Despite two years of a “surreal struggle” against the COVID-19 pandemic, and amidst rising global challenges, optimism for achieving sustainable development persists, a senior UN official declared on Wednesday.
Ensuring COVID-19 vaccines for all will be critical if the world is to defeat the pandemic, the President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Munir Akram, said on Friday in his address to the closing its high-level segment.
The world was off track in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, even before the COVID-19 crisis erupted, but can get back on course by increasing investment in public services, showing solidarity on financing, and “reshaping” how people work, learn, live and consume.
In closing the High-level Segment of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Friday, President Inga Rhonda King assured participants that the session had contributed significantly to advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The newly-elected President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Ronda King, of the Caribbean island nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, said on Thursday that she intended to make the year ahead “a defining” one for the body that leads the UN’s ambitious drive for sustainable economic, social and environmental development.
Progress has been made on achieving global goals to end poverty and hunger but meeting the targets by the deadline of 2030 will require a laser-sharp focus and a true sense of urgency, a key United Nations forum on sustainable development heard on Monday.
Children increasingly bear brunt of CAR violence amid mass displacement
Horrific and deadly acts of violence against babies and children have been reported in the Central African Republic (CAR), where fighting has forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in recent months. The warning follows months of renewed conflict involving armed groups in the mineral-rich state, which has seen decades of instability after declaring independence in 1960. Daniel Johnson has more.
Arab states are late in beginning the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), due largely to conflict and instability, but “not that late”.
That’s the cautiously optimistic view of Mohamed Ali Alhakim, the newly-appointed Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA), which includes 18 Arab states.
He’s the first Iraqi to become an Executive Secretary in the UN system, and he’s a former Iraqi Ambassador to the UN in both New York and Geneva.
New globally agreed development goals offer “the promise of a revolution” but the key is now to know how to implement them; that’s according to a Senior official at the World Bank.
The international community has been gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to discuss how to progress made toward the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.
The Agenda, which aims to eradicate poverty and shift the world onto a more sustainable path includes 17 goals and was adopted at the UN last September.