The Insistence on Transforming the World: Brazilian Civil Society and the 2030 Agenda

This chapter discusses the participation of Brazilian civil society in the construction of resolution A/70/15 approved by the United Nations (UN), whose negotiation was recognized as one of the most inclusive ever carried out by the UN. It was developed based on the experience of Gestos (Seropositivity, Communication and Gender), an NGO created in 1993 in Recife-PE, which participated in the entire process established by the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in 2012. Civil Society Organizations moved on a chessboard of extremely dense, unequal power struggles with complex dynamics within the Brazilian State, the United Nations, its member states, and the various negotiating blocs. The stakeholders were many and there were, therefore, multiple interests in dispute for the definition of the objectives to be achieved by 2030 which, in the end, also ended up benefiting from the citizen diplomacy exercised by Brazilian NGOs and networks.