And leadership and support are needed to ensure statistical organizations have the tools and resources to facilitate timely and smart decision-making. Recovery packages must facilitate the shift to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy and support universal access to quality public services. A large-scale multilateral response is needed to ensure that developing countries have the resources they need to protect households and businesses. Universal access to treatments and vaccines, when they become available, is essential. Health systems must be urgently strengthened in countries that are at greatest risk, with increased capacity for testing, tracing and treatment. I have therefore consistently called for a coordinated and comprehensive international response and recovery effort, based on sound data and science and guided by the Sustainable Development Goals. Women and girls are facing new barriers and new threats, ranging from a shadow pandemic of violence to additional burdens of unpaid care work.įar from undermining the case for the SDGs, the root causes and uneven impacts of COVID-19 demonstrate precisely why we need the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and underscore the urgency of their implementation. Across the globe, young people are being disproportionately affected, particularly in the world of work. In developing countries, the most vulnerable – including those employed in the informal economy, older people, children, persons with disabilities, indigenous people, migrants and refugees – risk being hit even harder. In advanced economies, fatality rates have been highest among marginalized groups. Instead, it has exposed and exacerbated existing inequalities and injustices. More than 1.6 billion students are out of school and tens of millions of people are being pushed back into extreme poverty and hunger, erasing the modest progress made in recent years.Īlthough the Novel Coronavirus affects every person and community, it does not do so equally. The livelihood of half the global workforce has been severely affected. Health systems in many countries have been driven to the brink of collapse. As of the beginning of June, the death toll had surpassed 400,000 and was continuing to climb, with almost no country spared. Now, due to COVID-19, an unprecedented health, economic and social crisis is threatening lives and livelihoods, making the achievement of Goals even more challenging. Change was still not happening at the speed or scale required. At the same time, the number of people suffering from food insecurity was on the rise, the natural environment continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate, and dramatic levels of inequality persisted in all regions. Some gains were visible: the share of children and youth out of school had fallen the incidence of many communicable diseases was in decline access to safely managed drinking water had improved and women’s representation in leadership roles was increasing. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 brings together the latest data to show us that, before the COVID-19 pandemic, progress remained uneven and we were not on track to meet the Goals by 2030. But, as Member States recognized at the SDGs Summit held last September, global efforts to date have been insufficient to deliver the change we need, jeopardizing the Agenda’s promise to current and future generations. They require immense political will and ambitious action by all stakeholders.
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