Regarding the widening development gaps in the Arab region, HE Administrator of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Achim Steiner said that despite some extraordinary development successes, improvements in living conditions, governance, health and education indicators, we have in certain parts of the region catastrophic setbacks, pointing out that over the last eight years of conflict, Yemen has lost according to UNDP’s reports and analysis, 20 to 25 years of its development gains.
He added that there are a lot of suffering, so the ongoing conflict there has had a tremendous impact not only on people in terms of their ability to survive, but also in terms of the development gains that it had achieved.
He also noted that Libya is another country still caught in conflict, which is an ongoing challenge according to the UNDP’s definition of the region, stating that we see again conflict causing enormous harm. I think our ability, as the United Nations family of humanitarians, as well as UNDP in the development side, to help people cope with these enormously painful disruptions has been critical to avoiding even more harm, he said, stressing that peace is always a precondition for successful development, so, we must continue to focus on peacemaking, sustaining development and protecting assets.
In his interview with QNA, the Administrator of United Nations Development Programme spoke about the call made by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals, saying, “I think many today talk in terms of the failure to achieve the indicators and targets that the world agreed upon in 2015 when it adopted the SDGs. I think my point would always be when we adopted those SDGs, we did not expect a global pandemic to hit us. We did not expect to find ourselves in the year 2023 with more wars, civil wars and conflicts than we have seen for decades happening around the world. We have a major financial and debt crisis unfolding for many developing countries. Their ability to even pay the interest on their debt is now forcing them to cut their education and health budgets.” He stressed the SDGs are in fact a common and shared agenda on how to move forward, explaining, “I think it is important that we remind ourselves the pandemic, the increase in poverty and
inequality, the setbacks we have through conflicts. All of these are in fact what the SDG’s are meant to avoid in the future, so they are still as relevant as ever, even if the indicators and targets are not very good news right now.” Regarding development financing, Steiner said that wealthier countries are able to recover from these shocks faster, while poorer countries are recovering much more slowly or not at all, noting a divergence in the economic pathways that ultimately will create more political tension.
He emphasized the need to deescalate tensions and conflicts that set the world into a mode of competing with one another rather than cooperating with one another, adding that “part of what we see in the year 2023 is the inability of countries to come together to solve problems and as a result of that, every citizen on the planet is suffering more.” He also explained that the implementation of the SDG is ultimately a responsibility of every country, pointing out that during the pandemic, countries did some miraculous things when it came to inclusion, from social safety nets to digitalization, attributing the increase in investment in renewable energy and clean energy infrastructure to the fact that energy security has become a driver of investments.
He stated that the SDGs remain in many ways the only agenda on which every country has agreed upon because they represent the major challenges in the world, noting that UNDP has also developed a series of inside reports for SDGs with 95 countries, which tell the story of where a country lost momentum as a result of crisis and how it is now trying to recover it.
He pointed out that from the national perspective, the SDGs are a global agreement, but in reality they become most relevant when a country translates them into national development priorities. This is UNDP’s number one priority, he said, highlighting the Programme’s role in helping countries find the right political options and then partnerships to recover the SDG momentum.
HE Administrator of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Achim Steiner concluded his statement to QNA by saying that “despite some of the criticism, and despite some of the frustrations with the United Nations, there is no other organization where every country that is a member state has a seat in the General Assembly hall; it has a right to speak, and a right to be heard. And that is why you will see the extraordinary number of leaders coming together in a couple of weeks here in New York. Because it is here that the world gathers to talk to each other or find a better way to resolve conflicts than going to war or to fight. And secondly, to forge an agenda of solidarity. I think people should not underestimate how important it is to have a place in the world where, despite all your differences, we are reminded that we are one planet, one human family, and we will not succeed in this century if we do not find ways to collaborate and cooperate.”
Source: Qatar News Agency