PD 21 - Decade of Action: Accelerating Progress on the Health-Related SDGs at Country Level

By committing to the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All (GAP), the signatory agencies signaled their readiness to better support countries during the decade of action on the SDGs. COVID-19 has set countries back on their path to achieving the health-related SDGs and has further emphasized the importance of joint support to countries.

The GAP’s comparative advantage is to strengthen continuous, effective, long-term collaboration and alignment among a set of UN and non-UN multilateral agencies in support of countries’ nationally defined needs, priorities and plans. Country ownership and leadership lie at the heart of GAP’s success and clear priorities for action to accelerate progress towards the health-related SDGs have been identified by around a dozen countries under the auspices of the GAP, with expressions of interest from many more.

This panel debate will present what countries are doing to get back on track and/or accelerate progress towards health-related SDGs as they respond and recover from COVID-19. It will feature representatives of countries engaged or interested in the implementation of the GAP and hear about their experiences so far and what they expect from the GAP agencies in terms of joined-up support. The panel will share updates on the collaboration; review lessons learned and challenges encountered in the implementation of the GAP to date and discuss how successful approaches could be replicated in more countries. The debate will also highlight how other stakeholders at country level can engage and contribute to the process.