Stakeholders have said that although the main agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to ‘Leave no one behind’, the entire marginalized community is being left behind by the agenda. In the parallel session of the one-day Nepal People’s Forum organized by the SDG National Network  on 18 August, 2023 in Kathmandu, in the discussion on Leave No One Behind, they told that the different clusters identified by the constitution, such as women, Dalits, tribes, Muslims and their issues cannot link with SDG’s indicators prepare by the government.

They said that ‘though there is an important opportunity for the overall development of all the marginalized communities, including those who are geographically left behind, the sustainable development goals are not connected with them’.

A parallel session of the People’s Forum titled ‘No One Left Behind’ was facilitated by the Nepal Disabled Women Association. Speaking at the session, Lili Thapa, a member of the National Human Rights Commission, said that although Nepal’s constitution and laws ensure women’s rights, there has been no significant improvement in women’s conditions due to lack of proper implementation.

Speaking at the session, Dalit activist Ganesh BK emphasized that the government should move towards identifying these clusters and implement the SDG accordingly.

Program Officer of CBM Global, Bimal Paudel, emphasized that since data is primary to achieve sustainable development goals, we need to work hard for collecting data and it should be started from this mid-term review.

For this, he said, the work of keeping statistics should be started in support from an organizations working in the field of disability, non-governmental organizations, international organizations and the government.

The panelists said that the indicators of the sustainable development goals are not specified, the policies and programs made without statistics and the indicators and the budget are not linked to the indicators of the sustainable development goals. This session was facilitated by Tika Dahal, chairperson of the NDWA.

At the opening session of the program, it was informed that Nepal has achieved only 12 percent of the target when Nepal is in the middle of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. At the People’s Forum, 5 parallel sessions were held on various topics related to the Sustainable Development Goals.