Voluntary National Reviews at the HLPF 2022

At this year's High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, 44 countries presented a Voluntary National Review (VNR), including many African countries. The latter particularly highlighted the potential that lies in the joint implementation of Agenda 2030 and Africa's Agenda 2063 and underscored the importance of comprehensive action plans to implement the SDGs. All VNRs described the dramatic impact of multiple global shocks - esp. the Corona pandemic and the war in Ukraine - on the economy, energy sector, food security, and human well-being. Countries that derive much of their GDP from services, the tourism sector, or oil exports are particularly hard hit by the current crises. In many countries, COVID-19 has exacerbated already high poverty and unemployment rates, as well as debt burdens, inequalities, and inflation. Women and children are suffering particularly. For example, access to education has deteriorated significantly in some countries.

A lot of money that is actually needed for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda was and is being used for pandemic response. Nevertheless, many countries are striving and motivated to design their recovery plans in line with the motto "build back better" in such a way that progress on the SDGs is also possible. In doing so, they are increasingly relying on partnerships with other countries and with non-governmental stakeholders.

In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme weather events such as droughts, heavy rains and floods causing crop failures, and disrupted grain imports from Russia and Ukraine threaten people in many parts of the world.

But despite the numerous challenges, countries also report progress, for example in the areas of agriculture, education and social security. It turns out that good monitoring helps, as successes and shortcomings can be tracked better.

A detailed summary of the 2022 VNRs and links to the individual state reports can be found on this page.