One Month Until The Global Goals: Leaving No-One Behind

 In just a months time, the world will decide on a new set of Global Goals. We explore how we achieve equity and ensure we leave no-one behind. This year is a crucial one. It marks the deadline of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)  adopted in 2000, which built the momentum towards ending extreme poverty and hunger, reducing mortality and improving health by tackling killer diseases, expanding education opportunities, and outlining collaborative partnerships for development and environmental sustainability. The world has come a long way since 2000, making commendable progress in reducing child and maternal mortality, reducing hunger for millions, increasing primary school enrolment, and reducing absolute poverty. Yet, development is an unfinished agenda. Over 1 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day, nearly 795 million people still suffer from hunger and over 2 billion suffer from ‘hidden hunger’, 2.3 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation, 6.3 million children die every year mostly of preventable causes, and around 121 million children and adolescents do not have access to education. Moreover, our ever growing population which is likely to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, continues to strain global resources.  Climate change is threatening lives both directly and indirectly through its impact on weather patterns, agriculture production, and occurrence of natural disasters. In just a month’s time, Member states will launch The Global Goals (some of you might know them as the Sustainable Development Goals), to build on the unfinished agenda of the MDGs, ensure wider and more inclusive progress for all, while protecting the environment. These goals are being agreed through an active consultative agreement of development priorities, whilst placing planet, people, partnerships, dignity, prosperity, and justice at the core of the agenda. Next month, at the United Nations in New York, World Leaders will meet to give their stamp of approval to the 17 goals (as seen above) and 169 targets of the new Global Goals. The big question, however, is how will these goals (which are likely to require trillions every year) be financed? The Financing for Development (FFD) conference just held at Addis Ababa, led to world leaders agreeing to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, providing a foundation for implementing the SDGs to be adopted this September. Financing is the key that unlocks the progress we will be able to make over the next fifteen years. However, the finance required to achieve these new goals will not be met by continuing as ‘business as usual’. One thing is clear. We will not meet the Global Goals through Overseas Development Assistant (ODA) alone. Financing the goals will require increased domestic revenues, greater public expenditure in focus areas such as health, engaging private sector investments and philanthropists, and innovative financing mechanisms and multistakeholder partnerships such as Gavi, the vaccine alliance, and The Global Fund to fight Aids, TB, and Malaria, the Power of Nutrition, a catalytic financing facility for improving nutrition for children and women, and the Global Financing Facility for RMNCAH. A recently launched report by RESULTS UK, takes a look at the complex balance of different sources of finance, using Kenya as a case study, to explore the long term financial considerations that must be made, particularly as countries ‘graduate’ to a higher income bracket.  Kenya, is a country which has progressed from being a Low-Income country (LIC) to a Middle-Income Country (MIC) but despite increases in GDP, 26% of children are stunted and the rates of children who are fully vaccinated is falling. The report explores how the changing dynamics in financial flows (donor and domestic)associated with this change will  affect the provision of health services of the nation and to vulnerable groups such as women and children suffering from malnutrition, infectious diseases, and a growing burden of non-communicable diseases. Middle-Income countries continue to bear a great burden of poverty, undernutrition, and other poor health outcomes. We need to ensure we focus finance for development on the poorest and those most in need, if we don’t we risk losing the progress we’ve made. As RESULTS UK highlights in their report, increase public investments in health and new financing mechanisms, amidst continued support from donors are all necessary. The post-2015 agenda is based on the principle we must leave no-one behind. It’s fundamental the same principle must run through every aspect of financing for development too.