The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) form a roadmap toward a better and more sustainable future for all. They aim to address the global challenges we face—such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and environmental degradation—while also promoting prosperity, peace, and justice. Given their interconnected nature and the principle that no one should be left behind, achieving each goal by 2030 is essential.
Human rights focus on protecting individuals and ensuring they have access to their fundamental rights, which have been codified in international treaties to guarantee their implementation. The SDGs, on the other hand, aim to elevate the quality of these rights to achieve comprehensive, sustainable development worldwide, spanning economic, social, and environmental aspects. For instance, while international treaties mandate that education be provided as a right, the SDGs emphasize ensuring that this education is of high quality, thereby not limiting the focus to mere availability, but extending it to achieving excellent educational outcomes.
Seventeen Goals to Save the World
By 2030, the SDGs aim to eradicate extreme poverty everywhere, currently measured by the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day. They also seek to reduce by at least half the proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
This plan involves developing comprehensive social protection systems at the national level, setting minimum standards to ensure universal access, and achieving broad health coverage for the poor and vulnerable. It guarantees that all men and women, particularly those who are poor and vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources and essential services, including ownership and control over land, inheritance rights, access to natural resources and appropriate technology, as well as financial services such as microfinance.
Furthermore, it aims to enhance the resilience of the poor and vulnerable against climate-related extreme events and other economic, social, and environmental shocks and disasters by 2030. This requires mobilizing substantial resources from various sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, to provide developing countries, particularly the least developed ones, with reliable means to implement programs and policies designed to eradicate poverty in all its forms.
Finally, the plan calls for the establishment of effective policy frameworks at national, regional, and international levels that take into account the needs of the poor and adopt a gender perspective, accelerating investments in policies aimed at eradicating poverty and achieving inclusive and sustainable development.
This goal aims to eliminate hunger and ensure that everyone, especially the poor, vulnerable groups, and infants, has access to safe and nutritious food year-round by 2030. It includes ending all forms of malnutrition, meeting internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under five, and addressing the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women, and older persons by 2025.
Moreover, it seeks to double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers—particularly women, indigenous communities, family farmers, pastoralists, and fishers—by ensuring equal access to land and other resources for production, as well as inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets, and value-adding opportunities and non-farm employment by 2030.
Additionally, the plan emphasizes the need for sustainable food production systems and the implementation of resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and crop yields, maintain ecosystems, enhance resilience to climate change, and improve land and soil quality over time.
Preserving the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants, and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species is also paramount, achieved by creating and managing diverse seed and plant banks at national, regional, and international levels. Ensuring equitable access to these resources and related traditional knowledge is integral.
To boost agricultural production capabilities, the plan calls for increased investments in rural infrastructure, agricultural research, advisory services, technological advancement, and genetic banks for animals and plants, with particular emphasis on developing and least developed countries through enhanced international cooperation.
By 2030, this goal seeks to achieve radical improvements in global health indicators, aiming to reduce maternal mortality to fewer than 70 deaths per 100,000 live births and lower neonatal and under-five child mortality to 12 and 25 deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively. It strives to end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases, and combat hepatitis, waterborne diseases, and other communicable diseases.
It also aims to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one-third through prevention, treatment, and the promotion of mental health, as well as halving deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents.
Additionally, it involves ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services and strengthening universal health coverage to protect citizens from financial risks while providing essential healthcare services, including affordable and effective medicines and vaccines.
Moreover, this goal focuses on lowering the impact of pollution and hazardous chemicals on health, implementing international agreements to combat tobacco use, and supporting research and development for vaccines and medicines. It also promotes increased funding, the recruitment and development of healthcare personnel, and boosting the capacities of all countries—particularly developing ones—in early warning, risk management, and national and global health interventions.
The “Quality Education” goal aims to ensure that by 2030 all children can complete free, equitable, and high-quality primary and secondary education with effective learning outcomes. It seeks to give all children, both girls and boys, equal access to quality early childhood development and pre-primary education, thereby ensuring their preparedness for primary education.
The goal further emphasizes achieving equal access for all women and men to affordable, high-quality technical, vocational, and higher education, thereby expanding opportunities for youth and adults to acquire technical and vocational skills that will enable them to obtain decent jobs or launch their own projects. It encompasses eliminating gender disparities in education at all levels and helping vulnerable groups, such as persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations.
Additionally, it aspires to ensure that a large share of youth achieve literacy and numeracy, while ensuring that learners acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to support sustainable development—covering education on sustainability, sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, peace, non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and the role of culture in sustainable development.
Furthermore, it seeks to improve educational environments by constructing new facilities that account for gender differences and disabilities and meet the needs of children, as well as upgrading existing facilities to provide an effective, safe, and violence-free learning environment. The goal also focuses on significantly expanding scholarship opportunities for developing countries, particularly the least developed countries, small island developing states, and African countries, enabling students to enroll in higher education, technical, and vocational programs. Lastly, it stresses boosting the supply of qualified teachers, particularly in developing countries, through international cooperation for teacher training, ensuring better quality education at all levels.
This goal pursues the genuine realization of gender equality by eliminating all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls in every context. It addresses human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and all other forms of exploitation. Additionally, it seeks to eradicate harmful practices like child, early, and forced marriage, as well as female genital mutilation (FGM). It recognizes the importance of unpaid care and domestic work, advocating public services and infrastructure and implementing social protection policies that promote shared responsibility within the household. It also guarantees women’s full and effective participation in decision-making at all levels—political, economic, and social—and ensures that everyone has access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in line with international agreements. This goal includes reforms that grant women fair rights to economic resources, including ownership and control over land and property, financial services, and natural resources, and encourages the use of information and communications technology as a tool to empower women. Lastly, it calls for the adoption of enforceable policies and legislation to promote gender equality and empower all women and girls.
This goal aims to ensure, by 2030, that everyone has equitable access to safe, affordable drinking water as well as adequate sanitation and hygiene services, paying special attention to the needs of women, girls, and vulnerable groups. It also aims to improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating the dumping of hazardous chemicals and materials, and significantly lowering the release of these substances. Additionally, it seeks to halve the proportion of untreated wastewater globally and substantially increase recycling and safe reuse.
Other objectives include raising water-use efficiency across all sectors, ensuring sustainable withdrawals and supplies of freshwater to reduce water scarcity, and significantly reducing the number of people affected by water shortages. It includes implementing integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation.
Moreover, this goal emphasizes protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems—such as mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers, and lakes—and enhancing international cooperation and capacity-building for developing countries in water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling, and reuse technologies. It also promotes community participation in improving water and sanitation management.
By 2030, this goal aims to ensure universal access to reliable, modern, and affordable energy services for everyone. It focuses on substantially increasing the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency, and enhancing international cooperation to facilitate access to clean energy research and technology, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, and advanced, cleaner fossil-fuel technology.
Furthermore, it involves expanding infrastructure and upgrading technology to provide modern, sustainable energy services for all, with particular emphasis on developing countries, especially the least developed countries, small island developing states, and landlocked developing countries, under their respective support programs.
This goal aims to maintain per capita economic growth in line with national circumstances, with a focus on achieving at least 7% gross domestic product (GDP) growth per annum in the least developed countries. It seeks to bolster economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading, and innovation, emphasizing high-value-added and labor-intensive sectors. It also aims to strengthen development-oriented policies that promote productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services.
Additional key targets include gradually improving global resource efficiency in consumption and production by 2030 and working toward decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation, in line with the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production—led by developed countries. It also aims to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value, while significantly reducing by 2020 the proportion of youth not in employment, education, or training.
Immediate measures include eradicating forced labor and ending modern slavery and human trafficking, with the prohibition and eradication of the worst forms of child labor and the goal of ending all forms of child labor by 2025. It protects labor rights and promotes safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers. The goal also encourages sustainable tourism that generates jobs and promotes local culture and products, strengthens the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and expand access to banking, insurance, and financial services for all, and increases Aid for Trade support for developing countries, particularly the least developed countries, through an enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance. Lastly, it encompasses the development and operationalization of a global strategy for youth employment and the implementation of the ILO Global Jobs Pact.
By 2030, this goal aims to develop high-quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, ensuring affordable and equitable access for all. It also seeks to promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization for all, significantly increasing the share of industry in employment and GDP and doubling its share in the least developed countries. It focuses on improving access to financial services for small-scale industrial and other enterprises, particularly in developing countries, integrating them into value chains and markets.
Efforts include upgrading infrastructure and retrofitting industries for sustainability by increasing resource-use efficiency and adopting environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes, as well as fostering scientific research and upgrading technological capabilities within the industrial sector, especially in developing countries, increasing public and private R&D spending. Moreover, it emphasizes facilitating sustainable and resilient infrastructure development in developing countries through enhanced financial, technological, and technical support to African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states, while supporting domestic technology development, research, and innovation by creating a conducive environment for industrial diversification and adding value to commodities. Finally, the goal seeks to significantly increase access to information and communications technology and provide universal and affordable internet access in the least developed countries by 2020.
This goal strives to progressively achieve and maintain income growth of the bottom 40% of the population at a rate higher than the national average, empowering and promoting the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic status. It calls for ensuring equal opportunity and reducing inequalities of outcome by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and promoting relevant legislation and policy measures, along with adopting fiscal, wage, and social protection policies to progressively achieve greater equality.
It further aims to improve the regulation and monitoring of global financial markets and institutions and strengthen the representation and voice of developing countries in decision-making in global economic and financial institutions to enhance their effectiveness, credibility, and accountability. Additionally, the goal addresses migration by facilitating safe, orderly, and regular migration and mobility of people, implementing the principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries in line with WTO agreements. It also promotes official development assistance and financial flows, including foreign direct investment, particularly to states where the need is greatest, such as the least developed countries, African countries, small island developing states, and landlocked developing countries, with the aim of reducing the transaction costs of migrant remittances to less than 3% and eliminating remittance channels exceeding 5% by 2030.
By 2030, this goal aims to ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing, upgrading slums, and providing access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable transport systems, with particular attention to the needs of vulnerable groups, women, children, persons with disabilities, and older persons, improving road safety, and expanding public transportation. It promotes inclusive and sustainable urbanization through integrated and participatory human settlement planning and management, and supports efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
It also seeks to significantly reduce the number of deaths and people affected by disasters, including related economic losses measured by global GDP, with particular focus on protecting poor and vulnerable populations. Moreover, it works to decrease the environmental impact of cities through improved air quality and municipal waste management. The goal advocates providing universal access to safe, inclusive, and accessible green and public spaces. It also supports the positive economic, social, and environmental ties between urban, peri-urban, and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning, encouraging a substantial increase in the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies toward resource efficiency, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and resilience to disasters. This is done by developing and implementing holistic disaster risk management at all levels, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, as well as providing financial and technical support to the least developed countries for sustainable and resilient building using local materials.
This goal aims to implement the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production, with all countries taking action, and developed countries taking the lead, while respecting the development and capabilities of developing countries.
It seeks to achieve sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources by 2030 and to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels, as well as reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses. It ensures the environmentally sound management of chemicals and wastes throughout their lifecycle in accordance with agreed international frameworks and significantly reduces their release into air, water, and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.
Additionally, it aims to reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse by 2030, urging companies, especially large and transnational corporations, to adopt sustainable practices and integrate sustainability information in their reporting cycles. The goal calls for promoting sustainable public procurement practices in line with national policies and priorities, ensuring that by 2030 people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature.
It also focuses on supporting developing countries in strengthening their scientific and technological capacities to move toward more sustainable patterns of consumption and production, as well as developing and implementing tools to monitor the impacts of sustainable development on sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products. Moreover, the plan includes rationalizing inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption by removing market distortions through restructuring taxation and phasing out harmful subsidies, taking into account the specific needs and conditions of developing countries while minimizing adverse impacts on the poor and affected communities.
This goal aims to strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries and integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning. It emphasizes improving education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and impact reduction, including early warning systems.
The goal also calls for implementing the commitments by developed countries under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to mobilize $100 billion annually from all sources to address the needs of developing countries, ensuring the operationalization of the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible. Furthermore, it stresses the need for promoting mechanisms to enhance capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing states, with a focus on women, youth, and local and marginalized communities.
This goal aims to conserve and sustainably use the oceans and marine resources by preventing and significantly reducing all kinds of marine pollution, particularly from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution, by 2025. It also seeks to sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems to strengthen their resilience and achieve healthy and productive oceans, while minimizing and addressing the impacts of ocean acidification through enhanced scientific cooperation at all levels.
Additionally, it targets the effective regulation of fishing to end overfishing, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and destructive fishing practices, and to implement science-based management plans to restore fish stocks to sustainable yield levels. The goal calls for conserving at least 10% of coastal and marine areas in accordance with national and international law, and based on the best available scientific information.
It also involves prohibiting certain forms of fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, eliminating subsidies that encourage IUU fishing, and refraining from introducing new ones. Effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries should be an integral part of WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations. Moreover, it aims to increase the economic benefits for small island developing states and least developed countries from the sustainable use of marine resources by 2030, including through sustainable management of fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism. The goal also focuses on enhancing scientific knowledge, developing research capacity, and transferring marine technology consistent with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) criteria and guidelines to improve ocean health and enhance marine biodiversity’s contribution to the development of developing countries.
Lastly, it seeks to provide access for small-scale artisanal fishers to marine resources and markets and strengthen the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans and their resources by implementing international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and paragraph 158 of “The Future We Want.”
This goal aims to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and inland freshwater systems, including forests, wetlands, mountains, and drylands, in line with international agreements. It focuses on ensuring the sustainable management of forests, halting deforestation, restoring degraded forests, and increasing afforestation and reforestation globally.
Additionally, it aims to combat desertification and restore degraded land and soil affected by desertification, drought, and floods, working toward a land degradation-neutral world by 2030, as well as ensuring the conservation of mountain ecosystems to enhance their capacity to provide benefits essential for sustainable development. It includes urgent action to end poaching and trafficking of protected species and preventing the decline of biodiversity by protecting threatened species, promoting fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources, and preventing the introduction and impact of invasive alien species in land and water ecosystems. It also integrates ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, and poverty reduction strategies.
Furthermore, the goal focuses on mobilizing significant financial resources from all sources to conserve biodiversity and manage ecosystems sustainably, providing adequate incentives for developing countries to advance sustainable forest management, and increasing global support for efforts to combat poaching and trafficking in protected species, thus ensuring sustainable livelihoods for local communities.
This goal aims to significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere, and to end abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against children, including torture.
It works to promote the rule of law at national and international levels and to ensure equal access to justice for all. Additionally, it seeks to curb illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets, and combat all forms of organized crime, corruption, and bribery.
It calls for developing effective, accountable, and transparent institutions at all levels, ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making, and broadening and strengthening the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance. The goal also promotes the provision of legal identity for all, including birth registration, and ensures public access to information and the protection of fundamental freedoms in accordance with national legislation and international agreements. In terms of capacity-building, it seeks to strengthen relevant national institutions through international cooperation, building capacity in developing countries to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime. Furthermore, it encourages the adoption and enforcement of non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development.
In the financial domain, this goal focuses on mobilizing domestic resources, including through international support for developing countries, to improve their domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection. Developed countries are encouraged to fulfill their commitments regarding Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing nations by allocating a percentage of their gross national income (GNI) and mobilizing additional financial resources from various sources. The intention is to help these countries achieve long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering financing, alleviating debt burdens, and restructuring debt, as well as adopting systems that promote investment in the least developed countries.
In the area of technology, the goal promotes regional and international cooperation between North-South and South-South countries through the exchange of knowledge, facilitating access to technology and innovation, particularly in the field of environmentally sound technologies. This includes fully operationalizing the Technology Bank and Science, Technology & Innovation Capacity Building Mechanism for Least Developed Countries.
Capacity-building is also paramount, with an emphasis on enhancing global support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries, to support national plans to implement all the Sustainable Development Goals through North-South and triangular cooperation.
Regarding trade, the objective is to promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory, and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization, significantly increasing the exports of developing countries and doubling the share of global exports from least developed countries, while ensuring duty-free and quota-free market access for all products from these countries, in accordance with the rules of origin that are transparent and simple. Overall, macroeconomic stability, policy coordination, and policy coherence for sustainable development are emphasized, respecting each country’s policy space and leadership to establish and implement policies for poverty eradication. The goal calls for multi-stakeholder partnerships among governments, the private sector, and civil society to share expertise, technology, and financial resources.
Finally, the goal underscores the importance of improving the availability of high-quality, timely, and reliable data in developing countries, disaggregated by demographic characteristics, and employing existing initiatives to develop measures of progress complementing GDP in evaluating sustainable development achievements, enhancing accountability at both national and international levels.
