Sustainable Development Goals and Security Workshop 2019 in South Africa

Apply today to attend The Sustainable Development Goals and Security Workshop 2019. Sustainable development and security are closely related. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) only explicitly mention Food Security as a specific goal, but in the same vein, reference could have been made to maritime security, environmental security or human security in general. The latter concept supposes freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom to live with dignity as a critical basis for sustaining and developing livelihoods. Personal and community security is perhaps a significant basis for achieving some satisfactory level of sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals and Security Workshop 2019 focuses on this aspect.

To get more exciting opportunities like this, at your fingertips, install the Youth Opportunities Mobile App here from your cellphone.

The absence of a more nuanced security-oriented approach in the SDGs has raised critical questions. While the SDGs should not be turned into a securitization project, the need for traditional security arrangements as well as an understanding of the goals in terms of ‘securing’ basic human needs is necessary. A clarification of the term ‘secure’ in connection with specific SDGs “access to land” (SDG 2.2.), “child labour prohibition” (SDG 8.7) “working environments” (SDG 8.8) is required, as is an understanding of the general SDG – security nexus. Without properly securing sustainable development environments, the implementation of the SDG program could come under threat.

Set against this context of security and preventing or mitigating challenges, how should (or how can) the United Nations in cooperation with other intergovernmental organizations, business and civil society organizations, manage and secure spaces in order to allow for sustainable development. Of immediate concern are geographical spaces which are vulnerable: refugee camps, schools, agricultural land, fishing grounds, villages, workplaces, etc. but also emergent less tangible spaces of the internet and technology.

Participants in the workshop will gain scholarly and practice-based knowledge and applied skills in the analysis of a number of issue areas related to the workshop theme. In some measure, the selected areas will be determined by the research proposals of the successful participants, but more broadly the themes and skill-sets to be addressed may be anticipated to include (but not be limited to):

• Identifying and addressing current security challenges facing the SDGs project;
• Managing and balancing the security roles and interests of actors at the local, national, and regional levels, including intergovernmental, non-governmental, and civil society parties, with those of the global IOs;
• The current state of scholarly knowledge regarding non-traditional and human security ideas and debates, and of practitioner understanding regarding policies, doctrine and practices;
• UN and Member State progress towards the SDGs;
• Identifying and reflecting upon vulnerable environments and groups that are in need of specific security arrangements with respect to their sustainable development.