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December 2022 - You are accessing an archived version of our website. This website is no longer maintained or updated. The Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform has been migrated here: https://sdgs.un.org/

Sustainable Development Goals
At Rio+20 - the UN Conference on Sustainable Development - countries agreed to establish an intergovernmental process to develop a set of "action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate" sustainable development goals (SDGs) to help drive the implementation of sustainable development. The Rio+20 outcome document, The Future We Want, also calls for the goals to be coherent with the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015. A 30-member Open Working Group (OWG) of the General Assembly is tasked with preparing a proposal on the SDGs.

Thematic Clusters

The Open Working Group is holding eight sessions in 2013 - from March through November - focusing on various thematic and cross-cutting issues that could be included as Sustainable Development Goals (see Schedule of Work in the tab above).

The Permanent Representatives of Hungary and Kenya to the United Nations, in their capacity as co-chairs of the OWG, have requested to hold open and inclusive meetings with major groups and other stakeholders the morning before each OWG session. The meetings are organized around the themes which are considered by the OWG on that day.

Each thematic area - or cluster - as outlined below, is coordinated by steering committees, who are responsible for actively engaging with Major Groups and other Stakeholders in preparing joint position papers or briefs for consideration of the Open Working Group. Click here to read more on Steering Committees. Major Groups and other Stakeholders may also wish to contribute to the World We Want thematic consultations and the SDGs e-Inventory, which outcomes will feed in to the various thematic clusters.

As a registered Major Groups organization, you can contribute to the Thematic Clusters, in the following ways:

  • Comment and provide input on joint position papers (please note deadlines - see Timeline above)
  • Submit relevant material under "Contributions from MGs" - which will be visible for the public and the Steering Committee

Click on the Thematic Clusters below to begin.

OWG5
Official Statements by Major Groups related to the SDGs process

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