Poor leadership, war and terror hampering MDG achievements
FE Report | Thursday, 24 July 2008
Poor leadership, conflict, war and terror, global warming, trade barriers and energy insecurity are hampering achievements of the millennium development goals (MDGs) throughout the world, an international expert said Wednesday.
"The US and the Group 7/8 are ambivalent about the MDGs. Besides, lack of adequate fund disbursement by the developed countries and international financial institutions for the developing countries have made slow progress to the development goals," David Hulme, a professor of the Brooks World Poverty Institute of the Manchester University, UK said at a seminar in Dhaka.
He was presenting a keynote paper on "the making of the MDGs: human development meets results-based management in a material world" at the conference room of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) in the city.
Presided over by the BIDS Director General Quazi Shahabuddin, the seminar was attended by researchers, academicians and development activists.
The United Nations in 2000 set some eight goals to be achieved by the 189 countries in the globe aiming to cut their poverty level by half by the year 2015.
Mr. Hulme suggested not to abandon the MDGs saying "that would be disastrous for the goal of global poverty reduction."
"Strategise for post-2015. A new set of MDGs or a return to human rights or a focus on national level processes, which will not be controlled by the international financial institutions, will have to be taken," he said.
He said: "The MDGs are the world's biggest promise -- a global agreement to reduce poverty and human deprivation at historically unprecedented rates through collaborative multilateral action."
"They differ from all other global promises for poverty reduction in their comprehensive nature and the systematic efforts taken to specify, finance, implement, monitor and advocate them," the poverty expert said.
Research director of the BIDS M Asaduzzaman and senior research fellow Dr. Nazneen Ahmed and others spoke on the occasion.
"The US and the Group 7/8 are ambivalent about the MDGs. Besides, lack of adequate fund disbursement by the developed countries and international financial institutions for the developing countries have made slow progress to the development goals," David Hulme, a professor of the Brooks World Poverty Institute of the Manchester University, UK said at a seminar in Dhaka.
He was presenting a keynote paper on "the making of the MDGs: human development meets results-based management in a material world" at the conference room of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) in the city.
Presided over by the BIDS Director General Quazi Shahabuddin, the seminar was attended by researchers, academicians and development activists.
The United Nations in 2000 set some eight goals to be achieved by the 189 countries in the globe aiming to cut their poverty level by half by the year 2015.
Mr. Hulme suggested not to abandon the MDGs saying "that would be disastrous for the goal of global poverty reduction."
"Strategise for post-2015. A new set of MDGs or a return to human rights or a focus on national level processes, which will not be controlled by the international financial institutions, will have to be taken," he said.
He said: "The MDGs are the world's biggest promise -- a global agreement to reduce poverty and human deprivation at historically unprecedented rates through collaborative multilateral action."
"They differ from all other global promises for poverty reduction in their comprehensive nature and the systematic efforts taken to specify, finance, implement, monitor and advocate them," the poverty expert said.
Research director of the BIDS M Asaduzzaman and senior research fellow Dr. Nazneen Ahmed and others spoke on the occasion.