2024 Report: Achieving the SDGs remains a difficult challenge. FIBGAR’s unwavering commitment
Without massive investment and increased action, meeting the 2030 Agenda will remain a complicated challenge.
In September 2015, the 193 members of the United Nations approved the well-known 2030 Agenda, an ambitious project of the international community with the aim of fighting poverty, caring for the planet and reducing inequalities over the next fifteen years. Through this plan, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were configured, supported by 169 detailed targets and their corresponding indicators.
Currently, only 17% of the SDG targets are making progress, while almost half are experiencing minimal or moderate progress, and more than a third are stagnating or regressing. Progress has been significantly hampered by the persistent COVID-19 pandemic, escalating conflicts, geopolitical tensions and increasing climate change.
This is what the 2024 Sustainable Development Goals Report, the report produced annually since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by UN member states in 2015, highlights.
This year the document offers a stark reality check and highlights three urgent priorities: financing development, peace and security, and scaling up investments and effective partnerships to drive critical transitions in food, energy, social protection and digital connectivity.
SDG 16, which is the focus of our activity, is one of the goals facing the most significant challenges. It aims to promote peaceful and inclusive societies, facilitate access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Focusing on governance deficits, SDG 16 addresses the root causes of many of the problems related to development, including corruption and bribery in all its forms (target 16. 5), phenomena that, when insinuated in those situations where monopoly of power, discretionary decision-making and lack of control mechanisms converge, affect human rights in their entirety -civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental-, weakening governance and democratic institutions, fostering impunity and undermining the rule of law.
The 2024 report warns that the rise of conflict and violent organized crime persists around the world, causing immense human suffering and hindering sustainable development. The number of forcibly displaced persons reached an unprecedented 120 million in May 2024. The number of civilian casualties in armed conflict increased by 72% in 2023.
Corruption continues to divert resources from sustainable development, with one in five people saying they have been asked to pay or have paid a bribe to a public official in the past 12 months. With one-third of prisoners worldwide unconvicted, fair judicial processes and improved prison conditions are imperative.
In short, with six years to go before the 2030 Agenda comes to an end, urgent action is needed to combat corruption and organized crime, strengthen the rule of law and access to justice, and protect fundamental rights and freedoms.
From FIBGAR we will continue to do our bit. Therefore, this year we have decided to dedicate the XVIII edition of the Summer Courses in Torres to “European Union Law and the Sustainable Development Goals”. The program can be downloaded here.
