Sustainable Development Goals in short
SDGs is another development objective like Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). After the year 2015 MDGs will replace with SDGs. MDGs aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality rates etc.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) refer to an agreement of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 (Rio+20), to develop a set of future international development goals.
BackgroundThe current development agenda is centered on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations (UN) in 2000. The MDGs encapsulate eight globally agreed goals in the areas of poverty alleviation, education, gender equality and empowerment of women, child and maternal health, environmental sustainability, reducing HIV/AIDS and communicable diseases, and building a global partnership for development.
As the target date of the MDGs, 2015, is approaching, a debate on the framework of international development beyond 2015 has started. In this vein, 192 UN member states agreed at the Rio+20 summit to start a process of designing sustainable development goals, which are “action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, inspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities”.
The Rio+20 outcome document, “The Future We Want”, also calls for the goals to be integrated into the UN’s post-2015 Development Agenda.
Current processSince Rio+20 did not elaborate specific goals, a 30-member Open Working Group (OWG) was established on 22 January 2013 by the decision of the UN General Assembly. The OWG is tasked with preparing a proposal on the SDGs for consideration during the 68th session of the General Assembly, September 2013 – September 2014.
The OWG uses a constituency-based system of representation, which means that most of the seats in the working group are shared by several countries.
The Rio+20 outcome document states that, “at the outset, the OWG will decide on its methods of work, including developing modalities to ensure the full involvement of relevant stakeholders and expertise from civil society, the scientific community and the United Nations system in its work, in order to provide a diversity of perspectives and experience”.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals