Information You Can Use: A Bi-monthly Service for the UN and Civil Society
Volume 1, Issue 2, April-May 2004

Fifth Global Civil Society Forum to UNEP/GC/GMEF (Jeju Statement)

28 March 2004

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  The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) facilitated the gatherings of representatives or civil society organizations (CSOs) from all regions of the world including, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, North America, Africa and West Asia, to discuss effective engagement strategies and to gather inputs for this civil society statement to be addressed to the 8th Special Session of the UNEP GC/GMEF.  This was called for in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and by the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at its Eleventh Session in 2003 to address specifically the thematic cluster of Water, Sanitation and Human Settlements.

The UNEP regional processes, took place between November and December 2003.  They substantially widened UNEP’s outreach to CSOs and afforded civil society the opportunity to network at regional and global levels and to coalesce around these issues in a more coordinated manner.

This paper synthesizes the inputs from the regional meetings and attempts to lay out civil society position and priorities in relation to the implementation of Agenda 21 and the JPOI on goals and targets pertaining to water, sanitation and human settlements. This civil society statement to the GC/GMEF is divided into two parts.

Part One provides the backdrop to the issues, reiterates the goals and targets and sets out the obstacles and challenges to implementation of global commitments.
Part Two outlines the overarching principles upon which civil society position and priorities are based and offers specific action proposals and strategies.
Finally, the statement draws a few lessons that have been learned from the experiences of civil society’s engagement with UNEP.

Download the statement