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Sustainable Development Goals

KHOA

Background on the goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were born at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. The
objective was to produce a set of universal goals that meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our world.

The SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which started a global effort in 2000 to tackle the indignity of poverty. The MDGs

established measurable, universally-agreed objectives for tackling extreme poverty and hunger, preventing deadly diseases, and expanding primary
education to all children, among other development priorities.

For 15 years, the MDGs drove progress in several important areas: reducing income poverty, providing much needed access to water and sanitation, driving
down child mortality and drastically improving maternal health. They also kick-started a global movement for free primary education, inspiring countries to
invest in their future generations. Most significantly, the MDGs made huge strides in combatting HIV/AIDS and other treatable diseases such as malaria and
tuberculosis.

Key MDG achievements

• More than 1 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty (since 1990)

• Child mortality dropped by more than half (since 1990)
• The number of out of school children has dropped by more than half (since 1990)
• HIV/AIDS infections fell by almost 40 percent (since 2000)
• The legacy and achievements of the MDGs provide us with valuable lessons and experience to begin work on the new goals. But for millions of people
around the world the job remains unfinished. We need to go the last mile on ending hunger, achieving full gender equality, improving health services
and getting every child into school beyond primary. The SDGs are also an urgent call to shift the world onto a more sustainable path.

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