• Only 15% of UN Sustainable Development Goal targets are on track and IRC report finds that countries affected by conflict are falling furthest behind.

  • Poverty is concentrated in conflict zones. More than a third of the world’s poor and a quarter of its malnourished children live in the 20 countries on the IRC’s Emergency Watchlist.

  • IRC calls for a new framework built around conflict, and renewed commitment to what already works in crises, including: cash assistance and simplified malnutrition treatment.

New York, NY, September 21, 2026 —  As world leaders gather in New York for the UN General Assembly and prepare to select a new UN Secretary-General, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) today warned that the institution’s goals to end poverty, hunger and disease are failing– because they were not built for an era of sustained conflict.

The warning lands amid a growing Ebola outbreak, escalating conflict in Yemen, and a food and fertilizer crisis around the Strait of Hormuz — part of a world with more active conflicts than at any point since World War II. 

“Conflict and fragility determine whether any development goal succeeds or fails," said David Miliband, IRC President and CEO. "The human cost is catastrophic human suffering that could have been prevented. The task now is to use the four years we have left before the 2030 deadline to make progress, prove what works, and design the next set of goals around the reality of conflict from day one — not as an afterthought. If the goals work in the world's hardest places, they can work anywhere."

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by UN member states in 2015, set a 2030 deadline to end extreme poverty, hunger and preventable disease worldwide. A new IRC report, Global Goals for a World in Conflict, finds that progress towards those goals is falling behind in countries affected by conflict. Only 15% of SDG targets are on track or met.

Conflict undermines the systems that development goals depend on, cuts off humanitarian access to the people who need it most, and drives displacement that severs families from healthcare, schools and jobs. 

Conflict-affected countries rank the lowest in progress towards the SDGs. More than half of the world’s extreme poor will live in the 20 countries of the IRC’s Emergency Watchlist by 2030. Almost a quarter of the world’s acutely malnourished children live in those countries, where the average wasting rate is more than twice that of other countries. As of 2021, armed conflict slowed global progress toward the SDGs by the equivalent of 18 years, and many fragile and conflict-affected states now sit at the bottom of the SDG index. 

As far back as 2018, the IRC warned that over 80% of fragile and conflict-affected states were off-track on meeting the benchmarks set out in SDGs, and that nearly 26 million refugees were being left behind. 

This is solveable. First by investing now in what’s already proven to work in crises: cash assistance that helps families survive and rebuild, a simplified approach to malnutrition treatment that cuts costs by 20%, and flexible education models that could reach 5 million children by 2030 for as little as $4 each. Where governments can’t or won’t reach their own people, humanitarian groups and local organizations are already filling the gap–but the current system isn’t built to fund them properly. 

Second, the IRC is calling for a different kind of framework after 2030, that puts conflict at the center. It should also have fewer goals, a shorter timeline, and money committed upfront instead of promised for later. IRC’s report lays out proposed targets for 2035 including: