Sustainable Development Goals Workshop:
Cambodia’s National Implementation Challenges

HSF

The workshop was part of the joint activities of HSF and ASEF in the CLMV region over the past years. Its main aim was to look at Cambodia’s national capacity for implementing the SDGs, which represent a global commitment to address the current challenges. The implementation of SDGs is especially challenging for developing countries due to resource constraints. The workshop served as a platform to discuss how to measure and address gaps in the progress towards achieving the goals. Its focus was on two parts: current state of SDG implementation in Cambodia and steps to move forward. It focused on four themes: Monitoring; Financing and Fundraising; Coordination/Collaboration for Implementation as well as Planning and Priority Setting.

H.E. Toun Thavrak (Secretary of State, Ministry of Planning, Cambodia) stressed that “Cambodia’s national context is important especially after the country’s civil war ordeal.” He further highlighted that Cambodia may face various challenges, for example access to financing resources and infrastructural and statistical challenges, to achieve the SDGs.

HSF

One of the pressing challenges Cambodia faces is the lack of data – only 36% of the proposed CSDGs indicators have available data. While most of the data can be obtained from census and surveys, these are mostly supported by development partners and there is a declining trend of development support for Cambodia. Due to funding limitation, it is necessary for the country to set priorities to tackle the most urgent challenges.

The Hanns Seidel Foundation will continue to support the National Institute of Statistics with further activities in 2018.