UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday galvanised action among member states to implement his new Our Common Agenda, which, he said, aims to turbo-charge work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“I have put these ideas to you not because I think they will be easy to agree upon or implement, but because I believe they are the right thing to do. History will judge us if we do not rise to the challenges before us,” he told an informal plenary meeting of the General Assembly on Our Common Agenda.

“We already have roadmaps in place: the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement (on climate change). But we know that progress in achieving the SDGs was already off track, and the pandemic has set it back even further. Our Common Agenda aims to turbo-charge work on the Sustainable Development Goals, so that we accelerate throughout the decade, taking into account the gaps and delays caused by the pandemic.”