Voluntary Local Review 2021

Raymond Saner, CSEND, Geneva, 2021

In addition to the inclusion of Voluntary National Reviews as part of the High-Level Political Forum’s (HLPF) review process, cities, region or provinces are now also partaking in this voluntary review process during the annual HLPF meetings in July at the UN headquarters. These subnational administrative units report on their own implementation and monitoring of the progress of the SDGs in the format of Voluntary Local Review (VLR). These VLR reports are available at the UN DESA SDG Knowledge Platforms.

Since our last reporting on the VLR during the occasion of the 80th session of the Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management (2019), number of cities and regions making their VLR public has increased visibly on the UNDESA SDG portal has reached 15 in 2020 and 2021 from the low number of 2 (2016) and 5 (2017). A stylized analysis was carried out by CSEND in August this year. The findings of the CSEND research are presented in the text available here