Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are viewed as extension of millennium development goals (MDGs) and a post-2015 agenda to fight against poverty and hunger, while protecting human rights of people and ensuring inclusive and sustainable development and healthy lives. It sounds simple but there are very complex international dynamics involved with evolution of MDGs and then SDGs. This review article examines the sociopolitical evidence base that served as motivation for MDGs to come and later on SDGs. The antecedents to the MDGs include some key summits of the 1990s which fed into many of the goals of MDGs. Then Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) came out with international development goals (IDGs). Then Clare Short (a member of the Labour Party) in the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and Utstein group propelled the IDGs by securing support for them. The UN also came out with a set of development goals to be converted to MDGs. There were interactions between and within the UN and DAC to bring together one set of MDGs. Other big players were IMF and World Bank. There was huge criticism of MDGs for not being holistic as they left out certain social issues. Also there was a need for post-2015 agenda. As a result, SDGs came by the end of 2015. Even they could not escape criticism, and the article discusses few debates around them. At last, the article discusses potential challenges for SDGs, both at international level as well as national level with special emphasis on health-related SDGs.