Our SDG Commitment
Why we must leave no one behind
In September 2015, all 193 Member States of the United Nations made history and adopted a plan for achieving a better future for all — laying out a path over the next 15 years to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and protect our planet.
It was called Agenda 2030.
Part of this Agenda are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. The new goals result from a process that has been more inclusive than ever, with governments involving business, civil society and citizens from the outset.
The finalised SDGs are:
ReportOUT are part of the mission of 2030 Agenda which specifically state that we should ‘leave no one behind’ and to ‘reach the furthest behind first,’ which is often sexual and gender minorities. The video below explains more about this:
Where do ReportOUT fit into the SDGs?
Watch this video from the UN Free and Equal Campaign to find out more about the experiences of sexual and gender minorities globally.
“There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals all based on a single, guiding principle: to leave no one behind…we will only realise this vision if we reach all people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity... Ending marginalisation and exclusion of LGBT people is a human rights priority – and a development imperative." - United Nations
ReportOUT recognise that to make a safer and better world for sexual and gender minorities, we must engage in the issues that they face in all aspects of their lives. This does not just include the impacts of direct homo/bi/transphobia and interphobia, but also how sexual and gender minorities are impacted by other intersecting factors, such as poverty, poor health outcomes, education, societal inequalities, gender equality, work and employment.
Our SDG Champions
With this in mind, we have developed our SDG Champions. A team of our volunteers come together to take our work further. They map what we do to not only the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Yogyakarta Principles, but also to Agenda 2030.
The team do this in several ways, such as:
-
Mapping everything that we do onto the SDGs internally and externally with our SGD Officers.
-
Ensuring that our research projects are driven forward to United Nations review panels when nation states measure their progress against the SDG targets.
-
Developing partnerships with other organisations to drive the Agenda 2030 forward.
-
Supporting our EducateOUT Project to train up international development organisations to ensure that sexual and gender minorities are not left behind in their plans to hit the goals.
-
Raise the voices of sexual and gender minorities, so that no one is left behind.
Climate Emergency
However, we are all not able to achieve any of the goals without taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impact (No. 13 ‘Climate Action’) which the United Nations has stated is the single biggest threat to global development.
What is the climate emergency?
The climate is the long-term pattern of day-to-day weather. Our food and water supplies depend on stable seasonal patterns of temperature, rain, and wind in the UK and elsewhere. In the last 100 years the earth’s average temperature has increased faster than previously seen – this is known as global warming or global heating.
Evidence shows that human activity and our use of fuels like petrol, diesel, gas, and coal is highly likely to be the main cause of global warming. When these fuels are burned they release greenhouse gases which trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere, causing the air and seas to heat up which changes the climate. The greenhouse gases produced when we burn these fuels contain a lot of carbon and so the term ‘carbon emissions’ is often used.
The problem is that current levels of greenhouse gases are higher than they have been over the last 800,000 years and they are rising rapidly.
The climate emergency is a real and significant threat. Communities, the environment, and the economy will be severely affected without significant changes to the way we live, work, and move around. This affects sexual and gender minorities, who will face this threat unevenly, compared to the rest of the population.
What are we doing at ReportOUT?
ReportOUT have pledged to become a carbon neutral organisation in the future, and we have adopted sustainability and carbon reduction programmes and activities. Read more here.
We have researched the link between the Climate Emergency, and sexual and gender minorities. You can read our work, through our Green in the Rainbow Project.
We even have our own Trustee who is in charge of Sustainability and Climate Change at ReportOUT.
If you would like more exclusive updates about our progress, please sign-up to our newsletter here.
