Kyrgyzstan is the leader in Central Asia in making progress toward sustainable development goals, according to a UN report.The UN’s 2026 Sustainable Development Report shows Kyrgyzstan ranked 50th out of 169 countries evaluated in making progress toward UN goals established in 2015 to reduce poverty, improve education and healthcare, achieve gender equality, promote green energy and environmental protection, foster peace and prosperity and build sustainable cities.
Kyrgyzstan recorded the most progress on poverty reduction and reducing inequality, according to the UN report.Bishkek also made moderate advances in such areas as green energy, healthcare, education and access to clean drinking water.
But in a cautious sign about the country’s future, the report noted that confidence in the country’s political institutions is “stagnating.” Uzbekistan was the next highest-ranked Central Asian state in the survey at 65th, followed by Kazakhstan (67th), Tajikistan (98th) and Turkmenistan (128th).
In the Caucasus, Armenia was the top-ranked state at 47th, followed by Azerbaijan (52nd) and Georgia (61st).The UN report gave Armenia plaudits for meeting the target for reducing inequality, while expressing concern over environmental degradation in the country.
The report notes that the established targets, originally intended to be met by 2030, will not be reached within that timeframe. “The goals are highly ambitious and will not be achieved. … Yet they have spurred action and inspired governments to take on large and complex challenges,” the report states. “They should remain our framework past 2030 because they define the future we want and need.” The chief lesson learned over the past decade is that peace is a prerequisite for sustainable development. “Without peace, none of the other transformations are possible,” the report states. “War destroys infrastructure, displaces populations, diverts resources, weakens and breaks the institutions through which transformation is implemented, and poisons the political relationships across which cooperation must flow.
War hollows out the moral architecture on which the SDGs [sustainable development goals] rest.”