MDGs

Salvaging the SDGs: New Thinking to Spur Action Takes Shape

September 30, 2019

For the first time since a new development agenda was adopted in 2015 to make the world a better place for everyone, government leaders assembled at the United Nations in late September to take stock of progress. The verdict of this summit was not good. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the centerpiece of Agenda …

Sustainable Development Goals

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Big Holes in the UN Development Goals Are Exposed by New Studies

March 18, 2019

by Barbara Crossette

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. They are finding that the lofty visions that produced the SDGs, now in their fourth year of implementation, have from the start been undercut …

Health and Population, Sustainable Development Goals

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Finding True Power for Women and Girls: The UN Goals’ Toughest Task

October 27, 2015

by Barbara Crossette

Challenged by the staggering agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to abolish most of the world’s ills within 15 years, research organizations, advocacy groups and objective demographers had begun to do the math well before the goals were adopted globally in September 2015. Success or failure rests on complex equations with interlinked or …

Africa, Asia, Education, Sustainable Development Goals, Women

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Can the UN’s SDGs Live Up to the Hype?

October 10, 2015

by Barbara Crossette

When the United Nations’ member states gave final approval at a special General Assembly session on Sept. 25 to the new global development policy, they were making a commitment to the most wide-ranging and ambitious plan ever attempted by the organization. Now the hard part begins as experts struggle to decide how to measure …

Development, Sustainable Development Goals

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The General Assembly Blesses a New Set of Universal Development Goals

August 8, 2015

by Bill Orme

For some time, it seemed that United Nations debates over a new set of 15-year global development goals would last nearly as long as the goals themselves. But nearly three years of formal, informal and “informal informal” negotiations finally came to a close on Aug. 2, with agreement by General Assembly consensus on this …

Sustainable Development Goals

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Freed From Extreme Poverty, but Left Out of the Middle Class

August 3, 2015

by Barbara Crossette

When the final assessment of what the Millennium Development Goals achieved was released on July 6, the United Nations said confidently that more than 1 billion people had been lifted from poverty since 1990, the baseline year for setting the goals, which were then monitored from 2000 to 2015. But where did these poor …

Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Latin America, Poverty

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2015: A Year of Potential Landmarks for the UN

January 13, 2015

by Barbara Crossette

By almost every measure, this year will be monumental for the United Nations. The organization will be 70 years old and that will inspire, as anniversaries always do, a lot of stocktaking, analysis and, of course, criticism. Past stumbles will get attention and an army of “reformers” will offer prescriptions for the future. In …

Governance, LGBT, Sustainable Development Goals, Women

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In 2014, a Year of Catastrophes, Women Still Made Some Gains

December 26, 2014

by Barbara Crossette

Amid the horrors that women and girls have suffered around the world in 2014 — including being forced to flee their homes by the hundreds of thousands in Syria, the sexual enslavement of Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and the kidnapping and forced conversion to radical Islam of girls from schools in northern Nigeria …

Health and Population, Sustainable Development Goals, Women

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Can Good Governance Become a Global Development Goal?

October 28, 2014

by Bill Orme

British Prime Minister David Cameron had two clear messages when he spoke at a post-2015 global development goals forum on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month. The first was his emphatic view that the General Assembly panel’s proposal for 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 associated “targets” was too unwieldy …

Development, Secretary-General, Sustainable Development Goals

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For Journalists Covering Climate Change, the Topic Goes Beyond Science

September 14, 2014

by Dulcie Leimbach

NEW ORLEANS — In this urban symbol of disaster unpreparedness, journalists who cover climate change and the environment gathered this month, almost exactly nine years after Hurricane Katrina tore this city apart, to swap stories and advice while brainstorming communally on their beat. In a world that is ever more intertwined, it was clear …

Climate and Environment, Health and Population

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How Is the UN’s Development Machinery Perceived? Does Anyone Care?

August 22, 2014

by Stephen Browne and Thomas G. Weiss

One year ago, the report of a high-level panel of world leaders and renowned development specialists proposed 12 goals and 50 indicators for the United Nation’s post-2015 agenda. These were already unwieldy numbers, but after a year and a half of juggling and negotiations, member states in New York on the Open Working Group …

Development

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Human Development That Sidetracks a Woman’s Power of Choice

August 4, 2014

by Barbara Crossette

The 2014 United Nations Human Development Report appeared at the end of July wrapped around the title “Sustaining Human Progress,” a goal that moves beyond meeting the targets that can measure achievement at any given time but cannot promise continuity or permanent improvement. The report’s subtitle, “Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience,” suggests how to …

Development, Women

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WORLDVIEWS

Will Women’s Reproductive Rights Be Dropped in the Post-2015 Agenda?

July 17, 2014

by Rebecca Brown

The United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda is the next phase of the Millennium Development Goals, which provided a 15-year road map to tackle poverty and foster development in the world’s poorest countries. But as putting together the new agenda moves forward, it is becoming clear that the critical needs of women may be pushed …

WORLDVIEWS

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An Italian Priest and a US Health Group Win the 2014 UN Population Prize

June 18, 2014

by Barbara Crossette

Putting a new focus on maternal health and obstetric fistula in particular, which devastates the lives of women and girls in many poor countries, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has given its 2014 UN Population Award to an Italian doctor working in Mozambique and to an American maternal and child health organization with …

UN Agencies, Women

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To End Deep Inequalities, Say Doyle and Stiglitz, Create a Ninth Development Goal

May 7, 2014

by Barbara Crossette

Two leading international policy experts at Columbia University are calling for more action from individual governments to address inequalities within their borders, in effect adding a bold new goal to the eight measurements of progress reflected in the Millennium Development Goals. Their proposal comes as debate swirls around what the United Nations needs to …