Publication

Setting The Foundations: 2019 Progress Report

Annual Report

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development brings disparities to the fore. Policy and social dynamics that spur rising inequalities and pervasive exclusion can and must change. Systemic drivers of exclusion, which can be social, cultural, economic, political and legal, should be examined and addressed. 

Over the last few months, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented the world with its greatest challenge since the creation of the United Nations, threatening millions of lives and causing massive socio-economic disruption. Many of the key performance indicators in the Fund’s overall results framework reflect the state of play of the wider UN development system reform at work in 2018-2019.  This progress report reflects how the UN Joint SDG Fund began setting the foundations for both immediate and longer-term acceleration of the SDGs at country level in 2019. Foundations that will be more critical than ever for the immediate and long-term challenge to support countries to recover better from COVID-19.

This report follows the outline of the UN Joint SDG Fund’s overall results framework, placing an analysis of programmatic results expected in 2022 first, followed by the various operational indicators that measure resource mobilization efforts, the Joint Fund’s alignment with core UN programming standards across human rights, gender and inclusion, among others.  Given the mis-alignment of some indicators and the progress made on some of the reform-related indicators that go beyond the Joint Fund - and are more appropriately reviewed in the broader context of implementation of The Funding Compact - the Fund Secretariat will review and propose an amended version of the results framework for stakeholder review in 2020.