Addressing the UN General Assembly (UNGA), UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted his priorities for 2023. Describing 2023 as “a year of reckoning,” he urged Member States to change the mindset of decision making from near-term thinking to long-term thinking and develop a strategic vision to act decisively “in deep and systemic ways.”

The Secretary-General began his speech before the General Assembly with a word of warning. “We have started 2023 staring down the barrel of a confluence of challenges unlike any other in our lifetimes,” including wars, the climate crisis, extreme poverty, and geopolitical divisions, he said, calling for a “course correction.”

Drawing attention to opportunities to “rescue” the SDGs, the Secretary-General highlighted the second part of the Fifth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) in March and the SDG Summit in September, which he characterized as the “centrepiece moment of 2023.” He called for immediate resource mobilization towards the goals on poverty and exclusion, to ensure that “developing economies have the liquidity to fund investments in quality education, universal health care, pandemic preparedness, decent work and social protection.” Guterres urged the Group of 20 (G20) to agree on the global SDG Stimulus, proposed at the G20 Summit, to support the countries of the Global South.