Dr. Arvind Kumar*
The world is standing on a fault line; one that trembles beneath the combined weight of hunger, inequality, and climate chaos. The countdown to 2030 the deadline for achieving the SDGs feels less like a march of progress and more like a race against collapse. As UNSG António Guterres has urged, “The Second World Summit for Social Development would be an opportunity to live up to the values, including trust and listening, that underpin the social contract and to give new momentum toward achieving the SDGs.” That social contract today lies frayed. The 673 million people who went hungry in 2024, the 2.3 billion who endure food insecurity, and the millions displaced by droughts and disasters are not victims of nature they are casualties of a man-made catastrophe born of greed, inequality, and climate injustice.
Across the Global South, climate change has become the invisible arsonist of development torching decades of progress. Africa, which contributes less than 4% of global emissions, bears 90% of disaster impacts. The cruel irony? Developing nations are forced to borrow at market interest rates to adapt to crises they did not cause. 65% of climate finance comes not as grants but as loans, forcing the poor to pay interest simply to survive. The adaptation-finance gap of $258–313 billion annually is not a statistic it’s a canyon where futures vanish. Every loan taken to rebuild a flood-hit village is a dream deferred: a clinic unbuilt, a school unfunded, a generation unhealed.
Unfulfilled Promises and Doha’s Reckoning
When world leaders met in Copenhagen in 1995, they envisioned a future anchored in dignity and inclusion. Thirty years later, as the world prepares for the 2nd WSSD 2025 in Doha this November, that dream stands tattered. The commitments to eradicate poverty, ensure full employment, and foster social integration have faltered under the weight of unkept promises and widening divides. The Doha Summit to be held from November 4–6, 2025 is more than another global meeting; it is a mirror held up to our collective conscience.
The gathering will bring together an extraordinary constellation of leaders and heads of state from Brazil, South Africa, and beyond. It is, in essence, a referendum on multilateralism itself: can global cooperation still heal a broken world? As World Bank’s President Mr. Ajay Banga declared recently, “Development is not about charity, but about strategy; about treating jobs not as a side effect, but as the outcome of development done right.” The spirit of Doha must reclaim that fairness translating ambition into architecture and commitments into tangible change.
The thematic core of WSSD 2025 is both familiar and urgent: poverty eradication, decent work, and social inclusion. Yet its true power lies in its potential to redefine these goals for an era of climate disruption and digital transformation. If Copenhagen was about aspiration, Doha must be about accountability.
On paper, many developing nations appear to have progressed. Vietnam has lifted millions out of poverty; Bangladesh has pioneered social-protection innovations; Rwanda has become a digital governance success story. Yet, beneath these headlines, inequities fester. Only 35% of SDG targets are on track; half are stagnating or regressing. The very notion of “development” now seems haunted progress measured in percentages while people remain trapped in precarity.
Education, the supposed equalizer, has become a silent casualty. In sub-Saharan Africa, just 1/10 children attains basic literacy by age ten. Globally, 258 million children remain out of school. Even where access has expanded, learning outcomes have plummeted exposing the hollow triumph of quantity over quality. Health systems, too, are on life support. Maternal and child mortality rates remain unacceptably high, particularly in Africa and South Asia. And the specter of undernutrition continues to stalk entire generations: in India alone, 32% of children under five remain underweight, and 57% of women of reproductive age are anaemic.
India’s Paradox
The Global South’s employment crisis is no less dire. The world is set to add 1.2 billion young people to the labour force by 2035 but only 420 million jobs are projected to emerge. The deficit of 800 million jobs is a ticking social time bomb. In Africa, 62% of workers are “working poor,” employed but still trapped in poverty. The future, for many, looks less like a ladder and more like a treadmill movement without mobility. The Global South’s story is not one of failure alone but of systemic neglect of potential unrealized because justice has been rationed by geography.
Amid this grim global picture, India offers both hope and humility. Between 2011 and 2023, the country lifted 171 million people out of multidimensional poverty the largest such reduction in history. Financial inclusion, through Jan Dhan Yojana, has reached over 550 million people. Ayushman Bharat has extended health insurance to more than 410 million citizens, and the Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana feeds over 800 million near-universal food security for a population of 1.4 billion.
India’s social-protection coverage has soared from 22% in 2016 to over 64% by 2025. Rural sanitation and water access have reached nearly universal levels, and renewable-energy capacity has more than doubled. Yet, beneath these remarkable statistics, challenges endure. Youth unemployment, learning deficits, and regional inequalities persist. India ranks 99th in the 2025 SDG Index; a reminder that even the most ambitious nations remain entangled in the web of unfinished development.
Way Forward
As the world gathers in Doha, WSSD 2025 stands as a defining moment to reshape the trajectory of global social development. The summit must move beyond rhetoric to deliver binding commitments on universal social protection, ensuring that no one remains outside the safety net of basic human security. A global employment strategy that generates millions of decent, sustainable jobs through investment in green and digital sectors is vital to address the growing crisis of joblessness. Equally, climate adaptation financing must shift from debt-inducing loans to equitable grants, enabling developing nations to survive and thrive amidst intensifying climate shocks. For the Global South, Doha represents the hope of reclaiming agency of ensuring fair taxation, inclusive growth, and justice-driven reforms in global finance and governance. Above all, it must recognize that social development, climate resilience, and sustainability are inseparable, forming the triad of humanity’s collective survival. The Doha Summit could become a historic turning point where the world finally chooses transformation over inertia. If leaders act with courage and conviction, WSSD 2025 can reignite global solidarity, rebuild trust in multilateralism, and chart a renewed path toward dignity, equity, and shared prosperity for generations to come.
*Editor, Focus Global Reporter
