Jordan is preparing to present its third Voluntary National Review on the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This is an important milestone that should not be treated as merely procedural exercise before the United Nations High-Level Political Forum, but rather as a national opportunity to review public policies and assess their real impact on people’s lives, particularly the most vulnerable groups.
اضافة اعلان
It cannot be denied that Jordan has made progress in several areas related to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. The national data system has improved, and the Jordan Development Portal has expanded its provision of indicators that can be monitored and tracked. The Sustainable Development Goals have also been linked to national frameworks such as the Economic Modernisation Vision. In recent years, efforts have also been made in the areas of social protection, food security planning, digital transformation, improving access to education, expanding the contribution of renewable energy, and reforming the water sector, including a focus on resource-use efficiency in a country that is among the most water-scarce in the world.
However, important as these achievements are, they do not obscure the fact that progress remains uneven and has had a limited impact on the daily lives of many citizens. Poverty data is still not updated regularly, weakening the ability of decision-makers and society to accurately assess social policies. Unemployment, especially among young people and women, remains high, while households’ purchasing power continues to decline due to the rising cost of living and weak wages. Added to this are the expansion of informal work, gaps in social protection, persistent challenges related to gender equality, and growing pressure on public services.
The lack of progress on several Sustainable Development Goal indicators cannot be separated from the economic policy choices adopted by successive governments over recent years. These policies have placed pressure on indicators related to poverty, unemployment, decent work, and social protection through the broad reliance on indirect taxes and consumption taxes. Such policies affect low- and middle-income groups more than others, weakening purchasing power and domestic demand. Wage policies have also failed to develop sufficiently to keep pace with the rising cost of living, as increases have remained limited and infrequent, and have not succeeded in providing a minimum level of decent income for a wide segment of workers.
In the field of labor, policies have often tended to prioritise reducing operating costs and stimulating investment, without sufficient guarantees to improve working conditions, expand social protection, and reduce informal work. In this sense, some aspects of stalled progress are not due only to external crises or funding shortages, but also to an economic model that has not placed social justice and decent work at the heart of public policy.
What is more problematic is that the preparation of the report was not based on broad and systematic consultations with civil society. The consultations conducted by the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation were selective to some extent and did not include many organisations with long-standing experience in working on the Sustainable Development Goals, including organisations that had previously contributed to shadow reports during the two earlier reviews. This weakens national ownership of the report and turns participation from a meaningful dialogue into a formal presence or a limited exchange of information.
Jordan’s third Voluntary National Review should mark the beginning of an honest national debate on policies, rather than merely presenting achievements. The principle of “leaving no one behind” can only be realised through broader participation, greater transparency, and a clearer link between indicators, policies, and rights.
