The UN/WHO Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (a UN signed in 2000) come to the end of their term December 2015 and a post-2015 health agenda, comprising called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) takes their place and came into effect January 1, 2016.
On 25 September 2015, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the new development agenda called “Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development…The agenda builds upon the outcome document of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20 conference)” [1, 2, 3] Australia signed by Julie Bishop.
In late December 2015 the WHO released their first report “From MDGs to SDGs” which has gone from 8 goals to 17 goals. The WHO’s Director-General Dr Margaret Chan wrote in the report “[w]hile progress towards the MDGs has been impressive in many ways, much work remains to be done…[as] several global and many country MDG targets were not met. The unfinished agenda needs to be addressed, but more importantly the dramatic progress paves the way for more ambitious achievements by 2030.” [PDF]
According to the report, the SDG date back to a resolution made at the pivotal 66th UN General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro on July 27, 2012, called “The future we want”
“In 2016, WHO will publish the first in a series of annual reports on the SDGs to set the baseline and measure progress towards achieving the goals over the next 15 years” to 2030.