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Sustainable Development Goals

Adhering To The UN Charter: Barbados First And United States Last

As part of our academic research on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we are examining the extent to which UN member states adhere to the UN Charter and UN-backed goals such as the SDGs. Towards this end, we have created a preliminary “Multilateralism Index,” and welcome feedback and suggestions. The ranking of 74 countries according to the Multilateralism Index is shown in Figure 1 below. Barbados ranks highest, the UN member most aligned with the UN Charter. Though Barbados is a very small country, with just 280,000 people, its peaceful multilateralism gives it a big voice.

At UN General Assembly Session, Global South Leaders Call For Urgent Reforms

On the first day of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, September 19, countries from the Global South raised the demand for urgent reforms in multilateral institutions, both political and economic, for a just and democratic world order. The session was addressed by UN General Assembly chair Dennis Francis, UN Secretary General António Guterres, and leaders of various countries including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, among others. Each of these leaders highlighted the growing geopolitical tensions in the world and the failure of multilateral institutions to resolve them.

Rice Bowl Of The Chinese People Is Held Firmly In Their Hands

At the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), member states decided to replace the Millennium Development Goals (established in 2000) with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first SDG was to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere’. Despite the enthusiastic verbiage, it was clear that poverty was simply not going to be ended across the world. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the data showed that poverty had become intractable. In October 2022, the UN Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative released its 2022 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index report, which showed that at least 1.2 billion people in 111 developing countries live in acute multidimensional poverty.
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