The Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (CSPPS) is the global network of civil society actors, experts and academics from the South and the North who work together to support conflict prevention and peacebuilding in fragile situations. CSPPS enjoys the support of the EU Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO) to implement its workplan in 2019-2020. On 1 January 2019, CSPPS embarked on a one-year collaboration with the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) to enable CSPPS to sustain and expand its work to amplify the voice of civil society within the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS), and to support the operationalisation of the Ministry’s holistic approach to addressing crises and fragilities.

For the first time since the advent of the 2030 Agenda in 2015, SDG16 – along with other SDGs – will go for a detailed review at the High-Level Political Forum in July 2019. With the support of the MEAE and DEVCO, this has prompted CSPPS to implement its Ready for Review project. The Ready for Review is a CSPPS project to support civil society engagement in fragile and conflict-affected countries going for 2019 Voluntary National Review (VNR) implemented in partnership with the TAP Network. More specifically, this project is built around political dialogue processes taking place in context of the IDPS-partnership. It entails that CSPPS will seek to ensure – in partnership with the TAP Network and local civil society partners – the meaningful inclusion, participation and contribution of civil society during Voluntary National Review (VNR) processes. The project focuses on SDG 16+ an includes a group of selected countries, namely Côte d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Chad, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, Rwanda, Ghana and Nigeria. The group of target countries illustrates CSPPS’ willingness to make use of the existing partnership as built up in the context of the IDPS while at the same time also open doors for new connections by providing support to non-g7+ countries (Rwanda, Ghana and Nigeria) in amplifying the voice of civil society in relevant policy processes around the VNR.

At the country level on the ground, the support provided enabled CSPPS to ensure – to the extent possible depending on the political context and with the help of the expert facilitator – the meaningful inclusion, participation and contribution of national and local Civil Society during the consultation and validation stages of the VNR process. This also thanks through targeted outreach to involve youth- and women-led organisations. Workshop results were to inform the national VNR reports and supported the next steps in the localization and implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Undoubtedly, the liaison efforts made by CSPPS all throughout the various steps of in-country VNR consultation processes either directly improved or planted the seeds for better coordination between government-led and civil society-led activities. The qualitative data collected during these in-country consultative workshops laid the foundation for a civil society common positioning around the current state of SDG implementation at the national level. The combination of workshop activities with outreach to IDPS, donor and government partners has helped to garner needed strategic support for VNR processes while at the same time catalysing entry points for follow-up discussion with the same actors by our local partners. Subsequently, both during and after the High-Level Political Forum, CSPPS set to organise a peer-to-peer exchange to reflect upon the VNR experiences of Civil Society Organisation representatives involved.