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World Leaders to Take Stock of 'Faltering' Global Goals

Thomson Reuters Foundation

   UNITED NATIONS - The world is decades behind schedule to achieve
   ambitious goals to fight poverty, inequality and other ills,
   development experts warned Wednesday, as global leaders prepared to
   meet to weigh their progress.

   The high-level summit in New York next week will be the first to focus
   on the sustainable development goals since they were adopted by the
   United Nations four years ago.

   The 17 sustainable development goals, known as SDGs, set out a
   wide-ranging "to-do" list tackling conflict, hunger, land degradation,
   gender inequality and climate change by 2030. Assessments of their
   progress have been bleak.

   On Wednesday the Social Progress Imperative, a U.S.-based nonprofit,
   said the goals were unlikely to be reached until 2073, more than four
   decades past their target date.

   "Progress isn't fast enough to achieve the ambition of the SDGs within
   my lifetime, and that's a problem," said Michael Green, chief executive
   of the Imperative. "There are some countries that are going backwards
   and letting us down."

   Most countries are lagging particularly in efforts to improve
   sanitation, nutrition, basic medical care, shelter and water, said the
   group, which ranks nations on an array of economic and social factors.

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