SI welcomes the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and Global Goals

At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, which took place this weekend in New York, member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and a new set of Global Goals. These Goals have the aim of ending extreme poverty, fighting inequality and injustice, and tackling climate change over the next fifteen years. The Socialist International and its member parties have made a fundamental commitment to the achievement of these objectives.

The SI has expressed its support for the post-2015 agenda, most recently from the United Nations headquarters on the occasion of its last Council meeting in July. The Council recognised the singular importance of 2015 in terms of development, and declared the Global Goals to be in line with the basic values of the global social democratic movement, calling on all countries to adopt the post-2015 agenda.

The Socialist International believes it is truly a time for global action, and the Global Goals are a vital step to ending poverty. This important statement of intent must be matched by actions, in particular in order to ensure access to finance for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Active engagement is needed to ensure that development, sustainability and security go hand in hand, making use of technological advances to deliver sustainable industrialisation that can remove the poverty and underdevelopment that contribute to insecurity and conflict in the world.

Equality is a crucial element of the platform of the SI and we see the urgent need to reduce inequality between and within countries as a core progressive principle. We also welcome all initiatives to achieve gender equality and end gender-based discrimination. Women's empowerment will require an end to violence against women, equal access to education and the elimination of poverty.

The success of the Global Goals also requires a willingness and ambition to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats to the planet and its people. An ambitious and binding international commitment to address anthropogenic climate change is needed to halt and reverse the dire consequences we have already been witnessing across the globe, and for sustainable development, with preservation of the long-term future of the planet at its core. In this regard, the SI and its member parties will continue to work for a legally binding and universal agreement on climate change at COP21 in Paris.

Ending poverty, promoting equality and taking action on climate change have been central to the identity of the Socialist International, in line with three pillars of our movement's agenda, the economic, the social and the environmental. The adoption of these seventeen Global Goals should give us optimism, but must also be a spur to redouble our efforts and those of our member parties to make this a priority for our generation, in order to secure a brighter future for the generations to come.