In a historic move, some 160 Heads of State and Government gathered at a special United Nations (UN) General Assembly meeting in New York on 25 September to adopt the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The long-awaited era of the post-2015 global development agenda has begun.

The summit document, Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, with its 17 goals and 169 targets, is a call to action in five vital areas, encompassing people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. This universal, integrated and transformative agenda aims to spur action that will end poverty and build a more sustainable world over the next 15 years.

Before the opening of the UN Summit, His Holiness Pope Francis addressed the gathering, where he spoke about the need to protect the natural environment and put an end to exclusion. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took the floor during the opening ceremony and a brief address was given by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai.

The Sustainable Development Summit, taking place during the seventieth session of the UN General Assembly, will explore six specific themes over two days in interactive dialogues, before a final closing plenary session. These themes include ending poverty and hunger, empowering women and girls and leaving no one behind, fostering sustainable economic growth, combating climate change, and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions.

The SDGs are the result of a three-year-long participatory process. The decision to launch a process to develop a set of SDGs was made by UN Member States at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012.

A UNAIDS statement on the occasion of the UN Summit for the adoption of the Post-2015 development agenda was delivered at the High-Level plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly by UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Jan Beagle.