The present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 43/36, contains a racial justice and equality analysis of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. In the report, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, E. Tendayi Achiume, offers the following three findings:

(a) The 2030 Agenda is characterized by a shallow commitment to racial justice and equality and fails adequately to address the systemic racism and xenophobia that remain barriers to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals.

(b) Notwithstanding these shortcomings, the 2030 Agenda has an untapped potential to advance international human rights law and principles of racial equality and nondiscrimination. In the light of the global influence of the 2030 Agenda, the Special Rapporteur provides actionable recommendations that could help unlock this potential.

(c) While recognizing the progress made in the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, the Special Rapporteur concludes that it is incapable of fundamentally disrupting the dynamic of racially discriminatory underdevelopment embedded in the international economic order.

The development framework, including the 2030 Agenda, preserves colonial injustice, perpetuates the domination of powerful nations over peoples and territories that were subject to historical colonial extraction and preserves structural racial discrimination within nations.