Global goals summit: from the pope to Shakira, everything you need to know

For three days this week, New York will be the centre of the world when the pope, presidents and pop stars descend on the city to ratify the sustainable development goals and celebrate the start of a new era.

The summit will adopt a new set of priorities and pledges meant to end poverty and huger, fight inequality and injustice, and achieve gender equality by 2030. Those are some of the broad aims of the 17 sustainable development goals due to be ratified by the UN’s 193 members on Friday.

But the men and women gathered in New York will be acutely aware that this defining moment is taking place against the backdrop of multiple global challenges – from the worst refugee crisis since the second world war to the threat of dramatic climate change.

It is, as the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has said, a time of “turmoil and hope”. The fractured reality sits uneasily with the “global” rhetoric behind this week’s events. Optimists would hail the show of unity at the summit as progress in itself, while cynics might wonder if the world’s most vulnerable will really gain from all these promises. Pragmatists will probably have a foot in both camps.

In its public events, the summit will be high on hope. There will be uplifting speeches, a Global Citizens concert hosted by Stephen Colbert and Salma Hayak in Central Park, and plenty of candles to shine the way towards a better future.

So far, so Manhattan. But people worldwide can participate in what is meant to be a global declaration of intent: many have already been tweeting selfies showing their favourite development target, or pictures of themselves performing “dizzy goals”.

Anyone, anywhere can hum along to the Tell Everyone song, or record themselves talking about the goal that matters most to them. The best of these moments will be edited into a crowd-sourced film to be shown on the Google homepage on 25 September, when the three-day summit starts.

At the heart of all this frenetic activity is the idea that people everywhere need to know about the goals – which will replace the simpler but less ambitious millennium development goals – so that they can demand that their leaders translate laudable ideas into policies.

To this end, the British film-maker Richard Curtis has set up the Project Everyone initiative – run in partnership with the campaign groups action/2015 and Global Citizen – to reach 7 billion people in the seven days after the goals are adopted. The idea is to take the debate out of the UN general assembly, and spread it throughout the world.

What are the headline events?

The sustainable development goals – also known as the global goals – are due to be ratified at the UN general assembly on Friday. The first speaker at the opening session will be Pope Francis, who is making his first trip to the US. The 78-year-old pontiff’s 50-minute address is expected to focus on his recent encyclical on the environment, which called on rich nations to begin paying their “grave social debt” to the poor. His speech is also expected to touch on the migrant crisis and could include an endorsement of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Delegates will then watch a short clip from a Project Everyone film on people and the planet, before performances from the Colombian singer Shakira and Angelique Kidjo from Benin, both of whom are UN goodwill ambassadors. Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai will then speak.

From 11am, roughly 160 heads of state and government together with the leaders of multilateral bodies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation will take part in the opening plenary. The room will also be filled with young people from around the world – the generation who will witness the fruits of their elders’ efforts in the decades ahead.

Among those expected to speak early on are Ban, the presidents of Uganda and Denmark – whose countries hold the outgoing and incoming presidency of the general assembly – and a civil society activist.

The summit proper will then get underway, with interactive sessions on many of the key elements featured in the goals, such as ending poverty and fostering sustainable economic growth. There will be more speeches from world leaders, with the US president Barack Obama expected to speak on Sunday.

What else should we look out or?

There should be something for everyone in New York, especially given the huge number of side events organised to address the concerns of different interest groups. The main events include:

A talk on empowering women and girls, scheduled for Thursday and chaired by the presidents of Croatia and Kenya.

The launch of a technology facilitation mechanism, the cumbersome name that has been applied to a method of helping developing countries harness technology to kickstart their own development.

A private sector forum, to be hosted by Ban on Saturday. Business may be a bete noire for many of the humanitarians in New York, but the UN has made it clear that private finance has to be part of the solution to the world’s development problems at a time of global austerity.

On Sunday, UN Women and China will co-host an event on gender equality and women’s empowerment where more than 70 world leaders are expected to make firm commitments to overcome gender equality gaps.

On Wednesday, the Ford Foundation is hosting an event at which civil society groups will discuss how to translate the sustainable development goals into national agendas. Later that day, you can hear what children think of the goals by heading to Scandinavia House to celebrate children’s voices for the global goals, including a living collage of images from children expressing their support for the pledge of a world where they are free from violence and exploitation.

On Thursday night, there will be a multi-faith festival of prayer and music, Light the Way, at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza opposite the UN. Participants will show their support for Pope Francis’ message – and there will be a worldwide vigil afterwards calling on leaders to “light the way” to sustainable development.

From 26 September, Curtis and his Project Everyone will be striving to reach that all important 7 billion through radio broadcasts, and the world’s largest school lesson.

On Sunday, there is the People’s UN general assembly, billed as an event to allow people to “hear the stories that governments in the United Nations did not want the international community to hear”.

Beyond the official events, what will really be going on?

Just as the liveliest place to be at a party is usually the kitchen, what happens beyond the summit may be more newsworthy.

Ban has more than 100 one-on-one meetings scheduled with high-profile visitors over the following week, and he is expected to discuss the Syrian war with the foreign ministers from all permanent members of the security council – Britain, Russia, China, France, and the US. The conflict in Yemen, the refugee crisis, and funding shortages for UN efforts to deal with the world’s interlinked tragedies could also be on his agenda.

A Vatican official has said the pope will meet with other world leaders during his visit, including the Russian president Vladimir Putin.

So by Friday we will have a global roadmap. Where do we go then?

Pledges are good, but proof of the world’s commitment will lie in the measuring. So in March next year, the all-important indicators to monitor progress on the 17 goals and 169 targets will be agreed.

Before that, world leaders will reconvene in Paris in December to try to hammer out a deal on cutting carbon emissions and limiting the rise of global temperatures. Everyone agrees that overcoming entrenched divisions to reach an agreement is critical.

Will the global goals summit make any difference?

Some might see the summit as an expensive photo-op. The hard work of drafting the goals, and getting global agreement, has been done. But the twin perceptions of success and political unity might themselves be reward in this break between the drafting and implementation of a new development agenda.

As Curtis said in a speech to the UN last September: “At a time when the morning newspaper fills you with fear and nervousness, when people are working against each other, when we see things falling apart – it is so crucial that here in the UN, everyone has worked together and things have fallen into place.”

• For all our coverage of the run-up to the sustainable development goals summit, click here.
  
• For our review of the millennium development goals, click here.
  
• For the Guardian’s coverage of the UN at 70, click here.

• This article was amended on 21 September 2015 to correct the day of the Light the Way multi-faith festival of prayer and music to Thursday 24 September