UN looks past 2015

No one must be left behind by virtue of their gender, age, disability, income, geography or ethnicity. This includes people affected by MS, wherever they are in the world.

Between 17 and 21 February, United Nations (UN) discussions on defining a post-2015 development agenda took place in New York, USA.

The agenda will be launched at a Special Summit on Sustainable Development in New York in September 2015. That is the target date for realising the eight Millennium Development Goals set in 2000, when 189 nations made a promise to free people from extreme poverty and multiple deprivation.

The process is being led by the UN General Assembly with broad participation from major groups and other civil society stakeholders.

There have been numerous inputs to the agenda, notably a set of Sustainable Development Goals to help drive the implementation of sustainable development.

In preparation for the New York meetings, the MS International Federation joined more than 270 other non-governmental organisations, representing over 3,200 organisations worldwide, to urge UN member states to ensure that the Declaration of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda includes an explicit reference to the criterion that ‘no target should be considered met unless it is met for all social and economic groups’.

Download the global civil society statement

As a result of this action, for the first time, the discussion document for the Declaration circulated to member states on 19 February made an explicit reference that ‘no target will be considered met unless it is met for all economic and social groupings’.

Director of Programmes Ceri Angood Napier said: “Inequalities are not an inevitable outcome of development progress. If we are to recognise the truly transformative potential of the new sustainable development framework we must embed equity at its core.”