7th and 8th Sessions of the Post-2015 Intergovernmental Negotiations
(Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Outcome Document)

Delegates continued to give statements on the 30 July revised version of the post-2015 outcome document on Friday morning. Many welcomed elements of the draft and cautioned against undertaking extensive re-drafting at the current stage of negotiations, with one delegate commenting that the meeting was “within sniffing distance” of an outcome.

Delegates delivered statements through the morning, commenting on the two alternative versions of the preamble, two alternative versions of the climate change paragraph, and issues including water, desertification, children, youth, poverty eradication and good governance. They also continued to express differing views on the relationship of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) with the post-2015 development agenda, and means of implementation.

Switzerland, supported by several countries, called for a broader view of water management to be reflected in the declaration, and for adding sanitation to the human right to safe drinking water.

Many countries, including Ecuador, the European Union, Ghana, Iceland, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru for several Latin American countries, the Philippines, Serbia and Turkey, supported the shorter version of the preamble, while some others called for importing elements of the longer version, or expressed flexibility.

Amb. Samantha Power, US Permanent Representative to the UN, stressed that the text should speak the language of people whose lives depend on this effort, so they feel represented and hold governments to their commitments, and she called to “clearly state our ambition to be the generation that ends extreme poverty.”

Plenary adjourned at 1:40 pm to enable the Co-Facilitators to draft text changes in consultation with Member States. Delegates received the revised text at 8:00 pm. The plenary reconvened at 12:40 am on Saturday, 1 August, after delegates had time to review the draft. After four hours of comments by delegations, the Co-Facilitators suspended the meeting at 4:45 am to allow further work on the text that might enable adoption by consensus. The meeting will reconvene at noon on Saturday.