January 22-24, 2018: Busan Democracy Forum takes place in Busan, South Korea. The theme of the 2018 Busan Democracy Forum, co-organized by the Community of Democracies (CoD), Asia Development Alliance (ADA ), and Asia Democracy Network (ADN ) and ‘the UN SDGs and Democracy’.
The forum’s main aims are:
• To promote Goal 16 of the UN Agenda 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as the enabler of all Sustainable Goals (SDGs) and discuss the inter-linkages with other Goals and Targets.
• To provide platform for a wide ranges of stakeholders to share experiences on advocacy initiatives, implementation, national level reporting and available tools for measuring the progress toward SDG 16 which is one of the global priorities at the UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF) in 2019.
• To refine the VNR guidelines and SDG 16 national indicators to be finalized soon for use by the CSOs preparing themselves for the VNR/CSO reporting and for those planning to monitor SDG 16 in their respective countries.
There were key notes from Key focal person such as: the representative from Korean Government, Presidents of Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), representatives of Inter-governmental organizations, the representative of international CSOs and UN agency. (See the keynotes link). A-two day forum were divided as the thematic focuses: 1) Cross-cutting issues of SDGs ( Breakout Session), while in this thematic area focused on Gender Inequality ( Goal 5), Inequality (Goal 10), Global Citizenship Education (Goal 4) and Localizing SDGs and City (Goal 11). 2) SDG 17 selected target while the important sessions were breakout such as: Financing for Development (ODA), Capacity Building, Multi-Stakeholder Partnership and Data for the proofing the indicator. 3) On SDG 16 target 1. It focused on Peace and Violence, violence again children and protection, Rule of Law and Access to Justice and Anti-corruption and transparency and 4) on SDG 16 target II. The breakout secessions concentrated on Democratic decision-making and institution, Democratic global governance, fundamental freedoms and non-discrimination and access to information.
There were 4 NGO representatives from Cambodia invited to join the important forum: NGOF, CCC, API and WVC. Under the theme of promoting Peaceful, Justice and Inclusive societies in Asia and beyond, Mr. Keo Bunly, representative from The NGO Forum on Cambodia (NGOF), was invited to share the session on “Trend and the effectiveness of official Development Assistant (ODA) in the context of Cambodia effectiveness”. In his key message, he illustrated about the context of Economic of Cambodia, the importance of ODA, priorities theme of ODA that Japan and Korea should consider for Cambodia and how CSOs in engagement in Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) .