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Parliaments and the United Nations: A shared agenda for sustainable development

October 28, 2025 | Activity

With less than five years remaining to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an urgent question arises for Latin America and the Caribbean: how can effective implementation be accelerated through concrete policies that improve people’s lives?

Although the region has made progress in integrating the SDGs into national development plans, persistent inequalities and growing challenges in social protection, public security, climate change, and social cohesion call for more decisive collective action.

To this end, ParlAmericas and the United Nations Development Coordination Office for Latin America and the Caribbean convened a high-level regional dialogue that brought together parliamentarians and United Nations Resident Coordinators. Held virtually, the meeting created a space to strengthen cooperation between legislatures and UN country teams, examine the gaps that persist in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, and promote joint responses that accelerate its uptake.

Participants agreed that parliamentary leadership is essential to align national priorities with the commitments undertaken under the 2030 Agenda and other international instruments – translating those agreements into policies, budgets, and mechanisms for accountability that advance well-being, sustainable development, and equality. They also underscored the value of parliamentary diplomacy and inter-parliamentary dialogue for advancing the region’s development agenda. In this regard, sustained collaboration with United Nations offices and ParlAmericas provides an institutional framework to ensure coherence between national public policy and international commitments.

The dialogue highlighted examples of cooperation that reflect this approach, including the creation of a parliamentary observatory; programs for institutional strengthening and youth participation; coordination through committees and parliamentary caucuses on issues such as human rights, gender equality, and social protection; and multisectoral partnerships to address the climate crisis. These experiences demonstrate that structured, sustained cooperation between parliaments and the United Nations system helps translate international commitments into more coherent legislative and budgetary frameworks, contributing to long-term responses to development challenges.

Participants also emphasized the importance of quality information and disaggregated data to inform decision-making and assess policy impact, and of promoting more effective and plural civic participation that brings legislative processes closer to communities and strengthens trust in institutions.

In a hemispheric context that demands collective responses, the dialogue reaffirmed that cooperation between parliaments and the United Nations is key not only to accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, but also to renewing multilateralism and strengthening democracy in the region.

This meeting was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada.