The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 by the United Nations provide 17 goals for international cooperation and action. They reflect the consensus of the international community about what are the most challenging problems facing humanity now and in the future. Their formulation is the result of a long process since the 1990s of searching for shared values recognizing that all countries face similar global problems, which are not only interconnected but also request international cooperation. A similar search for commonalities in the area of ethical principles motivated the member states of UNESCO to adopt the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights in 2005. This Declaration presents an encompassing vision of global bioethics, uniting individual, social, and environmental concerns. This chapter discusses the relationship between the SDGs and the Universal Declaration, arguing that the global ethical principles declared in the last document provide the motivation and justification for implementing the SDGs.