Asia-Pacific Need Stronger Alliances to Meet Goals

UN Meeting Says Asia-Pacific Needs Stronger Alliances To Meet Millennium Goals

Governments and civil society organizations need to cooperate better if the Asia-Pacific region is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a senior United Nations official has told a two-day workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal.

“We have a long way to go and we will need years of hard and dedicated work at all levels,” Kim Hak-su, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), said on Sunday.

The MDGs, adopted by a UN summit in New York in 2000, are a set of time-specific targets for tackling the world’s ills. They include pledges to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

Mr. Kim said stronger alliances and partnerships between stakeholders are essential if the region is to make progress. “Unless that partnership is in place, our quest for equity and justice will remain illusive,” he said.

The Kathmandu workshop, which finished yesterday, was organized by UNESCAP and the UN Development Programme (UNDP). Participants also agreed on how a second phase for promoting the MDGs would work.

© Scoop Media