Saudi Arabia at UN urges shift from SDG ambition to delivery as Riyadh-hosted forum spotlights prioritization
NEW YORK CITY: With four years left before the 2030 deadline for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Saudi Arabia used a high-level side event at UN headquarters on Friday to argue that the central challenge facing governments is no longer setting ambitious targets but organizing institutions and resources to deliver them.
The session, “Rethinking SDG Delivery Through Prioritization and Implementation Approaches,” was organized by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Economy and Planning on the margins of the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, and brought together officials from Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Pakistan, Poland and Ireland, along with a recorded address from the UN’s South-South cooperation chief.
Opening the discussion, Fares Al-Otaibi, deputy permanent representative of Saudi Arabia to the UN, said the question before governments today “is no longer whether we are committed to the Sustainable Development Goals,” but how to organize national systems to deliver them.
He said today’s development landscape has grown more complex, forcing governments to respond to economic, social and environmental pressures with finite institutional and financial resources, meaning success should be measured not by the number of priorities pursued but by governments’ ability to identify and deliver the ones with the greatest transformative potential.
