ABSTRACT
This chapter will consider the fate of the United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its potential to serve as a vehicle for advancing just, sustainable, and rights-affirming recovery policies. It explores the possibility of the COVID-19 crisis leading to one of two paradigm shifts – either a consolidation of stakeholder capitalism with the private sector in the driver’s seat or a more rights-favorable course correction that alters the power dynamics between the public and the private sector, with the focus on people as rights-holders. The crisis has brought new visibility to the importance of a holistic human rights-based approach, the critical role of the public and the state as human rights guarantor, and the need for robust multilateralism to advance global cooperation and solidarity. At the same time, the disruption will also intensify pressure for austerity measures, including privatization, as well as for multistakeholderism and corporate capture of key policymaking spaces under the banner of ‘stakeholder capitalism’. The chapter concludes that for the 2030 Agenda and its 17 SDGs to overcome existing vices and truly serve as a guide for just and transformative global and national COVID-19 recovery efforts, the Agenda must be anchored in human rights.
