The world faces many challenges. From environmental, social and economic factors, it feels as though progress is stalling and the world is in a precarious state.
The interconnectedness and complexity of problems means that they cannot be addressed and solved alone. While we can all act locally, our actions need to move upwards and connect to global outcomes.
Released in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an attempt to lead us towards better outcomes. It continues global efforts to tackle the world’s big issues. Containing 17 Sustainable Development Goals, this agenda seeks to end poverty, achieve equality, and create prosperous communities, thus leading to global peace and security.
Adopted and used by governments and corporate organisations, the UN SDGs received much attention and were used as a framework for policies and actions to address issues such as climate change, gender equality, hunger and access to clean drinking water and sanitation.
Reported on every year, the current 2024 progress report is sombre reading. Scheduled for launch on 27 June, the report which is available (LINK) states that only 17% of the global targets are on track to be achieved (access to mobile broadband, reducing infant mortality and access to energy), while the rest are either not progressing, or unlikely to be achieved.
A myriad of factors which we’ve all experienced is leading to this. Whether it is wars (Ukraine, Sudan, Middle East), the Covid-19 pandemic, or environmental degradation, the impact to the daily lives of many and the health of the planet means that standards of living are not improving, and in many cases are unfortunately going backwards.
Reflecting on this, my mind goes to Iran and how it’s faring. A review has found that the UN does have a cooperation framework on the UN SDGs with the Islamic regime. Interestingly, the report found failures to meeting many of the UN SDGs as being sanctions. The five priority areas are: socio-economic resilience; public health management; Environmental conversation, natural resource management and addressing climate change; disaster risk reduction and management; and drug control.
So how is the Islamic regime performing against meeting the UN SDGs? This report details its performance with responsibility of failures deflected to sanctions, the presence of Afghan refugees and pollution events caused across the border affecting Iran (e.g. dust storms).
The reports do not address the reasons for the sanctions, and steer well clear of any reporting against human rights and targets around gender equality. This underscores a failure as amongst the principles of the UN SDGs is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So while the report does not provide an adequate report card on progress against the UN SDGs by the Islamic regime, what I outline below provides an independent assessment based on publicly available information.
In reading reports from international institutions, it is clear that much of the information relies on data supplied by the Islamic regime. This therefore doesn’t paint the full picture of environment, social and economic factors in the country.
In order to gain a better picture, greater scrutiny of claims is important. It is also important for international institutions to not work in silos. The decoupling of reports such as that of the Independent Fact Finding Mission into Human Rights Abuses in Iran from other partnerships is not progressing the UN SDGs, and not positively impacting the lives of Iranians. We can only achieve sustainable development by coming together better coordinating responses to the regime that upholds the values of human rights, equality and dignity.