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December 2, 2024Vision 2030 could derail as more people slip into poverty – UN warns
Vision 2030 could derail as more people slip into poverty – UN warns
The United Nations has warned that 575 million people will be living in severe poverty and 84 million children will not be attending school in 2030 — and that it will take 286 years to achieve gender equality.
According to a report on progress toward fulfilling 17 broad-based United Nations goals agreed by world leaders in 2015 to better the lives of the world’s more than 7 billion people, only 15% of the 140 specific targets examined by experts are on track to be met by the end of the decade.
The UN report noted that nearly half of the targets are moderately or badly off track, and 30% have either seen no movement or have backslidden, including major targets on poverty, hunger, and climate change.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the report that “Unless we act now, the 2030 agenda could become an epitaph for a world that might have been.”
He added that “Failure to make progress means inequalities will continue to deepen, increasing the risk of a fragmented, two-speed world.”
The report was released ahead of a summit convened by Guterres during the annual meeting of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in September, which he described as “a moment of truth and reckoning.”
On his part, Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Li Junhua said conflicts including the war in Ukraine, climate change, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic especially its devastating financial impact on developing countries, and geopolitical tensions are all “threatening to derail hard-earned progress” toward achieving the goals.
The UN official then urged political leaders to develop “a new roadmap” to accelerate action at the global, regional, and national levels in order to meet the goals by 2030.