SDG 10: What, Where, and How

With the first term of the school year coming to a close, we had one last project to finish out our class on the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. We started off external research by going to City Hall to see government in action. We saw a meeting of the Budget and City Operations Committee. After, we were supposed to make an original piece of art or a poster to convey a message related to the goals. I chose to focus on goal 10, reduced inequalities.

How many things do you think you agree on with 192 people you know? Probably only a few things, if any. Imagine you were trying to make a list of goals for every nation in the world to agree to and work towards. It’s fairly difficult to imagine what all nations could agree on. The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 17 goals from the United Nations. They were ratified by all 193 participating countries, and intended to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. 

SDG 10 aims to reduce global inequalities. One way it specifies is on the basis of sex, or “other status” (United Nations 2015). Though this is intentionally vague on the part of the UN, it is considered by many groups to extend to equal rights based on sexuality. These are both issues that people have been fighting for for a very long time, and continue to fight for today. The SDG has targets and indicators that are supposed to help the United Nations determine where the world is on progress, and what areas the world needs to focus extra attention and resources on. 

Many countries are effectively addressing this issue, and many have been doing so even before the global goal was set. A great example of a country on the forefront of reducing inequality within it is the Netherlands (Holland Alumni Network). The Netherlands is ranked as one of the top five best countries for women to live in (USNews 2019). Same-sex relations were legalized in 1811, and it was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, in 2001. Although it is not perfect, they have definitely taken a global lead in making sure that all of their citizens are guaranteed equal rights. 

MD. 2019. Poster.

The world is far away from being equal for all, but this doesn’t mean we aren’t on the right track. There is much progress to be made, yet much progress that has been made and is being made every day. Aiming to have finished by 2030 is ambitious, and admittedly unlikely, but more people than ever believe it is worth trying.

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“Sexual Diversity in the Netherlands.” Holland Alumni Network, Holland Alumni Network , 2016, https://www.hollandalumni.nl/medias/editor/files/sexual-diversity-in-the-netherlands.pdf.

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“The 80 Best Countries for Women.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-women.