Statelessness, Development, and Protection of ‘Disadvantaged Groups’ specific objectives to be attained, and indeed a total of 232 agreed indicators against which achievable progress is monitored. The SDGs differ from its precursor — the MDGs — in diverse and critical ways. They are broad — addressing a complex and diverse range of interconnected issues — intersecting different development challenges and opportunities, and universal issues — achievable by all UN member states and regions rather than mere low and middle-income countries. The SDGs also provide an exceptional opportunity to entrench human rights principles within the development agenda, hence ensuring that the most vulnerable and excluded persons, including the stateless, enjoy equal access to development. This view was captured by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, in the run-up to the drafting of the SDGs: The Post-2015 Agenda must be built on a human rights-based approach, in both process and substance. This means taking seriously the right of those affected to free, active and meaningful participation. ... ensuring the accountability of duty bearers to rights-holders, especially the most vulnerable, marginalized and excluded. It means a focus on non-discrimination, equality, and equity in the distribution of costs and benefits. It means embracing approaches that empower people, both politically and economically. And it means explicitly aligning the new development framework with the international human rights framework — including civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights, as well as the right to development. In essence, it means deliberately directing development efforts to the realization of human rights.42 The SDG as a plan of action attempts to leave no one behind. It pays utmost attention to the most deprived groups, combatting systems and structures that stimulate exclusion and impoverishment of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, including stateless persons. Statelessness is detrimental to human development, trapping affected people and communities in vicious poverty and deprivation. Accordingly, the September 2015 UN Summit’s outcome document envisaged: “(a) world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity; of justice and equality; of respect for race and ethnicity; and of equal opportunity permitting the full realization of human potential while promoting shared prosperity”.43 The intergenerational nature of statelessness, where affected parents are inherited by their children and grandchildren, exacerbates exclusion, poverty, disadvantage, and marginalisation of stateless persons. Such a factor perpetuates statelessness across the most affected communities in the world (see Figure 1). Thus, the persistence of statelessness may undermine the progress of attaining the SDGs. 42 43 ISI op cit note 5 at 3. Ibid. 65