Yunus meets Macron

Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus yesterday met French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of UN meetings and urged him to play an active role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to mount pressure on the Myanmar government to end the Rohingya crisis.

They met following the Head of Government Climate Meeting at the United Nation headquarters in New York where Prof Yunus was invited by Macron, said a press release from the Yunus Centre.

Yunus thanked Macron for supporting Bangladesh on the Rohingya crisis. He also briefed the French president about the circumstances forcing hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas to flee Myanmar and come to Bangladesh in the past few weeks.

He urged the French president to mount pressure on Myanmar to stop the ethnic cleansing and grant Rohingyas full citizenship after taking them back from Bangladesh.

Macron assured him of doing his best to find a solution.

Prof Yunus also told Macron about the upcoming Global Social Business Summit scheduled for Nov 6-7, 2017 in Paris and invited him to address the event. Macron agreed to speak at the inauguration, added the press release.

The Nobel laureate earlier spoke at Forbes Philanthropy Forum on “how to remove hurdles from women in participating in economic activities”.

The event brought together 100 living greatest business minds of the world at a gala. Prof Yunus was one of the 100.

He is currently in New York to attend high level meetings at the UN, a celebration of Grameen America's tenth anniversary and to go on a tour for his new book "A World of Three Zeros".