A look into upcoming highlights for UNGA week
This year’s 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will be held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from September 18-30. The 73rd session will host discussions around the general theme of debate: “Making the United Nations Relevant to All People: Global Leadership and Shared Responsibility for Peaceful, Equitable and Sustainable Societies.” During the opening of the 73rd session, H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés of Ecuador, President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly, laid out her priorities for the session. These include gender equality, migration and refugees, decent work, environmental action, people with disabilities, UN revitalization, and peace & security. She also spoke about the 2030 Agenda, mentioning that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are “best measured by its impact on the well-being of the world’s people”. She continued to say that the impact of the SDGs “is ultimately what makes the United Nations relevant and valuable to the world.”
To understand the impact of the SDGs on people and business, United States Council for International Business (USCIB) will be leading an event, hosted by Deloitte, on September 27. The event, Making, Valuing and Communicating SDG Impact, will seek to measure the impact of the SDGs on US business and how companies are embedding SDGs into their everyday process. During the event, the platform Business For 2030 will be highlighted as an innovative and accessible way to present specific examples and approaches to the SDGs, embedding the cases in the SDG language itself. USCIB member companies, government, and other stakeholders, will attend the event to consider how American business can make an impact in embedding SDGs in their business operation, and options to strengthen international cooperation and business engagement for the SDGs.
The General Assembly will also feature sub-events specifically focused on driving progress toward the SDGs, namely Global Goals Week and Climate Week NYC.
Global Goals Week is a week long series of events starting on September 22nd focused on making progress toward the SDGs. The week will include events such as 2018 Concordia Annual Summit, 2018 Global People’s Summit, Sustainable Development Impact Summit, Global Day of Action and more. This event presents the chance for representatives from businesses, governments, academic institutions and NGOs to engage in a variety of panel discussions, exhibitions and seminars.
Climate Week NYC will be held from September 24-30 in New York City, and is organized by The Climate Group along with the United Nations and the City of New York. Climate Week NYC will host many high-level stakeholders with the objective to create policies around climate action to combat climate change. The week will host over 160 affiliate events in a variety of formats, in hopes of creating an open dialogue to drive awareness and advance debate against climate change.
Read more about UNGA here.
Read more about UNGA events here.