Washington, DC – 31 January 2024 – The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Ms. Amina Mohammed led a high-level delegation to Washington, DC for strategic discussions with the leadership of the World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and International Financial Corporation (IFC).

The meetings aimed to strategize about how to overcome hurdles to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The United Nations continues to champion the implementation with a call on all partners and countries to act now to get the SDGs implementation back on track.

Today, only 15 per cent of the targets are on track to be achieved by 2030. Progress on 50 per cent is weak and insufficient.  Worst of all, countries have stalled or reversed progress on more than 30 per cent of the SDGs.  Without a concerted and sustained effort, the SDGs set forth in the 2030 Agenda threatens to become an epitaph for a world that might have been.

At the World Bank, the Deputy Secretary-General and Mr. Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, discussed work to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals, which at the mid-point finds many countries’ progress lagging. She also met with Mr. Juergen Voegele, Vice President for Sustainable Development at the World Bank.

At the IMF, the Deputy Secretary-General met with Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Board, and discussed measures urgently needed to address debt, deploy Special Drawing Rights, and scale up Multilateral Development Banks. She also met with Mr. Makhtar Diop, Managing Director of International Finance Corporation on the same matters.

For more on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Sustainable Development Agenda - United Nations Sustainable Development