On 24th September, the night before world leaders converged in New York to agree the Global Goals, a quarter of a million people around the world took to the streets with the shared message: we are watching.

From Indonesia to Ethiopia, Kenya to Mexico, The UK to India, people converged with candles and torches and ‘lit the way’ to a better future as part of the action/2015 campaign. Their motivation was simple – to ensure that the goals are not just words on UN paper but become reality, in their country and around the world. 

Image: action/2015

Those marchers and campaigners know that the Goals are not legally binding. It was their job and it is our job to make them politically binding. Those 250,000 campaigners have made it very hard indeed for leaders to fly back home, stick the UN agreement into a dusty drawer and pretend it never happened. This agreement was born with the world watching.

Delegates at the UN are all too aware of this. This film showcasing the best of the mobilisations was screened at the opening of the UN General Assembly to make sure our leaders pay attention. 

Neither could they have failed to notice the Global Citizen Festival in New York the next day with its star studded line up of Beyonce, Ed Sheeran and more, broadcast around the world. Or the Global Goals ‘Tell Everyone’ project to tell 7billion people about the Goals in 7 days

Campaigns have changed and with them the prospects for ending poverty, reversing inequality and tackling climate change. The Millennium Development Goals were born in an analogue era. Without widespread public use of mobile phones and internet, decisions were taken by a few without reference to the many. In fact, it took years for these goals to gain widespread currency and recognition. 

This time it is different. Campaigns like Global Citizen and action/2015 can link up a campaigner in a bus park in Nairobi, with an activist in the Seychelles and another in New York, all with a basic telephone call. They can share campaigns materials, information and strategies at the click of the button. 

Equally, nowadays, the Tell Everyone project to ensure everyone knows about the Goals is actually feasible. It might still involve a donkey ride and a meeting in the shade of a baobab tree, but this time the analogue journey won’t start from New York. It will start from a print out in fading ink from an internet café in a nearby town.

We were able to halve extreme poverty within the lifetime of the Millennium Development Goals – imagine how much more we can do now that we, the people, can work together, across geographies. 

2015 is a year of well-founded optimism. But it represents the start of a 15 year journey. Much as all that marching sets the scene for a nice little rest, now is not the time. Thanks to the internet there is nowhere for leaders to hide. Let’s seize the opportunity. Tell Everyone. We have our Global Goals, let’s make them real.

Editorial

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How digital activism can make the global goals a reality