UN member states close to agreeing on global priorities for next 15 years

All 193 member states of the United Nations are close to reaching agreement on the world's top development priorities for the next 15 years, Amina Mohammed, the UN secretary-general's special adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning, told reporters here Tuesday.

"It's 193 countries who take great ownership of this and so every step of the way this is about their will," Mohammed said at a press conference. The post-2015 development agenda, or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is expected to be adopted in September to replace the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight anti-poverty targets.

Mohammed described 2015 as a global year of action, with the focus on expanding the concept of development to universal sustainable development -- covering interconnected social, economic and environmental issues.

"I think that we've got sufficient evidence on the ground the pieces won't work, we can no longer look at just Band-Aids on the problem we have to look at the root causes," she said, adding that development is increasingly understood as affecting all countries, not just poor countries.

"It is a universal agenda for all of it, whether we're talking about finance or the SDGs or climate," she said. Central to this change in mindset are the SDGs, a set of 17 targets that all member states have been tirelessly negotiating at UN headquarters since 2014.

July is a particularly important month in this process, with member states finalizing both the overall post-2015 development agenda political declaration and the means for implementing them. The key discussions around means for implementation took place at the Financing for Development Conference in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 13-16.

The meeting was considered a success, but Mohammed noted that tax cooperation in particular was contentious.

"We have 193 countries really engaging with this (the Addis Ababa outcome) as though it was legally binding," she said, adding that discussions around tax were more of a beginning than a conclusion. "What we're talking about in terms of tax is a huge issue. I think we should not underestimate where the issues are there and I think that door has been opened and will not be closed again."

Although the Addis Ababa agreement was now finalized, there were still discussions continuing about whether more concrete commitments to means of implementation could be made in the Post- 2015 Development Agenda political declaration in September, said Mohammed. "There are many member states there that will want to try and push if they can get more ambition out of the means of implementation."

According to Mohammed, the negotiators are now in New York where it is expected they will finalize the text of the post-2015 development agenda political declaration at the end of July. The political declaration is then expected to be endorsed by all 193 member states in September in New York.

A total of 116 heads of state have confirmed to be present for the annual gathering at the UN Headquarters in New York. Endite