The statistic of the session
Buried in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s presentation was the most instructive number of the entire Forum for anyone who works on measurement. Access to a source of drinking water in the DRC moved from 50.6% to 51.5%. Under a point of progress. The government did not present this as failure, and it was right not to. It explained why: the investment was real, but the gains were largely absorbed by population growth it put at roughly 3% a year, compounded by rapid urbanisation.
This is the denominator problem, stated plainly by a government about its own headline indicator, and it is the thing crude SDG scorecards are worst at seeing. A country can build genuinely, spend genuinely, connect hundreds of thousands of new people to water, and still show a flat line, because the population it is dividing by grew almost as fast as the service did. The indicator says nothing happened. Something very much happened. Any honest assessment of SDG 6 in high-growth countries has to reckon with this, and almost none do.
A footnote that says something about the segment: the DRC’s minister did not travel. The Permanent Representative presented in his place.
Two countries that actually audited their own data
Most VNRs report indicators. Two of these countries reported on the state of their indicators, which is a harder and more useful thing to do.
Tunisia ran an explicit data gap analysis alongside its review. It found that around 83% of SDG targets are covered by some form of Tunisian public action, and then, separately, that only a minority of the indicators applicable to those targets are actually being measured. The distance between those two numbers is the honest picture of SDG implementation in most countries: policy coverage is broad, measurement coverage is not, and the second is what tells you whether the first is working.
Senegal reported that roughly 84% of SDG indicators are now integrated into its national monitoring and evaluation system, one of the stronger figures presented this year.
Switzerland counts what it does to everyone else
Switzerland’s review was the most self-critical in the room, and its methodological contribution is one other rich countries have mostly avoided copying. It measures spillover effects, the environmental and social costs its own consumption, investment and supply chains impose beyond its borders, and it has run a dedicated indicator system for this continuously since 2008. Germany, from the floor, called it a valuable benchmark and noted that the transfer of environmental impacts along supply chains is a major obstacle to the global goals.
The point is uncomfortable and worth stating: a wealthy country can post excellent domestic SDG scores precisely because the costs of its consumption are counted in someone else’s territory, or not counted at all. Switzerland is one of the few that has built the instrument to see it. It still got the toughest questions of the afternoon, with the UNECE civil society mechanism pressing it on whether a beyond-growth position is compatible with its economic model.
The others
Saudi Arabia, presenting its third review through Faisal Alibrahim, Minister of Economy and Planning, offered a delivery record built on large numbers: basic healthcare coverage up from 84% in 2019 to 97% in 2024, a national digital health platform with more than 31 million users, and renewable capacity expanded from 24 megawatts in 2016 to 12.3 gigawatts in 2025. Italy led on localisation, and was asked about it by Tunisia, which partners with it and UN-Habitat on a platform for taking the goals to the municipal level. Cabo Verde presented as a small island state heading into the chairmanship of AOSIS and took questions on water security under climate stress.
The interactive dialogues were sharper than the presentations, as they usually are. The Workers and Trade Unions major group pressed Italy; the UNECE civil society mechanism pressed Switzerland; Gambia asked what any of it means for transparency and anti-corruption. The written case each country makes is summarised on its own page, linked above and gathered in our Voluntary National Reviews 2026 brief.
Why it matters for the SDGs
VNR sessions map to SDG 17 (follow-up and review), and this one touched SDG 6 hardest. But the reason to read it is methodological. Between the DRC’s denominator, Tunisia’s data gap analysis and Switzerland’s spillover indicators, this afternoon produced three separate demonstrations that the headline SDG number is not the thing you should be looking at. Progress can be real and invisible. Coverage can be broad and unmeasured. Excellence at home can be paid for abroad. Three countries said so about themselves, on the record, which is more than most.
Watch & read
- UN Web TV, recording of the HLPF 2026 9th meeting (13 July 2026).
- The presenting countries’ reviews: Cabo Verde, Senegal, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Tunisia, DR Congo.
- Voluntary National Reviews 2026, the full brief with all 36 countries.
- Arab News on Saudi Arabia’s presentation. Note that Arab News is a Saudi-owned outlet, so read it as national coverage of a national review, not as independent assessment. It was the only one of the seven presentations we could find reported in the English-language press at all.
- The 8th meeting, the first VNR plenary · The ministerial segment opening, the same morning · Full HLPF 2026 coverage.
Quotations and figures are drawn from an automated (Otter.ai) transcript of the UN Web TV recording and should be read as close paraphrase. The session was multilingual; the presentations by Tunisia, Switzerland, Senegal and the DR Congo were delivered in French and are summarised rather than quoted. Tunisia’s data gap analysis is reported without a percentage of indicators measured, which the recording does not render reliably. Presenters are cited by country and role unless named. Figures are as each country reported them and were not independently verified.