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STORY: UN / SDGS POLITICAL FORUM
TRT: 04:44
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 07 JULY 2026, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1. Med shot, United Nations flag
07 JULY 2026, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, ECOSOC chamber
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Lok Bahadur Thapa, President, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC):
“The High-Level Political Forum is the United Nations central platform for follow up and the review of the 2030 agenda. It is where Member States come together to assess progress, learn from one another, and strengthen collective actions in the final years leading to 2030. Over the coming days we will review progress on SDG6, 7, 9, 11 and 17 and hear from 36 countries presenting voluntary national reviews.”
4. Wide shot, ECOSOC chamber
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Lok Bahadur Thapa, President, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC):
“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. 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. 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.”
6. Wide shot, ECOSOC chamber
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Li Junhua, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs:
“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. With less than five years to achieve the SDGs the report offers a clear-eyed measure of our collective progress.”
8. Wide shot, ECOSOC chamber
9. Wide shot, press briefing room
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations: “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.”
11. Wide shot, press briefing room
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations: 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. And there is a huge risk of reversals.
13. Wide shot, press briefing room
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations:
“This year's report tells both stories. First, let's have a look at the story on the progress for human dignity in our societies. Since 2020, the global unemployment rate has seen a steady recovery, dropping to a record low of 4.9 in 2025. In the last decade, nearly one billion more people have had access to drinking water. There are increasing numbers of women in our parliaments and local governments and on boards nearing the 30 per cent target (about 27 per cent). Nine people in ten now have access to electricity. Children under five are surviving, who a decade ago would not have done, 34 countries have already met the target of under-five deaths. AIDS is claiming a third fewer lives. More people than ever have something to fall back on in terms of social protection. And almost three in four people now have access to the internet, up from two in five in 2015.”
15. Wide shot, press briefing room
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations:
“The conflict in the Middle East has rippled through the global economy. It's been disrupting maritime traffic, traffic, tying up energy, fertilizer and food corridors and driving up inflation. In Gaza war has undone 77 years of human development. And for several years now, we've seen some of the hottest summers on record; across the world we are fast approaching the temporary overshoot of the 1.5 degree limit. And in the same year that military spending reached $2.9 trillion, development assistance suffered its steepest fall on record, while the annual SDG financing gap still stands at 4 trillion dollars a year.”
17. Wide shot, press briefing room
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations:
“And the overall picture is very clear. 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, the, those progress, does not, achieved it at the hour expected the space and the scale. So, but the way forward is clear as, highlighted by the Under-Secretary-General. We need a political determination, political goodwill and also global partnership.”
19. Wide shot, press briefing room
20. SOUNDBITE (English) Shantanu Mukherjee, Acting Director, Statistics Division, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA):
“On SDG 11 - cities are finally being built more efficiently, but slums continue to grow with 1.16 billion living in them. 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.”
22. Various shots, DSG holding the report
“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 today (7 July).
“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.
Thirty-six countries will present Voluntary National Reviews during the Forum: Albania, Algeria, Bahrain, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Estonia, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kiribati, Liberia, Malawi, the Marshall Islands, Mozambique, Norway, the Republic of Moldova, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, Switzerland, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uruguay.
The Forum is set to conclude on 15 July with the adoption of a Ministerial Declaration, providing policy guidance for countries as they continue efforts to accelerate progress toward the 2030 Agenda.
