Ten facts about the Sustainable Development Goals and 19 days till the ‪#‎UN70Express‬ departure!

World leaders met in New York on 25 September 2015 to agree the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the successor to the Millennium Development Goals. But what are they and why do they matter?
Today we start our 10 Key Facts about the SDGs to explain why these goals are important.

FACT 1
The idea came from the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development - or Rio+20 Summit in 2012. It resulted in a focused political outcome document “The Future We Want” which contains clear and practical measures for implementing sustainable development*.
In Rio, Member States decided to launch a process to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals (#SDGs) or Global Goals, which will build upon the Millennium Development Goals and converge with the post 2015 development agenda.
The Millennium Development Goals (#MDGs) were the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability.
The Global Goals replace the MDGs, which in September 2000 rallied the world around a common 15-year agenda. With the job unfinished for millions of people—we need to go the last mile on ending hunger, achieving full gender equality, improving health services and getting every child into school. Now we must shift the world onto a sustainable path. The Global Goals aim to do just that, with 2030 as the target date.
*Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.