Southern agency in global norms creation: Bangladesh in the SDGs formulation process

Abstract

This paper examines which institutions, ideas, and interests have shaped the position of Bangladesh in creating the norms of the United Nations (UN)’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Bangladesh’s contribution to the SDGs norms creation process is examined in two distinct stages: drafting a position paper (June 2012–June 2013) and participating in UN Open Working Group (OWG) negotiations (March 2013–July 2014). Findings reveal how a small cohort of policy entrepreneurs played a key role in both stages. They gave prominence to ideas such as poverty alleviation, global inequality, and migrants’ rights in structuring the SDGs agenda. In the final round of OWG negotiations, Bangladeshi delegates calculated that active participation in the norms creation process would best serve the interests of the Global South by challenging the Global North which wanted to impose its interests. This paper offers an important insight into the norms literature by showing convergence and divergence of interests and agendas of global and local actors.

Keywords:

• Global norms
• SDGs
• Southern agency
• policy entrepreneur
• multilateral negotiations
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to QK Ahmad, Shamsul Alam, Abul Kalam Azad, Debapriya Bhattacharya, Rasheda K Chowdhury, Shahidul Haque, M. Riaz Hamidullah, Monirul Islam, AK Abdul Momen, Md. Mustafizur Rahman and the anonymous reviewers for their input and comments. Mahi Nur-e-Aziz, Taufique-e-Faruque, Qazi Fariha Iqbal, Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan, and Noor Nahar Shukanna provided research assistance. Any errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

The authors do not have any conflicts of interest to declare.

Research ethics and consent

Verbal and written informed consent was secured from the study participants. They remain anonymous throughout the document.

Notes

1 The OWG proceedings were led by two co-chairs, Ambassador Csaba Körösi of Hungary and Ambassador Macharia Kamau of Kenya, while the HLP was co-chaired by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. The two OWG co-chairs and the three HLP co-chairs essentially represented policy entrepreneurs in the context of structuring the debate, but they did not monopolise the process.

2 Senior officials of the Government of Bangladesh representing the General Economics Division (GED) of the Ministry of Planning (MOP), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and Access to Information/Aspire to Innovate (a2i) programme of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Division offered their candid views on the SDG formulation and implementation process. Among the UN agencies, delegates from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Bangladesh mission, and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), were interviewed.

3 Each OWG session held multiple thematic rounds of negotiations attended by senior UN officials, member state delegates, academic and professional experts, and major groups representing stakeholders such as women, children and the special needs population. Of the 135 statements, 24 were delivered by Bangladesh and the rest by BRICS delegates.

4 The expert meeting delegates include senior officials from the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Planning, UNDP, and civil society groups familiar with SDGs formulation and implementation processes. The dissemination seminar was chaired by the former Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, who was the head of the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations when the SDGs negotiations took place in 2013–2015.

5 PKSF stands for Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (Foundation for the Support of Rural Work). It is financed by the Government of Bangladesh but is headed by a civil society member with extensive experience in development and governance issues. Kholiquzzaman Ahmad was heading this institution, and hence UNDP partnered with it.

6 Calculated from OWG statements available at the Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform.

7 These include the negotiations leading to the adoption of Global Compact on Migration (GCM), the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), and various regional consultative processes including the Colombo Process.

8 Interviews with senior officials, ICT Division and a2i, September 2021, June 2022.

9 SDGs Tracker, ‘39 + 1 Indicators’, https://sdg.gov.bd/page/thirty_nine_plus_one_indicator/5#1, accessed 22 May 2024; Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), Action Plan and Methodological Guidelines Toward Data Generation and Disaggregation for Monitoring and Evaluation of SDGs (Dhaka: SDG Cell, BBS, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Dhaka under its Centennial Research Grant 2021 scheme [DU Memo # Registrar/Admin-3/12623, dated 17/9/2021].

Notes on contributors

ASM Ali Ashraf

ASM Ali Ashraf is Professor of international relations at the University of Dhaka. He holds a PhD in international security policy from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. His teaching and research interests are broadly in the fields of international security, development, migration, and public policy. He was a recipient of the J. William Fulbright Fellowship, awarded by the US State Department, and the European Union Center of Excellence Dissertation Fellowship, awarded by the University of Pittsburgh with funding support from the European Commission. He has provided advisory services to various UN agencies including ILO, IOM, UNDESA, UNDP, UNHCR, UNODC, and the UN Office for South–South Cooperation. He has edited three books: Intelligence, National Security, and Foreign Policy: A South Asian Narrative (Dhaka: BILIA, 2016); Women and Work in South Asia: Rights and Innovations (Dhaka: UPL, 2022; with Amena Mohsin, Niloy Ranjan Biswas, and Mohammad Atique Rahman); and Globalisation and Cultural Transformations among the Youth: Tertiary Institutions under the Spotlight (Dhaka: UPL, 2023, with Amena Mohsin, Niloy Ranjan Biswas, and Mohammad Atique Rahman). His next book (co-edited with Ryan Shaffer) will be titled Intelligence Services in South Asia: Post-Colonial Continuities and Divergences (Routledge, forthcoming).

Syeda Rozana Rashid

Syeda Rozana Rashid is Professor of international relations at the University of Dhaka. She received her undergraduate degree in international relations from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She obtained a master’s in forced migration from the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), University of Oxford, UK, and a PhD in migration studies from the University of Sussex, UK. She was awarded a Chevening scholarship from the UK government and a D.Phil bursary from the Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalization and Poverty, University of Sussex. Over the past 25 years, she has studied labour migration, refugees, human rights and development; this research has been published as books, book chapters, and journal articles from home and abroad. Forced and voluntary migration, poverty and development, gender, climate change, social protection, and livelihoods are among her areas of research interest.