Global Goals Week

Global Goals Week is an annual week-long event in September for action, awareness, and accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals.[1] It was first held in 2016. It is timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly "High-level Week" in New York. The week includes many events, summits, conferences, forums, workshops, pledges, etc. in New York but also around the world. It usually runs alongside Climate Week NYC, the annual conference of Goalkeepers (Gates Foundation), Bloomberg Global Business Forum and many other high-level events.

The Global Goals Icon

History
Young people holding SDG banners in Lima, Peru

Global Goals Week is an annual event that first took place in 2016. In that year it was piloted by organizing partners Project Everyone, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Foundation.[2]

Structure

Global Goals Week is timed to coincide with the annual main meetings UN General Assembly which take place in New York (also called UN General Assembly "High-level Week"). It is a shared commitment of partnership between civil society, business, academia and the United Nations system to push action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The week includes many events in New York but also around the world, including the Global Day of Action which usually sees thousands of people show their commitment to the Goals.

Purpose

The purpose is to organize "action, awareness, and accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals". It is also an opportunity to "speak out as one voice, share ideas and transformative solutions in the fight to build back better from global challenges".[1]

It aims to make "the SDG community come together".[1]

Themes and activities
Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, talks about "The role of free knowledge in advancing the SDGs" in Stockholm, 2019

2020

Global Goals week will take place from 19 to 26 September 2020. It will be online only (due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The plan is to "cultivate ideas, identify solutions, and build partnerships with the power to solve a wide range of complex global problems from inequality to climate change".[1]

2019

Global Goals Week 2019 took place concurrently with Climate Week NYC 2019. The theme was: "Action for People and Planet". There was an estimated 72 Global Goals Week events, as well as 68 events from SDG Action Zone, 351 events from Climate Week NYC, 2981 actions, including events, from the SDG Action Campaign.[3] About 107,000 people attended online and about 30,000 people attended in person.[3]

The week included the events of the UN Summits Week, comprising the UN-Secretary-General's Climate Action Summit, a High-level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage; the SDG Summit; the 2019 High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) ; and a High-level Review of Progress on SAMOA Pathway.[3]

Other events included:[3][4]

  • Youth Climate Summit
  • Social Good Summit
  • Global Week to Act for SDGs
  • Private Sector Forum
  • International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD)
  • Sustainable Development Impact Summit
  • Equator Prize 2019 Award Ceremony
  • Bloomberg Global Business Forum
  • SDG Business Forum
  • UN Solutions Summit
  • AI (artificial intelligence) Sustainable Development Summit.

A range of commitments were announced in 2019. These relate to financial commitments, partnerships, initiatives and activists. Core partners for the 2019 Global Goals week included: Project Everyone, United Nations Foundation, UNDP, Department of Global Communications and SDG Strategy Hub.[3]

Initiatives (some examples):[3]

  • The Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation supported the launch of the University Global Compact.
  • WFP and Alibaba Group unveiled “Hunger Map Live”, a digital map to track food-security issues across the globe.
  • Open Government Partnership's Acceleration Action on its recently launched coalition on justice.
  • Google presented innovations in AI to advance the Global Goals and highlighted the work from their Impact Challenge grantees.

Examples of activists events:[3]

  • Activists and leaders from across all sectors came together at the SDG Action Zone alongside UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed to pledge their commitment to a super year of activism in 2020, to kickstart a Decade of Action for the SDGs.
  • Trisha Shetty (SheSays) focused on empowering women and girls, ensuring no-one is left behind.
  • Kennedy Odede(SHOFCO and World Poverty Forum) focused on tackling poverty and reducing inequality, looking ahead to the World Poverty Forum in January, to be held in Kibera, Kenya's biggest slum.
  • Kumi Naidoo (Amnesty International) focused on grassroots civil activists whose lives are at risk worldwide.
  • Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (actor and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador) focused on the power of stories to galvanize movements for change.
  • SDG Advocates Alaa Murabit and Richard Curtis called on all sectors and citizens to mobilize in 2020 for the super year of activism ahead.

Examples of financial commitments:[3]

  • UNICEF and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) launched an innovative fund that will open new opportunities for Muslim philanthropy to reach the millions of children currently in need of humanitarian support and help achieve the SDGs.
  • Mastercard’s Michael Froman and Global Fund Chairman Donald Kaberuka reported on Mastercard’s new partnership with Step Up the Fight, a Global Fund initiative that proposes to raise $14 billion by 2023 for the fight against HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. Of that $14 billion, the Global Fund is advocating for the private sector to mobilize at least $1 billion to expedite progress toward SDG 3 and universal health coverage.
  • Colombian President Iván Duque and Howard G. Buffett discussed private capital and public policy levers that can support a sustainable peace in Colombia, as well as how the Howard G. Buffett Foundation is elevating its investments in Colombia’s agriculture industries in line with the country’s peace process.

2018

In 2018, Global Goals Week took place from 22–29 September. It was termed "the biggest Global Goals Week yet".[5] Its theme was "Let’s end poverty, fight inequality, and beat climate change".[5]

Events included:[6]

  • Learning Revolutions: Creating Educational Environments for Empowerment and Inclusion
  • Global People's Summit
  • Social Good Summit
  • UN Global Compact Leaders Summit
  • World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit
  • SDG Philanthropy Platform Events
  • 2018 Concordia Annual Summit
  • Global Day of Action
  • We the Future: Accelerating Sustainable Development Solutions 2018
  • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Goalkeepers
  • Sustainable Investment Forum North America
  • Bloomberg Global Business Forum
  • One Planet Summit
  • International Conference on Sustainable Development
  • The 8th Business Call to Action Annual Forum: Technological Disruption in the World of Inclusive Business

2017

Global Goals Week 2017 events included:[7]

Climate Week took place at the same time.

Trends that emerged from the 2017 Global Goals Week included: "Development through the Trump prism, refugees and migration, humanitarian water-treading, putting business to work (for the SDGs), breaking down siloes, what’s next for development and new partnerships, United Nations reform."[8]

Impacts

For Global Goals Week 2019 the following impacts were reported in terms of social media metrics: Reach: 5.8 billion - defined as the total number of unique people who have seen the social media content.[3] An analysis of Twitter data was done from 20 September to 2 October 2019 of over 50 different hashtags and Twitter handles. Around 10.8 million posts, shares, hashtags and mentions were tracked from 115 countries in 54 different languages.[3]

References
  1. "Global Goals Week - About". United Nations Foundation. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  2. "Global Goals Week 2019". SDG Knowledge Hub. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  3. UN Foundations (2019) Presentation about Global Goals Week in 2019, provided on website about Global Goals Week.
  4. "Global Goals Week 2019". IISD SDG Knowledge Hub. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  5. "Global Goals Week 2018". The Global Goals. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  6. "Global Goals Week 2018". IISD SDG Knowledge Hub. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  7. "Global Goals Week 2017". IISD SDG Knowledge Hub. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  8. "7 biggest trends to emerge from Global Goals Week". Devex. By Elizabeth Dickinson, Michael Igoe, Catherine Cheney, Amy Lieberman. 25 September 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
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