This inquiry examines debates underway assessing the achievements and limits of the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our research group is examining the underlying assumptions of the debates and contributing to them in certain vital areas: to what extent are issues of inequality, injustice, social exclusion and marginalization taken into account beyond the traditional indicators of human development, namely income, health and education? What are the complex intersectional issues between climate change, human development, and security/coexistence that affect the clear articulation of the rights and duties of nation-states to realize a global platform in which all the goals can be achieved? One particular area of interest is in ‘Discrimination on the Basis of Descent and Work” (DWD). Lead Investigator, Rajesh Sampath,is working with a global network of parliamentarians, heads of NGOs, executives at multilateral institutions, and academic researchers, to help craft a potential blueprint calling for a ban on current forms of birth and hereditary-based discrimination, including modern slavery, discrimination based on work and descent, untouchability, including the caste system, and other such forms across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The aspiration is to build international consensus towards the drafting of a multilateral institutional Declaration that will call for an end to what some oppressed groups see as legacy systems of social stratification, which according to today’s notions of democratic equality and liberty, constitute gross human rights violations.