Throughout life, we are all constantly trying to make changes, to evolve, and to grow. Whether it be in our career or just our daily lives. We constantly commit to turning over a new leaf and making things better for ourselves. A common pitfall that often happens time and time again is the thinking that we can change everything in 1 fell swoop and at the same time. Though, the only way to successfully evolve and improve is to take small specific steps, one foot and then the other. Making grand proclamations always sounds good and seems like the answer but that never works. Well, if it is so difficult to implement real change in our own lives imagine how difficult it should be to change the world! There are so many injustices and unfortunate realities throughout the globe that must be rectified. Now, it’s not for a lack of effort from all kinds of people and organizations that’s for sure. In 2015 the United Nations revealed the SDGs—an evolution of the Millennium Development Goals created 15 years earlier to help solve widespread poverty, the proliferation of diseases, a dearth clean drinking water, reasonable healthcare and other basic services in the developing world. Currently, there are myriad of international meetings based on SDG ideas.
Billions of dollars have been spent and contributed to the cause. And many groups, task forces, foundations, charitable endeavors, and government groups have formed part of a growing army dedicated to spreading the SDG goals. At first glance this seems great. Superficially, this is exactly what the world needs to help push many under developed countries into the 21st century and give all the people living in these places a chance to live the life they deserve. But there are many issues that have been completely ignored and those don’t seem to be changing any time soon. Lets take a look. While the SDG seem great and all, for the most part they were designed to be apolitical. They are intended to not challenge the authority or abuse of power of so many of the authoritarian leaders and dictators that preside and rule many of these nations and countries. Essentially all they are doing is perpetuating a reality in which 93 countries, and an estimated four billion people, are ruled by authoritarian governments, according to Human Rights Foundation .
And despite the superficial success of the SDGs, there has been twelve consecutive years of decline in global democracy, according to a recent report by Freedom House . Today, dictatorships like Algeria, Iran , China, Egypt, , Belarus, , Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Zimbabwe are part of the Open Working Group which is basically in charge of executing and overseeing SDG progress . The problem is, the only thing these governments want is to continue the long history of abuse, power, oppression and greed that have plagued these nations for so long and all they need to do is make it appear as if the apparent “development” gains are made and measured. Issues like human rights, free elections, and free press are just looked at as a minor inconvenience.
Nothing shows this better than the fact Bashar al-Assad (Syria) who is considered by many to be one of the absolute worst offenders of human rights the world has seen in a long long time, was involved in drafting the SDGs and has since promoted them worldwide. The current co-chairman of the group tasked with tracking SDG performance in Africa is Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda,. Kagame has been in control for over many years and has cleverly used his country’s SDG “success” to deflect from systemic human rights violations in his country , while orchestrating calamitous wars and politically charged assassinations across the globe .
