It’s Time to Update the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

UNGA 2026: The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals Are Outdated

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Argument: It’s Time to Update the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

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Argument

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It’s Time to Update the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

Countries committed to end poverty. They never accounted for forever wars.

By **David Miliband**, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee and a former foreign secretary of the United Kingdom.

!A group of five children sit side by side in the soft-focused foreground, facing each other in conversation. In the sharply focused background, a vast area of destroyed buildings and rubble stretches across the landscape beneath a clear sky.

*A group of five children sit side by side in the soft-focused foreground, facing each other in conversation. In the sharply focused background, a vast area of destroyed buildings and rubble stretches across the landscape beneath a clear sky.*

Children sit together near heavily damaged buildings at the Nuseirat camp for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip on June 19. Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images

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September 21, 2026, 3:44 PM

World leaders are about to choose a new United Nations secretary-general. Whoever gets the job will inherit an uncomfortable truth: The world body’s promise to end poverty, hunger, and disease is in retreat because today’s leaders are presiding over an era of multiple and growing forever wars.

In September 2015, U.N. member states set 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, to be achieved by 2030. These sought to end extreme poverty, promote climate action, and set social and economic targets, all while “leaving no one behind.” But the commitment assumed the existence of functioning states, international cooperation, and development systems capable of turning finance into progress.

World leaders are about to choose a new United Nations secretary-general. Whoever gets the job will inherit an uncomfortable truth: The world body’s promise to end poverty, hunger, and disease is in retreat because today’s leaders are presiding over an era of multiple and growing forever wars.

In September 2015, U.N. member states set 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, to be achieved by 2030. These sought to end extreme poverty, promote climate action, and set social and economic targets, all while “leaving no one behind.” But the commitment assumed the existence of functioning states, international cooperation, and development systems capable of turning finance into progress.

Instead, the world has entered a new global disorder. States flout laws, and impunity is on the rise, while aid budgets are cut and international cooperation is undermined. The United States, which was once the anchor of the global system, has abandoned its former role. Countries including the United Kingdom have joined in with significant aid cuts.

Meanwhile, more wars are raging today than at any point since World War II, and they are lasting longer than ever. More than 70 percent of conflicts that have begun since 2020 have continued for more than a year, up from 44 percent in the 2000s. So-called civil wars, or wars within states, are increasingly internationalized through external sponsorship. According to the Institute for Economics & Peace’s 2025 Global Peace Index, 98 countries were entangled in conflicts outside of their borders in the five years prior to the report, up from 59 in 2008. These internationalized wars are nearly four times less likely to end.

The U.S. war of choice in Iran exemplifies the adage that it is easier to start a war than end it. It also shows the risks of conflict in our interconnected world—farmers and consumers across the world pay the price when global fertilizer supplies, among other key goods, cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blocked since February.

The SDGs, adopted more than a decade ago, were not built for this era. Indeed, the word “conflict” appears less often than “fisheries” in the SDGs. For instance, both Goal 2 (“Zero Hunger”) and Goal 14 (“Life Below Water”) prioritize fisheries and fishers, while there is no formal target addressing humanitarian food aid or conflict and displacement as drivers of hunger.

Yet conflict is the principal force determining whether any development target can be achieved, and it is the main driver of heightened levels of poverty and hunger around the world

Already eight years ago, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which I lead, warned that more than 80 percent of fragile and conflict-affected states were off track to meet these goals, and nearly 26 million refugees were being left out of the official reporting processes. Since then, the situation has become direr. Research indicates that as of 2021, armed conflict slowed global progress on the SDGs by the equivalent of 18 years. Today, only 15 percent of the 139 SDG targets with sufficient data are on track, with fragile and conflict-affected states lagging furthest behind. Nearly half of all deaths of children under 5 years old have also occurred in those states.

By 2030, more than half of the people living in extreme poverty are expected to be in the 20 countries named on this year’s IRC Emergency Watchlist—countries that account for just 12 percent of the world’s population but 89 percent of those in humanitarian need globally. A generation of development g