Giving Compass' Take:

• Minh-Thu Pham, the UN Foundation’s Executive Director for Policy, discusses the learnings from the first three years of measuring the SDGs.

• How can donors align their work around the SDGs? Minh-Thu Pham highlights the need for additional work on gender equality, how can donors fill that gap? 

• Learn how blended finance can work to meet the SDGs.

Three years into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and how are we doing?

If we want to end poverty, reduce inequality, tackle climate change, and more by 2030, we need to track current progress so we can figure out how to do better, faster.

The United Nations has a review process for the SDGs: It’s called the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), and it takes place in July. To get a better understanding of the issues and the goals under discussion at the forum and why they matter, we talked to Minh-Thu Pham, the UN Foundation’s Executive Director for Policy.

As we head into the forum, what are some of the key things we’ve learned so far about making progress on the SDGs?

We know there is a higher likelihood of achieving the SDGs if you reach the furthest behind first.

With the MDGs, we cut extreme poverty in half and that was great, but the SDGs are mostly about getting to zero poverty, so we need to target those in the marginalized communities and vulnerable groups. And that means there is a whole set of policies, political attention, and shifts that have to happen.

Second, we need data, data, data! This includes quantitative data: Are we collecting the right information? Are we counting people? Are we disaggregating? But we also need qualitative data: What is it that people who are the furthest behind say they want and need?

And lastly, gender: really focusing on empowering women and girls. Evidence – time and again – shows that if you do this in all aspects of every issue, you’re going to make more progress and you’re going to make it faster.

Read the full article about measuring the SDGs by Jenni Lee at United Nations Foundation.