World leaders meet in New York to discuss sustainable development

The UN general assembly will provide a forum to discuss a full spectrum of international issues. Top of the agenda will be how to build on the MDGs and health
Ethiopia mother and child
The OECD has estimated that there is an annual funding gap of $62.1 billion to achieve the MDGs in 20 low-income countries. Photograph: Malaria Consortium

The world's governments will meet next week in a special session at the United Nations general assembly (UNGA) to identify ways to accelerate the progress on the millennium development goals, and also to reach a consensus for a timetable on a new set of sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The MDGs have brought about an unprecedented focus in combatting extreme poverty, hunger, and preventable disease. The SDGs will build on these efforts, but also add the challenges of ensuring more equitable economic growth and environmental sustainability, especially the key goal of curbing the dangers of human-induced climate change.

Setting international development goals has made a huge difference in people's lives, particularly in the poorest places by producing tangible targets. Sub-Saharan Africa in particular has benefited enormously from the MDGs, and the development community can learn from that success in designing the SDGs.

In the decade before the MDGs, sub-Saharan Africa was suffering from a high poverty rate, slow economic growth and the disease burden, including malaria, was ever increasing. In the decade that followed we have seen outstanding progress to combat all of these.

The MDGs made donor countries more ambitious in tackling developmental issues and offered a useful mechanism by which they could put pressure on each other to deliver in the specified areas. They also created a focus for attention by African governments, non-governmental organisations, UN agencies, international donors, foundations, and activists on the urgency of combating poverty, hunger, and disease.

We have seen remarkable progress in the fight against malaria following the advent of the mass distribution of insecticide treated nets, quicker diagnostic tests and more effective antimalarial drugs. By 2010, malaria deaths had dropped to around 660,000 per year, a decrease of more than 25% globally and 33% in the WHO Africa region compared to at the beginning of the century.

Despite this success there remains work to be done in achieving the MDGs, namely ensuring adequate financing is leveraged. The OECD has estimated that there is an annual funding gap of $62.1 billion to achieve the MDGs in 20 low-income countries. Furthermore, in 2012, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership estimated that it would take another $9.7 billion spent between 2012-15 if effective control and, where possible, elimination of malaria is to be achieved globally.

New funding needs to be forthcoming from a number of sources, including aid from emerging economies and increased domestic spending on poverty reduction. In relation to health, it is crucial that those countries that are signatories to the Abuja Declaration deliver on their commitment to spend 15% of their national budgets on health. Additionally, the success of innovative funding mechanisms such as Unitaid must be supported by donor countries and they must provide ample replenishment funding later this year to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB, and Malaria, which would ensure this vital agency's continued success.

What else should UN member states aim to achieve at UNGA?

The timescale for the next set of goals should be kept at 15 years to allow time for new inputs to bear fruit.

The number of goals should be set at a maximum of 12, as the recently published High Panel report recommended, to allow for ease of understanding and memorability.

All governments, both north and south, should be accountable for meeting the SDGs as implementers and should not be distinguished as implementers and donors.

The MDGs should be the basis for the SDGs. The MDGs helped to cut global extreme poverty by more than half and the SDGs must complete this unfinished business and end extreme poverty.

The High Level Panel report and the SDGs should be unified in order to produce one set of goals and a timetable should be produced detailing this process. This would draw together the accountability systems and avoid both duplication and the potential for important issues to fall between the remits of the two processes.

The MDGs have unquestionably helped to galvanise the global community in the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and disease. They created a global brand and reference point to rally behind for the past 15 years. At UNGA, world leaders have the opportunity to build on this legacy and meet the complex challenge of achieving sustainable development for all.

Alex Hulme is advocacy officer at Malaria Consortium

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