LocationsPolitics of SDGs
By Ahmed Bilal Mehboob | President, PILDAT-Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development & Transparency
The SDG Task Force paves the way for developing inter-party consensus on SDG legislation; it exercises implementation oversight and creates awareness of the SDGs among parliamentarians and provincial legislators.
2025 marks an important milestone for Pakistan and the 193 members of the United Nations, as they reach the halfway point in their journey to achieve the SDGs. Sadly, the progress in the past ten years does not match the time elapsed, as the cumulative progress on the SDGs globally is merely 35 percent compared to the 66 percent of the time spent.
Pakistan’s progress is also unsatisfactory in comparison with other countries. In terms of progress made over the past ten years, the Sustainable Development Report 2025 ranks Pakistan at 140 out of 193 countries, with a score of approximately 57 percent. The country’s earlier progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—the predecessor of the SDGs— was also unsatisfactory. Pakistan achieved only 4 out of 16 MDGs by the time the program reached the finish line in 2015. The performance of lower-to-middle-income countries was also inadequate.
Despite the mixed performance of the MDGs and SDGs, one can recognize that setting these goals provides an increased impetus for countries, especially the Global South, to accelerate and align their development agenda with the rest of the world. The system of scoring and ranking countries based on their progress towards SDGs provides a sense of competition among them, allowing them to identify and appreciate their policy and implementation gaps while reviewing their performance in comparison with other countries. Opportunities for global interaction through these programs also provide much-needed mutual learning.
Working on these programs, especially the current SDG activities, allows countries to recognize the need for reforms in development sectors, as progress becomes almost impossible without reforming the systems. Irrespective of the results, these programs pave the way for removing bottlenecks and modernizing their systems. Therefore, the SDGs and systemic reforms go hand in hand.
No reform agenda and hence progress on the SDGs can move forward without ownership of the political class, especially the elected representatives in democratic countries. Most reforms need legislation and unless parliament and top party leadership is not convinced, reforms cannot materialize.
Pakistan is a federal parliamentary democracy with a bicameral legislature at the center. Four provinces and a federally administered Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) form the federating units. Islamabad does not have a separate legislature; instead, the parliament serves as its legislature. Each province has its provincial assembly. Several political parties are represented in the two houses of parliament and each of the four provincial assemblies. The federal government is ruled by a coalition led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which also governs Punjab, the largest province, without a coalition. Sindh and Balochistan provinces have governments led by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is governed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which former Prime Minister Imran Khan founded. PTI sits in the opposition in the parliament and at the Punjab provincial assembly. Although PPP, traditionally a political rival of PML-N, and a contender for governments in the federation and Punjab, supports the PML-N-led federal government, it has opted not to join the federal cabinet. The President of Pakistan and the Governors of the two provinces, Punjab and KP, however, are PPP nominees under an arrangement reached between the PML-N and the PPP before the formation of the governments in 2024. The Senate Chairman is also from PPP under the same arrangement.
The idea behind describing the administrative and political landscape of Pakistan and the provinces helps to appreciate the complexity of policy formulation and decision-making at the provincial and federal levels. Developing consensus on reforms and new legislation can take a long time, and at times, it may not be possible at all.
Fortunately, the members of the National Parliament took the initiative early on in 2015 to form the SDG Task Force, represented by leaders from all the political parties in parliament. The rationale of an all-parties task force was to make the Global Goals a national agenda and to avoid party politics in legislation and reforms related to the SDGs. Subsequently, the All-Parties Task Force model was replicated in the provincial assemblies. Since 2015, although three national assemblies and four federal governments of different political parties and coalitions have come into power, the SDG Task Force has continued to exist, with amicable changes in office bearers every time the government changed. The Task Force paves the way for developing inter-party consensus on SDG legislation, it exercises implementation oversight, and creates awareness of the SDGs among parliamentarians and provincial legislators.
Pakistan is divided into 266 national assembly seats with 593 geographical constituencies. It is a good idea to localize SDG progress in each of these constituencies, allowing elected representatives to assess progress within their own constituencies and make comparisons with other constituencies. This information will motivate legislators to push for more speedy action to achieve the SDGs. At the same time, voters in each constituency will also have another tool to engage with their elected representatives and assess their performance on this basis as well. These ideas, if implemented, may accelerate the pace of achieving the SDGs in the remaining five years.