SDGs success depends on willingness of developed countries to fund them

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said the success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will depend on willingness of the developed countries and donors to fund them. In an interview to British newspaper ‘The Guardian’, she said she would tell the world leaders during the United Nations General Assembly to “keep their promise”.
UN member states on Friday night (Bangladesh time) at a special summit that will run until Sunday adopted 17 SDGs to combat poverty, inequality and climate change.
Leading a 60-member delegation, Sheikh Hasina is currently in New York on an 11-day visit to attend the annual 70th UNGA, which opened on September 15. Hasina told The Guardian in Dhaka recently that the UN adopting the SDGs will “give a good chance for us as a developing country. But I must say, about all the promises these developed countries give, sometimes when we attend these meetings, we receive so many promises but in practical terms we see very little,” she said.
“So, of course, I will tell [world leaders] to keep their promises. World leaders should keep their word, particularly the developed countries,” the influential newspaper quoted the Bangladesh prime minister as saying in tenreport published on Friday.
“We have many issues like climate change, food security – already Bangladesh has achieved food security and our people are getting two meals a day at least. But nutrition is another issue, especially for the children,” she added.
Hasina’s views assume special significance as Bangladesh succeeded in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before time. Incidentally, she also represented Bangladesh as prime minister when the UN set the MDGs in New York in 2000.
“We have made many achievements, so we can share our experience with others,” she said, pointing out Bangladesh’s MDG success story. Bangladesh has upturned some worst poverty indicators in the world; rate of women dying in childbirth has dropped by 40 percent between 2001 and 2010, according to the latest MDG report card.
Now, more girls go to school than boys do and extreme poverty rates have been halved between 1990 and 2015. The prime minister during the interview did not deny that the problems continued, but ‘insisted that overall progress was spectacular since 2000’.
“In each and every goal, we have tremendous achievements, and that’s why Bangladesh has won many awards from the UN and others,” Hasina said.
“Now our next step is to adopt the SDGs, and we will adopt these at the next UN session. Bangladesh is very much active on that.” Friday's report also said the prime minister was focused on moving Bangladesh to a fully recognised, middle-income country status by 2021. She said her ‘priority’ was to make Bangladesh a poverty-free nation but admitted that it had “a long way to go” and that they “have to do more”.
“When I have been able to establish this country as a poverty-free country, a hunger-free country, a developed country, perhaps at that time, perhaps then I may say I am proud,” she told the newspaper.
The Guardian published the first report based on her interview on Sept 16 in which Hasina had urged UK Prime Minister David Cameron to step up efforts to combat the British jihadis.
In the second report, published four days later, she refuted the allegations of democracy being threatened in Bangladesh by purported highhandedness of her government and human rights abuses by the police and security forces. She had also dismissed the claims of restrictions being imposed on opposition leaders and media.
“My job is to assist the common people. I do politics for the people, not for me... People are enjoying democracy now,” she was quoted as saying by the newspaper, according to bdnews24.com.
- biplab