Rule of Law and the Sustainable Development Goals

In: Max Planck yearbook of United Nations law, Band 18, Heft 1, S. 286-331

Abstract

2015 is the year when the Millennium Development Goals are due to be achieved. Deliberations about a post-2015 agenda have been ongoing for years, with multiple un agencies, ngos, and other stakeholders participating. The Open Working Group (owg) of the General Assembly in 2014, after a complex procedure, presented a proposal on the sdgs that will serve as the basis for Member State negotiations in 2015. The paper seeks to outline the organizational challenges of a process that was intended to be inclusive like none before, but that seems to have proved overwhelming, even detrimental to the objective. It does so by showing how, in the case of the rule of law concept, hopes were raised and then disappointed.