The SDGs Kenya Forum’s would like to thank the Government of Kenya through the SDG’s unit at the Ministry of Devolution and Planning for encompassing the spirit of partnership and participation in the development of Kenya’s Voluntary National Review of the SDGs that will be presented at the 2017 High Level Political Forum (HLPF) in July.

This partnership and participation of the SDG’s Kenya Forum is unprecedented and sets a new level of CSO/ government partnership in the national implementation of 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.. We hope that the VNR process will establish a formal engagement framework that fully includes civil society as proactive participants in the ongoing process of domesticating the SDGs in Kenya as well as tracking of progress.

The first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 - known as the Earth Summit, it was recognised that achieving sustainable development would require the active participation of all sectors of society and all types of people. Agenda 21, adopted at the Earth Summit, drew upon this sentiment and formalised nine sectors of society as the main channels through which broad participation would be facilitated in United Nations (UN) activities related to sustainable development. Major Groups and other stakeholders have facilitated this process.

Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, there is continued recognition of the role of civil society as a key stakeholder in ensuring that the SDG’s become a reality. There has been continued to efforts by both CSO’s themselves to reach out to governments as well as members states on commitment to work with civil society and other stakeholders in order to encourage and promote effective public, public-private partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies that will facilitate realization of 2030 Agenda.

At national level, it will be difficult for government or any other single entity to meet all the requirements needed to domesticate, implement, and track progress on SDGs. The mechanism to make this practically work in country requires substantial efforts to leverage synergies. Similar to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs are likely to have policy and service delivery implications that will positively impact citizens (if properly domesticated and integrated in national development plans and practice). Through programmatic interventions in thematic areas; such as health, education, water and sanitation, agriculture etc., CSOs have a critical role to play in supporting the implementation of SDGs. Furthermore, through their interactions with the community, they are at the frontline of tracking whether progress is being made or not on the ground or not. This provides a real opportunity to provide qualitative and quantitative evidence that can complement official data and information sources in order to influence policy and practice. CSOs must therefore engage and be part and parcel the process from the very beginning.

It is with this background that the SDGs Kenya Forum has been engaging with the SDGs Coordination Unit at the Ministry of Devolution and Planning in order to coordinate civil society participation in Kenya’s SDGs process towards domestication of the SDG’s. The forum was invited to contribute to the Kenyan national report that will be presented at the High Level Political Forum in July 2017.

This report outlines CSO’s input, the process as well as the modalities of work leading up to the development and finalisation of the report. It provides a background of the SDG Kenya Forum, its formation, membership as well as some of the key initiatives that CSO’s in Kenya are engaging in to deliver 2030 Agenda. The forum exists to mobilise and coordinate civil society advocacy for the achievement of SDGs in Kenya through partnerships, citizen engagement, capacity building, policy dialogue, and campaigns, among others.

This report further outlines the participatory methodology for its development. The forum organised a series of face-to-face meetings and online consultations among its members to agree on content and the approach in compiling a synthesised and thematically representative report. A core team was established to receive, review and synthesise the goal-specific reports into a single report that was subjected to review by members and the final version shared with government. The forum membership was divided into thematic SDGs of focus for this year’s review i.e. SDGs 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 14. Members were then tasked to prepare joint goal-specific reports depending on how their work aligned to the respective goals under review. A template was provided to standardise their input.

The report reviews the policy environment in line with the official format of the VNR process.

Continue reading full report in pdf file.