We have entered an age of polycrisis. Conflict, climate change, the
lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other global challenges are threatening to derail hard-earned progress towards the SDGs.
While the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be over, the world is still reeling from its impacts. The recovery has been slow, uneven and incomplete. The pandemic has created significant reversals in global health outcomes. Childhood vaccinations have experienced the largest decline in three decades, and tuberculosis and malaria deaths have increased
compared with pre-pandemic levels. COVID-19 has also had devastating impacts on education, causing learning losses in four out of five of the 104 countries studied. Its economic after-effects are equally severe. The pandemic interrupted three decades of steady progress of poverty reduction with the number of people living in extreme poverty increasing for the first time in a generation. It has also caused the largest rise in between-country inequality in three decades.
By May 2023, the devastating consequences of war, conflict and human rights violations had displaced a staggering 110 million people, of which 35 million were refugees – the highest figures ever recorded. Nearly 7,000 people died during migration worldwide in 2022, with the number of deaths in various regions returning to pre-pandemic levels and, in many instances, even surpassing them.
