T

he administration of President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo must work harder on meeting the targets set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) program to make up for its dismal performance in achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expire this year.

Members of the Civil Society Coalition for Sustainable Development said that they welcomed Indonesia'€™s gesture in agreeing to the Outcome Document on the SDGs at the UN on Aug. 2, saying that the move should push the government to prepare for the implementation of the SDGs within the context of national development.

The next step that the government could take, said International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) senior program officer for post-2015 development Hamong Santono, would be President Jokowi attending the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York in September to show Indonesia'€™s commitment to fulfilling the SDGs'€™ 17 development targets by 2030.

'€œJokowi'€™s attendance would symbolize Indonesia'€™s leadership and political will in fulfilling the SDGs. Afterwards, Indonesia should waste no time in preparing itself for the goals,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Hamong said that Indonesia'€™s failure to meet the MDGs was caused by a lack of coordination between the central and regional governments.

He also blamed the lack of public campaigns on MDGs for contributing to the failure.

Because of the lack of information on the MDG targets being distributed to regional governments and even to ministries, the progress toward improving gender equality, child mortality, maternal health and poverty reduction, among other things, had been minimal, especially in areas where the problems are the most prevalent.

'€œThere are a lot of facts from the field that are not necessarily reflected in official documents charting the progress. We want to know how the government is able to organize the regulatory framework so that the processes toward fulfilling these goals can be achieved,'€ he said.

There should also be efforts to involve civil society in the fulfillment of the SDG targets, said Indonesia Women'€™s Coalition secretary-general Dian Kartikasari.

Failure to involve members of civil society or relevant institutions such as the House of Representatives or regional governments could condemn the government to repeating the mistakes from the MDGs.

Meanwhile, Migrant Care development policy analyst Wahyu Susilo blamed politics for the failure in meeting MDG targets.

He said that Indonesia was distracted by political tensions between 2000 and 2005, adding that the country had made little progress in trying to fulfill the targets during the last five years.

'€œAlso, the MDGs were drafted in a top-down sort of system. Even though UN countries adopted it in 2000, the clear focuses of the MDGs were not equally distributed among '€˜lower'€™ countries. The SDG drafting process is more of a participatory system which Indonesia can be very involved in creating too,'€ Wahyu told the Post.

The SDGs are a set of 17 development goals that rose from the ashes of the MDGs, which were agreed upon by UN member states in 2000 to be fulfilled by 2015.

The SDGs will include a number of goals that were not included in the MDGs, including an emphasis on gender equality, eradication of child marriage, sustainable modern energy and climate change. Some of the MDG goals that will be further explored in the SDGs include the reduction of inequality, ending poverty and sustainable development.