Sustainable Development Goals

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Henrik and Lana cover the latest in episode 165 of Flashback Friday this 'Earth Day' April 22, 2022.
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Reducing inequality within and among countries is a Sustainable Development Goal that is not progressing, as evidenced in demonstrations that erupted in many parts of the United States and abroad this year. Here, a protest in New York City, June 2020. JOHN PENNEY

A refugee with the documents he needs to go from Greece into what is now called North Macedonia, 2015. Over the next two years, scores of countries will conduct censuses, and they will need to include migration data. That collection of information will be difficult but essential for societies to function optimally. STEVE EVANS/CREATIVE COMMONS

A pro-Kurdistan independence rally in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, 2017. Governments missed an opportunity to advance the Sustainable Development Goal on good governance at the recent UN gathering of world leaders as attacks on civil society rise. LEVI CLANCY/CREATIVE COMMONS

Progress on the universal Sustainable Development Goals was scrutinized during the UN’s annual opening session of the General Assembly in September, and the news was not good. Some ambitions, like safe sanitation, are not making headway. In India, above, for example, about half of its population still openly defecates. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Amina Mohammed, right, the deputy secretary-general of the UN, signed a partnership agreement with the World Economic Forum, led by Borge Brende, left, to speed up progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. António Guterres, the UN secretary-general (behind Mohammed) and Klaus Schwab, the Forum’s chief executive, joined the ceremony in June.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are meant to improve the lives of everyone universally, but the system tracking their progress is showing flaws resulting from politics and a heavy reliance on numbers. Women offering food at Cuba’s Independence Day celebration, Caimito, 2015. JOE PENNEY
Serious flaws in the system for tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals have been uncovered in a newly published collection of stunning, provocative research by eminent developing policy specialists.

A World Bank report on foodborne diseases says food-safety regulations are most deficient in low-income countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, which can result in early deaths, especially among children. A dried-fish market in Kathmandu, Nepal, above.

Achim Steiner, center, is a longtime specialist who now runs the UN Development Program, based in New York. The current restructuring of the UN may be sidelining Steiner, jeopardizing development work. 
As the first effects of Secretary-General António Guterres’s ambitious organizational reform plans become apparent, former and current officials of the United Nations Development Program see the future of the internationally influential agency as uncertain if not in peril.

Akuei Malwal, left, ambassador for South Sudan to the United Nations; Omer Dahab Fadl Mohamed, Sudan’s envoy; and Joanna Wronecka, Poland’s envoy, in the Security Council, Oct. 11, 2018. The authors suggest that the multilateralism system of the UN can be shored up despite the faltering leadership of America globally. EVAN SCHNEIDER/UN PHOTO