The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 finds that, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world had been making progress in several areas, including maternal and child health and access to electricity. Nonetheless, growing food insecurity, deterioration of the natural environment, and persistent inequalities remain and have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
On the issues of poverty, healthcare, and education, the 2020 edition of this annual report documents:
- the first rise in global poverty since 1998, with an estimated 71 million people expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty in 2020;
- the disruptions to health and vaccination services and limited access to diet and nutrition services could cause hundreds of thousands of additional under-5 deaths and tens of thousands of additional maternal deaths in 2020; and
- school closures have kept 90% of students worldwide out of school.
This report was launched at the opening of the 2020 session of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF 2020), on 7 July. The report uses data as of June 2020 for selected indicators in the global indicator framework for the SDGs, as developed by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) and adopted by the UN General Assembly on 6 July 2017.
The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 is the third of three global assessments on SDG progress that are released in preparation for the annual HLPF session. The yearly report of the UN Secretary-General on progress towards the 17 SDGs (SDG Progress Report) is released several months before the HLPF. The 2020 edition reported that progress was stalled or reversed on the number of people suffering from hunger, the rate of climate change, and increasing inequalities.
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) annually releases a Sustainable Development Goals Report along with indexes that list countries by SDG achievement. Their 2020 edition focuses on ‘The Sustainable Development Goals and Covid-19.’ The report indicates that all regions have made progress in the SDG index since 2015, with East and South Asia having progressed the most.