The eighth meeting of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development will take place on March 31-April 4, 2025 at the United Nations organization’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile. 

The Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, held an informational meeting on Monday, March 10 with ambassadors and other representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Chile to present preparations for and the main themes and actions to be addressed at the eighth meeting of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, which will take place from March 31 to April 4 at the United Nations regional organization’s central headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

This meeting – to be chaired by Peru, which holds ECLAC’s presidency in the 2024-2026 period – will be attended by representatives of government, the UN System, international and regional organizations, the private sector, academia and civil society, who will analyze the progress and challenges related to fulfilling the 2030 Agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ambassador Jorge Félix Rubio, Director-General for Economic Affairs at Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, welcomed those in attendance on Monday. He recalled that the Forum was created in 2016 as a regional mechanism for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda’s implementation and that it is open to the participation of all Latin American and Caribbean countries.

“Peru is deeply committed to the work carried out by ECLAC, which is an emblematic organization dedicated to pursuing the region’s economic and social development. In that regard, it has hosted the (Commission’s) sessions four times and has been similarly committed to the Forum on Sustainable Development from the beginning,” he stated.

Meanwhile, in his presentation, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary gave an overview of the main highlights of the eighth meeting of this Forum, which is one of the most important intergovernmental regional gatherings held each year, since it offers a platform for multi-stakeholder and multi-level dialogue and discussion for all countries regarding the region’s progress towards more productive, inclusive and sustainable development. 

José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs explained that this edition of the Forum is very significant because 2025 marks 10 years since the 2030 Agenda began to be implemented, and because we are just five years away from the 2030 target year. In addition, because in terms of the United Nations’ global agenda, the SDG Summit was held in 2023, the Pact for the Future and its annexes were adopted in 2024, and in 2025 several meetings of great importance for the multilateral system and international cooperation will be held, including:

• The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, on June 30-July 3 in Seville, Spain.
• The Second World Summit for Social Development, in November in Qatar.
• The COP 30 on Climate Change, on November 10-21 in Belém do Pará, Brazil; and
• The commemoration of two historic global milestones for the women’s rights agenda: the First World Conference on Women (Mexico, 1975) and the 30th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). In addition, the XVI Regional Conference on Women will be held on August 12-15 in Mexico.

“This Forum is especially important because the world has changed. As we all know, we are living in a seismic geopolitical time. And it doesn’t appear to be fleeting. A global redefinition is taking place not only in terms of economic trends but also the traditional alliances of the West versus other countries and regions. The world is undergoing a process of rupturing and reconfiguring alliances. And not at all gradually, but instead at collision speed,” the senior United Nations official warned.

“All of this is already having, and undoubtedly will intensify, serious consequences for the global economy, for the multilateral system, for the institutions of the Bretton Woods system, and of course for the United Nations,” he added.

At the Forum, ECLAC will present the eighth report on regional progress and challenges in relation to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, entitled Latin America and the Caribbean in the Final Five Years of the 2030 Agenda: Steering Transformations to Accelerate Progress, delivered by José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary.

He explained that this document describes the adverse challenges, both international and specific to the region, that hinder efforts to fulfill the 2030 Agenda. It also addresses the expectations for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and looks in-depth at the specific challenges and at the alternatives for accelerating the fulfillment of the Goals being analyzed this year, which are SDG 3: Health and Well-being; SDG 5: Gender Equality; SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth; SDG 14: Life below Water; and SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals.

After this, the Secretary of the Commission, Luis Fidel Yáñez, reviewed the Forum’s organizational details and announced that in addition to the meeting’s general programme, 38 side events will be held, organized by civil society, the United Nations system, governments that are members of ECLAC and other participating entities. He stressed that the main innovation at this meeting is a series of dialogues on global, regional and national action, ten years after the historic approval of the 2030 Agenda – particularly the dialogues on national action, which will include the discussion of successful national experiences relating to one of the SDGs that are part of the gathering’s analysis this year. 

Attending this informational meeting with the diplomatic corps were representatives of 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries and other States from Europe and North America that are members of ECLAC: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Türkiye, the United States and Uruguay.

The eighth meeting of the Forum will be inaugurated on Tuesday, April 1 at 8:30 a.m. local time in Santiago, Chile (GMT-3). The event will be preceded by a meeting of the mechanism for civil society participation and the Forum of Children, Adolescents and Youth of Latin America and the Caribbean, both of which will be held on Monday, March 31.

The meeting’s full programme is available on the website https://foroalc2030.cepal.org/2025/en/programme.