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Sustainable Development Goals[edit]
Sustainable Development Goals As the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals approached in 2015, the UN convened a panel to advise on a Post-2015 Development Agenda, which led to a new set of 17 goals for the year 2030 titled the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first goal (SDG 1) is to "End poverty in all its forms everywhere."

The HLP report, entitled A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development, was published in May 2013. In the report, the HLP wrote that:"Ending extreme poverty is just the beginning, not the end. It is vital, but our vision must be broader: to start countries on the path of sustainable development – building on the foundations established by the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro12, and meeting a challenge that no country, developed or developing, has met so far. We recommend to the Secretary-General that deliberations on a new development agenda must be guided by the vision of eradicating extreme poverty once and for all, in the context of sustainable development."Therefore, the report determined that a central goal of the Post-Millennium Development agenda is to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. However, the report also emphasized that the MDGs were not enough on their own, as they did not "focus on the devastating effects of conflict and violence on development…the importance to development of good governance and institution…nor the need for inclusive growth...". Consequently, there now exists synergy between the policy position papers put forward by the United States (through USAID), the World Bank and the UN itself in terms of viewing fragility and a lack of good governance as exacerbating extreme poverty. However, in a departure from the views of other organizations, the commission also proposed that the UN focus not only on extreme poverty (a line drawn at $1.25), but also on a higher target, such as $2. The report notes this change could be made to reflect the fact that escaping extreme poverty is only a first step.

In addition to the UN, a host of other supranational and national actors such as the European Union and the African Union have published their own positions or recommendations on what should be incorporated in the Post-2015 agenda. The European Commission's communication, published in A decent Life for all: from vision to collective action, affirmed the UN's commitment to "eradicate extreme poverty in our lifetime and put the world on a sustainable path to ensure a decent life for all by 2030". Specifically, the Commission argued, "long-term poverty reduction…requires inclusive and sustainable growth. Growth should create decent jobs, take place with resource efficiency and within planetary boundaries, and should support efforts to mitigate climate change." The African Union's report, entitled Common African Position (CAP) on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, likewise encouraged the international community to focus on eradicating the twin problems of poverty and exclusion in our lifetime. Moreover, the CAP pledged that "no person – regardless of ethnicity, gender, geography, disability, race or other status – is denied universal human rights and basic economic opportunities".