Launch of the SDG Report 2026, review of the 2030 agenda - Press Conference | United Nations

“The High-Level Political Forum is the United Nations central platform for follow up and the review of the 2030 agenda,” said Lok Bahadur Thapa, President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), opening the 2026 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York. The forum runs under the theme “Transformative, equitable, innovative and coordinated actions for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals for a sustainable future for all.” “The world does not need another catalog of challenges. We know the challenges. What we need is greater coherence, stronger partnerships, more effective, and international cooperations, faster implementations, and most of all, better delivery and the impact on the ground,” Thapa said. “Over the coming days we will review progress on SDG6, 7, 9, 11 and 17 and hear from 36 countries presenting voluntary national reviews,” Thapa said. “The 2030 agenda remains our shared promise to people, to planet and to future generations, who in the years ahead will not ask whether the challenges were difficult,” he continued. “They will ask whether we were equal to them. Let this forum show that when we connect ideas with actions, when we connect finance with innovations, and when we connect national leadership with international solidarity, progress is still possible.” Li Junhua, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, noted that the Forum's opening coincided with the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026. “Building on updates to previous HLPFs, the Secretary General's Progress Report is a both a testament to what is possible and an urgent call to do far more,” he said. “With less than five years to achieve the SDGs the report offers a clear-eyed measure of our collective progress.” Briefing reporters on the report's findings, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed cautioned that global averages conceal wide disparities. “The report is revealing the global picture, but we must not forget what it does mask and that is outstanding progress on SDGs in some countries, but also serious gaps across regions and countries,” she said. “Today, thanks to these findings, we can say two things with confidence: that the Sustainable Development Agenda, its 17 Goals work; they are delivering for people just not fast enough, not evenly and more inclusively,” Mohammed stated. “And there is a huge risk of reversals.” She pointed to gains in human development since 2020, including a global unemployment rate that fell to a record low of 4.9 per cent in 2025, nearly one billion more people gaining access to drinking water over the past decade, and women's representation in parliaments and local government nearing 27 per cent. Nine in ten people now have access to electricity, Mohammed added, while 34 countries have met the target of under-five mortality and AIDS-related deaths have dropped by a third. At the same time, Mohammed warned that conflict in the Middle East has disrupted maritime traffic, energy, fertilizer and food corridors, driving up inflation, and that war has erased 77 years of human development gains in Gaza. Recent summers have ranked among the hottest on record, she said, with the world fast approaching a temporary overshoot of the 1.5-degree limit. Military spending reached 2.9 trillion dollars in the same year that development assistance suffered its steepest fall on record, she noted, leaving an annual SDG financing gap of four trillion dollars. “The overall picture is very clear,” Mohammed said. “We yield a real progress already in a number of areas, in a number of fronts, and also in a number of the regions and the countries. But at the same time, those progress does not achieve it at the hour expected the space and the scale. So the way forward is clear, as highlighted by the Under-Secretary-General. We need a political determination, political goodwill and also global partnership.” Shantanu Mukherjee, Acting Director of the Statistics Division at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), said, “Cities are finally being built more efficiently, but slums continue to grow with 1.16 billion living in them,” he said. “Public services are improving but not keeping pace. As cities bring several SDGs together in practice offering a chance to improving billions of lives, we should capitalize on this opportunity.” The Forum, convened under the auspices of ECOSOC, runs from 7 to 15 July and brings together governments, business leaders, civil society representatives, mayors, scientists, policymakers and international organizations to assess progress and accelerate action on the SDGs. This year's session will review in depth Goals 6, 7, 9, 11 and 17, covering water and sanitation, energy, industry and infrastructure, sustainable cities, and partnerships for the Goals.


For more information or to watch video on YouTube, click here!