The United States and its allies are under pressure to make progress on addressing the United Nations' sustainable development goals at this week's U.N. General Assembly, where the war in Ukraine is expected to dominate the international agenda for the second year in a row.
President Biden and other Western leaders have faced growing calls to demonstrate that their focus on Ukraine at the U.N. gathering in New York won't give short shrift to issues like food security, climate change and proposed reforms to international lending organizations.
"[Ukraine] is very high on the agenda" at the U.N. General Assembly, said Michael Hanna, the U.S. program director at the International Crisis Group. At the same time, Hanna said, the U.N. gathering comes as the United States is seeking to strengthen ties with developing countries in the Global South.
"It's a new kind of challenge for the U.S.," Hanna said. The Biden administration "does want to create the impression that it is solicitous of the demands of some of these rising powers."
The meeting of world leaders this week will put a fresh spotlight on the lack of progress nations have made to meet the U.N.'s sustainable development goals, known as SDGs.
The goals, adopted by U.N. member states in 2015, included sweeping efforts to reduce poverty and hunger by 2030 and tackle climate change and global health concerns, among other issues. A report released earlier this year by the nonprofit group tracking the goals found that the world was "seriously off track" in meeting the benchmarks.
"Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 and other simultaneous crises, SDG progress has stalled globally," the report concluded.
Developing countries have urged the U.S. and other wealthy nations to deliver on commitments to boost financing to tackle climate change and other challenges that disproportionately impact the Global South.
The debate over the sustainable development goals is playing out amid a larger discussion over reforms to the U.N. Security Council and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The Biden administration has called for reforms to international lending institutions to ease debt burdens on poor countries. Biden has also proposed reforming the U.N. Security Council to add permanent seats for countries from Latin American and Africa.
The proposal to reshape the security council is widely viewed as an acknowledgment that the U.N. must adapt to rising powers and new alliances that didn't exist when the organization was created after World War II.
But reforming the security council would require support from a majority of U.N. member states, and there is disagreement among countries that could scuttle the plan. The war in Ukraine also complicates the effort, as Western allies seek to maintain a united international front against Russia.
Despite the obstacles, "it would be important at least to demonstrate to Global South countries that the U.S. is serious" about calls for reform when leaders meet at the U.N. this week, said Aude Darnal, who leads The Global South in the World Order project at the Stimson Center.
"All of these multilateral organizations are based on archaic foundations that are no longer suitable to the world today," Darnal said.
