A/76/162 stakeholders and a High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which was appointed to develop a proposal for the new agenda. 17 30. While formulating the new agenda, there were disagreements about how to incorporate inequality. The United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) led thematic consultations on inequality, involving multiple stakeholders. While initially most developing countries supported a stand-alone goal on reducing inequality, they opposed it in the final stages. 18 31. The High-level Panel did not formulate a stand-alone goal on inequality, but “leave no one behind” emerged as a central theme. This background to the emergence of leaving no one behind should be understood from a subsequent paper by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs from 2018 19 as the main approach to frame the inequality agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals as inclusive development, focusing on the exclusion of marginalized and vulnerable groups from social opportunities and deflecting attention from the core issues of distribution of income and wealth and the challenge of “extreme inequality”. The term is adequately vague so as to accommodate wide-ranging interpretations. It is suggested in the paper that whom the different countries identify and recognize as being left behind is indicative of how they deal with the concept of leaving no one behind. Most countries’ voluntary national reviews refer to exclusion on account of gender and age. In 2017, almost all such reviews referred to women and persons with disabilities, but only 18 mentioned race, ethnicity or religion and almost none used the word “minority”, and 11 referred to indigenous groups. 32. Nevertheless, the possible inclusion of minorities was raised in the negotia tions on the post-2015 development agenda several times. Indeed, the marginalization faced by national or ethnic, religious and linguistic communities had been referenced during discussions on nearly every issue on the agenda of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, although once again direct reference to them as minorities was often avoided. Moreover, a specific goal 10.5 was suggested during the Group’s discussions: 20 “empower and promote the social and economic inclusion of the poor, the marginalized and people in vulnerable situations, including indigenous peoples, women, minorities, migrants, persons with disabilities, older persons, children and youth”. 33. At this point, the “leaving no one behind” commitment would be turned on its head, with the exact opposite occurring: minorities were to be excluded. While paragraph 23 of the 2030 Agenda specifies vulnerable people who should be empowered by the Agenda, minorities were intentionally removed from the earlier versions of the enumeration of “those left behind” without any explanation, while all the others remained. 21 Thus started what could arguably be perceived as the __________________ 17 18 19 20 21 21-09902 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Thea Smaavik Hegstad, “‘Leaving no one behind’ as a site of contestation and reinterpretation”, Background Paper No. 47 for the Committee for Development Policy (ST/ESA/2018/CDP/47), pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 7. International Institute for Sustainable Development, “Summary of the Twelfth Session of the UN General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals: 16 –20 June 2014”, in Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 12, p. 7. From paragraph 23 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: “People who are vulnerable must be empowered. Those whose needs are reflected in the Agenda include all children, youth, persons with disabilities (of whom more than 80 per cent live in poverty), people living with HIV/AIDS, older persons, indigenous peoples, refugees and internally displaced persons and migrants.” 9/22