The Final Countdown – Ten Years to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

By The Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS)
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

In September 2019, New York will host the SDG Summit and the Climate Action Summit, which provide leaders and experts a platform to engage and negotiate ways forward to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. As we enter the final decade to reach these goals, it is important to reflect upon the achievements to date and build upon them.

This NTS Bulletin commentary focuses specifically on migration and the related Sustainable Development Goals – Health (Goal 3), Education (Goal 4), Gender Equality (Goal 5), Decent Work (Goal 8), Sustainable Cities (Goal 11), Climate Action (Goal 13), Peaceful Societies (Goal 16) and Partnerships (Goal 17) – the achievements and challenges to date as we enter the final stretch to 2030.

Since the International Health Regulations came into effect in 2010, countries are now better in detection with all 196 state parties submitting reports to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on their capacity to implement the regulations. However, this has not trans-lated equally to emergency prepared-ness and response with bigger gaps observed at points of entry (e.g., ports and ground crossings) and in chemical safety and radiological emergencies.

Across the world, women and girls still perform a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work aver-aging triple the amount of time that men do each. The most disadvantaged women and girls face the compounded effects of gender and other forms of discrimination especially those particularly faced by migrant women and girls such as vulnerability to trafficking and gender-based violence. Progress over the past decade was made where most countries had policies and programmes in place to address gender gaps but a minority of them reported adequate resources to implement them.

When considering the state of work in the world, informal employment remains dominant in three quarters of developing countries. The share of informal employment is higher for women than for men. Ethical recruitment, decent work-ing conditions and safe migration amplify the impact of migrant workers on development. Providing educational opportunities to the children of migrants and facilitating study abroad programs to enhance student mobility are part of the quality education commitment and the central reference in the Sustainable Development Goals to facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people through planned and managed migration.

Rapid urbanisation has drawn many people to migrate into cities and has resulted in an increasing number of slums. While the pro-portion of people in slums declined by 20 per cent between 2000 and 2014, this trend has reversed with 23.8 per cent living in slums in 2018, adding an extra 1 billion people living in slums the world over. The greatest absolute number of 370 million people living in such conditions is now found in Eastern and South-East Asia. The integration of climate adaptation into national development planning is a necessary step underway to achieve sustainable development in both urban and rural areas. These will need to address slums which are in the poorest and most exposed areas to the effects of climate change.

The greatest and most visible threat to human security is the absence or deterioration of peace, justice and strong institutions across Eastern and South-East Asia, a core element needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Simply put, without peace there cannot be sustainable development. In 2018, the number of people fleeing war, conflict and persecution exceeded 70 million, the highest the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has seen in almost 70 years. All of them are particularly vulnerable to various abuses from trafficking to additional violence and non-inclusive decision-making. Over-coming these challenges through protection is a baseline requirement to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

As September fast approaches, it is important for leaders to reconcile the plans made for each Sustainable Development Goal with adequate resources. While the investment in action plans is a necessary step forward, they must be followed by sustainable policy implementation without which rhetoric cannot be turned into reality.

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