30 June 2016: The UN Secretary-General has released the first annual report on progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provides a global overview of the current situation regarding the SDGs on the basis of the latest available data for indicators in the proposed global framework. The report also highlights the theme of the 2016 session of the High-level Political Forum on sustainable development (HLPF), ‘Ensuring that no one is left behind,’ through examples of disaggregated data that pinpoint where specific population groups lag behind.

Prepared by the Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the report notes that one in eight people still live in extreme poverty, nearly 800 million people suffer from hunger, an estimated 5.9 million children die before they reach age five, more than one in four girls marry before their 18th birthday, 1.1 billion people live without electricity, and water scarcity affects more than two billion people.

The report is structured in four chapters: an introduction, which sets the stage; a chapter titled ‘Measuring progress towards the SDGs,’ which presents the latest data for each of the 17 SDGs, both with regards to achievements and remaining challenges; a chapter titled ‘Ensuring that no one is left behind,’ which contains the data on the groups of people and countries most left behind, and notes that only a few of the current indicators can be disaggregated for migrants, refugees, persons with disabilities, minorities and indigenous people; and a chapter on data and indicators, which includes information concerning the availability and compilation of data, challenges faced by national statistical offices (NSOs) and the international statistical community in producing the SDG indicators, and global initiatives to address the challenges.

In addition to the Secretary-General’s report, a separate publication, titled ‘Sustainable Development Goals Report 2016,’ will be launched on 19 July, and will provide further analyses of selected indicators for a wider audience, using charts and infographics to highlight critical gaps and challenges, according to the Statistics Division. [Publication: Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals] [UN Statistics Division News]