Bill Jeffery, Executive Director of the Centre for Health Science and Law made the following statement on a joint statement endorsed by 267 civil society organizations and experts worldwide.

“It is no surprize that companies that sell food, alcohol, tobacco, and fossil fuels and the machines they power pressure governments to weaken government regulations to favour the uninhibited sale of their products. The manner in which that influence is exerted on the United Nations is largely secreted from view.

“The UN has no lobbyist registry, no access to information guarantees, and only patchy conflict-of-interest safeguards. Public interest organizations, experts and the news media are routinely excluded from treaty negotiations and other member state meetings, including negotiations of the Pact for the Future that is the centrepiece of the meetings this week in New York.

“It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Sustainable Development, but plain to see that progress in achieving them is terribly insufficient.

“Non-governmental organizations lack the transparency tools to hold governments to account and many governments generally provide little or no funds to NGOs to ensure that they exercise their vital role to hold them to account. Discretionary, short-term funding always carries the expectation that criticism is a deal-breaker for future funding.

“As of today, 267 organizations echoed these concerns and called on the United Nations and member states to provide independent funding to experts and expert-qualified NGOs to monitor and publicize shortcomings in progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

“But the environmental and human health harm of those products exceeds their purchase price and the combined cost to consumers, governments and other industries is roughly half of the US$60 trillion value of the global commercial economy.