With the start of SDG era, ‘Leave no one behind’ is a phrase we hear too often and as I first listened to it and later used it myself I thought I was able to understand it. However, the more I read about it more it gets me thinking as, ‘How do we really know who has the potential of being left out?’ … “How do we know our target group whom we do not want to leave behind?” and so on.
I found many criteria used in many places to define the vulnerable population or target group for certain intervention etc. Governments use population characteristics for defining groups for e.g. certain caste/ethnic groups, origins specified by geographic locations, population groups defined by age (geriatrics, pediatrics, etc) or by sex ( female or male), migrants or native, rich or poor, educational attainment, rural vs urban etc. Now as we look deep into these sub groups, we know and we see that not all people in these group are similar in terms of needs and their ability to fulfill these needs in terms of Health for example. At this cross road, the question comes how to further identify the real vulnerable ones among this broad classification of vulnerability based on above criteria. As some sub groups within these groups may be better off than other population group who were considered better off earlier in general population.
Now I want to move my discussion to Nepal, a country we proudly present as a vary diverse mix of cultures, ethnic groups, languages, geographical structure etc etc. Now with so much diversity in many aspects and the government committed in policy documents to address the needs of everyone, the need for identifying the needy ones is even more dire. Some criteria used currently for labeling needy population are as below:
- Below/Above Poverty Line
- Geographical Origin
- Marginalized population in terms of development
- Females/Males
The political agenda of parties, programs justification of NGOs, or in that sense the drive for donation/philanthropic activities are influence mostly by one or more of the above criteria.
A call upon everyone to kindly give your opinions on above criteria or any more criteria that are in use. Is there a more practical way to identify the ‘vulnerables’?
Shyam S Budhathoki's Blog 
In my view the ‘vulnerables’ specially in LMICs are the ones who don’t have access to resources for basic needs, be it either in terms of health, economy, or social justice. we have such vulnerable population among castes, geographical region, culture, genders, etc. SDG should try to identify population with lack of such access and develop policy directed to it.
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