The first meeting of the Interagency Working Group on Ensuring the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals was held today, 1 November.

The meeting was opened by Oleh Nemchinov, Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers. It was also attended by representatives of the Office of the President of Ukraine, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Ukrainian Parliament, the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, ministries, the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union project “Support to Comprehensive Reform of Public Administration in Ukraine” (EU4PAR).

During the meeting, the following issues were discussed:

• organisation of the work of the Interagency Working Group (IWG) and approval of the composition, work plan and tasks for the working groups under the IWG, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals;
• updating the local targets and indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals in Ukraine;
• conducting the Voluntary National Review of the Sustainable Development Goals in Ukraine in 2024 – Opportunities and Risks.

It should be noted that Ukraine, like other UN member states, joined the global process of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 with the approval of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the UN General Assembly, and since then, an inclusive process of achieving the goals in Ukraine has been launched. The 17 Goals are mutually reinforcing: actions in one area also affect the outcomes in others, so development should balance social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Presidential Decree No. 722 of 30 September 2019 “On the Sustainable Development Goals of Ukraine for the period up to 2030” sets out the Sustainable Development Goals as a benchmark for the development of draft forecast and programme documents to ensure a balance between the economic, social and environmental dimensions of Ukraine’s sustainable development. Each global goal was reviewed with due consideration to the specifics of national development, resulting in 86 national targets.

In addition, amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine stipulate that the need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals will be taken into account in the process of formulating and implementing state policy.

“We have been steadily and confidently making progress towards achieving the SDGs, but in 2022, due to russia’s full-scale invasion, not only Ukraine’s implementation of the SDGs, but also the fundamental foundations of the world order are threatened. In particular, the achievement of SDG 16 – promoting peace and justice – is impossible for the international community as long as russia’s armed aggression against our country continues.

However, despite all the challenges, Ukraine continues to take consistent steps towards the implementation of the SDGs. We plan to continue integrating best practices and experiences into the post-war recovery and modernisation processes in our country. That’s why the fundamental principle of sustainable development ‘leave no one behind’ will remain our top priority in the future,” said Oleh Nemchinov, Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers.

The need to create a mechanism to coordinate the implementation of the SDGs has been identified. The achievement of the SDGs can be improved if they are properly coordinated. To this end, the Interagency Working Group on Ensuring the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals has been established as a mechanism to coordinate the implementation of the SDGs at the interagency level in order to intensify the process of adapting the targets and indicators of these goals to the specific conditions of Ukraine.