Parliamentarians from Sustainable Development and Good Governance Committee of the National Assembly (NA) have discussed ways of mainstreaming SDGs into parliamentary mechanism. At an expert consultation with UNDP’s Parliament Support Programme (PSP), the lawmakers also stressed the quick formation of SDGs Parliamentary Forum and establishing SDGs resource center in the parliaments.

MPs attending the consultation notified on progress underway for the resource center, while also informing on the letters that have been dispatched to all seven provincial assemblies propose nominees for SDG Parliamentary Forum. Selected nominees will act as SDG champions to promote SDGs in their respective provincial assembly.

Kevin Deveaux, Canadian lawyer and International Consultant of UNDP discussed the mandate of SDGs and good governance committee, progress reviews, law reviews, coordination, sectoral oversight and data in planning and oversight in regards to the Global Goals in Nepal’s context.  

Addressing the interaction, Dr. Bimala Rai Paudyal, a member of the committee highlighted the need to develop a checklist to check whether new legislations being drafted by the parliament contain components of the SDGs. She suggested the checklist would allow the MPs to look at the laws from SDG perspective enabling them to provide inputs during the drafts.

Dinanath Sharma, Parliamentary Party leader of Nepal Communist Party in NA said the government has always placed the SDGs in the center of its agendas. "The government has given priority to all 17 SDGs and the budget for fiscal year is allocated with this focus," said Sharma ,. He also informed on the interaction about localization of the SDGs as organized in the provincial level. "Now, we need to support the local level governments and identify their needs and formulate the plans accordingly,”

The SDG and Good Governance Committee agreed to move forward the idea of ‘SDGs Champions’ Forum of MPs’ planned for Kathmandu, later this year. A total of 13 MPs (including three female) of the SDG and Good Governance Committee were present during the interaction.