UN endorses draft of new dev goals

The 193 member states of the United Nations endorsed a “historic” roadmap Sunday to tackle poverty and hunger, promote well-being and safeguard the environment over the next 15 years.

Bangladesh made "important contributions" to the formulation of a draft plan for global sustainable development by 2030, a top official at the foreign ministry said in Dhaka yesterday.

Concluding a negotiating process that has spanned more than two years and has seen unprecedented participation of civil society, countries agreed to an ambitious agenda that features 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that aim to end poverty, promote prosperity and people's well-being while protecting the environment by 2030.

“Bangladesh is 100 percent ready to implement the goals. We're more than confident. Like achievements in MDGs, we'll take lead this time too,” Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque told diplomatic correspondents after negotiators from the 193 UN members reached the deal.

He said Bangladesh, in the long negotiation, focused on a number of issues like education, migration, water resources, climate change, disaster risk reduction and health (autism, non-communicable diseases).

Foreign Ministry Director General (Economic Affairs) M Riaz Hamidullah said the outcome document was applicable to all but not legally binding.

The 30-page “agenda for sustainable development” is expected to guide policy and funding after the deadline for achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted in 2000, expires by the end of this year.

The document will be formally adopted at the Sustainable Development Summit at the UN headquarters in New York on September 25-27. More than 150 world leaders are expected to attend the summit.

Foreign ministry officials said Bangladesh attended the whole negotiation process.

The plan, known as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, calls on countries and their citizens to respect and safeguard the planet, and recognises that sound management of natural resources is the foundation of economic and social development.

“This is the People's Agenda, a plan of action for ending poverty in all its dimensions, irreversibly, everywhere, and leaving no one behind,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement on Sunday.