Situating social work within the post-2015 Global Agenda

ABSTRACT

The launch of the post-2015 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN) initiates a new set of global priorities to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Over a three-year process, governments and civil society representatives at the UN planned and negotiated the post-2015 Agenda and a set of SDGs and targets. Unlike the MDGs which focused almost entirely on developing countries, the new agenda is intended to be universal and therefore applicable to Europe and North America. The goals address a wide range of issues including poverty and inequality, health, international trade, climate change and gender, with a strong emphasis on the environment. This article will provide an overview of the post-2015 process and explore the implications of this agenda for social work globally and locally. It will highlight areas of particular interest to the profession, especially prospects for addressing growing global inequality within and between countries, and concerns over the role of human rights protection. The advantages and limitations of linking social work’s global agenda to the new UN priorities will be assessed.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-2015 agenda
• United Nations
• Sustainable Development Goals
• inequality
• human rights
• Global Agenda
• SDGs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lynne M. Healy, MSW, Ph.D., is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work (West Hartford, CT, USA). Her areas of expertise and publication include human rights, internationalizing social work curriculum, international social work, human service agency management and ethics. Dr Healy has been active in national and international social work organizations, serving as an officer of IASSW for six years. She is currently the Main Representative to the UN in New York for the IASSW and serves on editorial boards of six professional journals.

Notes

1. The author represents IASSW on the NGO Committee on Social Development, a body that is tied to the UN Commission for Social Development. The group has conducted several surveys inviting grassroots organizations across the world to share examples of successful programmes—what works in poverty eradication and social integration. For more information, see NGO Committee on Social Development (2009) and NGO Committee on Social Development (2014).