INTRODUCTION TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

For nearly 15 years, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been a guiding force on many issues affecting the lives of children, young people and their families.  Much progress has been made in reducing preventable child deaths, getting more children into schools (including girls), reducing extreme poverty and in ensuring more people have access to safe water


The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which have proved highly successful in rallying public, private and political support for global poverty reduction and provided an effective tool to stimulate the production of new poverty-related data and additional aid commitments – are set to expire at the end of 2015. Consequently, the international community and stakeholders around the world are currently engaged in a process to negotiate a new global framework to eradicate poverty - the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
 With the MDGs era coming to an end this year the world has a historic opportunity to set a course for the next era of human development that is transformational for both people and planet.  Already millions have been involved in crafting what this new sustainable development agenda will look like: governments, civil society, the private sector, academia, the UN system, concerned individuals and others.
This new agenda will define a vision of how the world should look in 2030; a bold, courageous narrative of an integrated sustainable future where no one is left behind. The framework will also include a new set of global goals, targets and indicators to incentivise and measure progress – the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
 While the MDGs prioritised the social dimension of development, the aim is for the SDGs to embody a comprehensive and integrated approach to development, and to seek to balance sustained socioeconomic growth with the sustainable use of natural resources. In addition, the SDGs will apply to all countries, unlike the MDGs, which served as goals for developing nations only. Building upon the successes and lessons learned from the MDGs, the SDGs are expected to become an important tool for national priority-setting, mobilisation of resources, and the achievement of specific development gains.