regarding participation:
Entrepreneurship is cast as an old boys’ network, with no social entrepreneurship or women entrepreneurs invited to a recent highly-publicised investment summit with the Chancellor. Earlier, the major coalition party had asked civil society organisations to “reveal” their sources of funding, implying that they were illegitimately funded or misappropriating taxpayers’ money – in reality, by law, these organisations transparently publish their accounts online annually.
On good governance and human rights:
Perhaps the most insidious is the attack on civil rights. On migration and the right to asylum, the government has closed many inner-EU (Schengen) borders, and is forcibly deporting vulnerable families back to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Protesters, academics and artists speaking out against the war crimes, crimes against humanity and risk of genocide in Gaza are labeled anti-semitic and many are cancelled, silenced, or even detained. And the right-wing factions in the government are meddling in the appointment of federal constitutional court judges, which is a prerogative of the independent parliament.
These policy disconnects between SDG commitments on the one hand which many governments – including Germany – profess nicely at the #HLPF, and their actual politics at home are unworthy. Dishonest. And infuriating. Civil society is pushing back against these pushbacks as best we can.
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The big disconnect
We note a disconcerting disconnect at the annual SDG meet at the UN between what governments say in New York and that they do at home.
The German government is a prime example. Its 2025 SDG report is good, covers many themes and is honest on shortcomings (it was actually penned by the preceding government which had feminist foreign policy, rights-based development cooperation, a commitment to renewable energies, and social justice in its programme).
The motto and the message in the German SDG presentation was participation, and indeed: the government delegation included many civil society organisations, trade unions and business representatives – this of course a welcome signal vis-a-vis the many autocratic governments in the HLPF room who have dismantled civil society outright.
Civil society had two speaking slots to respond to the German government and used them effectively to speak truth to power. One presentation pointed to the positive but also negative spillovers of German economic policy, and the other asked whether the supply chain due diligence law would really be undermined and how Germany sees the call for debt cancellation in distressed countries – rhetorical questions laying the finger in chafing wounds.
These interventions were crucial and need to be magnified because: On most of the SDG targets, the current German government is dismantling previous (slow) SDG-related progress, genuine participation is sidelined, and good governance is under attack. Some random examples:
Regarding SDG commitments:
The welfare state – a German post-war accomplishment, facilitated, ironically by the US via its generous Marshall Plan – is being hollowed out: fiscal budget expenditures are shifting to remilitarization, and proposals for progressive taxation on excessive wealth or large inheritances or high-income pensions are ridiculed or maligned. Renewable energy policies are displaced by talk of reverting to nuclear energy generation, or back-to-coal-and-gas, including unprecedented exploration for mining on lake and seaside shores. National and EU-level due diligence legislation to make companies adhere to human rights, labour and gender equality standards, and environment and climate commitments – fought for by progressive ministers of preceding governments – are retracted.
Regarding participation:
Entrepreneurship is cast as an old boys’ network, with no social entrepreneurship or women entrepreneurs invited to a recent highly-publicised investment summit with the Chancellor. Earlier, the major coalition party had asked civil society organisations to “reveal” their sources of funding, implying that they were illegitimately funded or misappropriating taxpayers’ money – in reality, by law, these organisations transparently publish their accounts online annually.
On good governance and human rights:
Perhaps the most insidious is the attack on civil rights. On migration and the right to asylum, the government has closed many inner-EU (Schengen) borders, and is forcibly deporting vulnerable families back to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Protesters, academics and artists speaking out against the war crimes, crimes against humanity and risk of genocide in Gaza are labeled anti-semitic and many are cancelled, silenced, or even detained. And the right-wing factions in the government are meddling in the appointment of federal constitutional court judges, which is a prerogative of the independent parliament.
These policy disconnects between SDG commitments on the one hand which many governments – including Germany – profess nicely at the #HLPF, and their actual politics at home are unworthy. Dishonest. And infuriating. Civil society is pushing back against these pushbacks as best we can.
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