NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Mandeep Tiwana, who’s attending the UN basic meeting because the consultant for the civic engagement group CIVICUS, concerning the 17 Sustainable Growth Objectives.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Every September, the United Nations Common Meeting convenes, and one of many objects on the agenda this 12 months is addressing the U.N.’s so-called Sustainable Growth Objectives. There are 17 such objectives, together with ending starvation, ending poverty and selling gender equality. This 12 months marks the midway level between 2015, when the U.N. member states adopted the objectives, and 2030, when they’re supposed to really meet them. However issues are shifting slowly. Even U.N. Secretary Common Antonio Guterres admitted earlier this 12 months that the world’s nations are, quote, “far off observe from reaching them.” One of many folks maintaining a tally of that progress is Mandeep Tiwana. He is in New York and is attending the Common Meeting because the U.N. consultant for the civic engagement group CIVICUS. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
MANDEEP TIWANA: My pleasure to be right here.
CHANG: Effectively, I wish to begin out – in the event you may simply give us a short description of what these 17 objectives are.
TIWANA: So the 17 Sustainable Growth Objectives embrace guarantees on ladies’s empowerment, training for women but in addition on peace, justice and powerful establishments, guarantees to deal with corruption in addition to to create extra sustainable environments all over the world.
CHANG: All proper. So we’re speaking a few wide-ranging and impressive set of objectives. I wish to focus particularly on ending starvation as a result of a latest U.N. report estimates that 735 million folks confronted starvation final 12 months, and that quantity has gone up since 2019, so the issue’s clearly getting worse. Let me ask you, how a lot do you suppose the battle in Ukraine has affected progress on this entrance?
TIWANA: So starvation stays an enormous international problem, and the battle in Ukraine undoubtedly has created a higher disaster on starvation as a result of Ukraine produces a whole lot of the world’s meals grains. It is also pushed up the costs of meals and gas all over the world. So even when meals is out there, folks do not have the cash to purchase their meals.
CHANG: Proper. Effectively, if this battle ever does come to some type of decision, how a lot hope do you’ve gotten that actual progress will probably be made on assuaging starvation all through the world?
TIWANA: I do consider that we are able to make progress, however for that, we will want management that’s prepared to name out dictators. It is management that’s prepared to problem totalitarianism and management that’s prepared to steer by instance and be daring and brave.
CHANG: Effectively, on that matter of authoritarianism, for the reason that U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan two years in the past, the Taliban has banned women from going to secondary college and severely restricted the roles out there to ladies. So one in every of these different large sustainable improvement objectives is gender equality. How does a rustic like Afghanistan transfer in direction of gender equality with the Taliban in energy? I imply, can it?
TIWANA: The story of Afghanistan is definitely a very tragic story of a terrorist regime principally controlling the federal government and in search of to behave as a political actor that’s in some way authentic. So the worldwide group has much more work to do right here to make sure that there’s situations within the nation the place folks’s aspirations might be met, the place the seeds of democracy, of individuals’s voices to be heard, might be planted. So long as the Taliban is in energy in that nation, in Afghanistan, there’s going to be little or no progress.
CHANG: I have to ask, are there any shiny spots for you? Are there any of those 17 objectives that you just suppose the world may truly obtain by this 2030 deadline?
TIWANA: Effectively, there are shiny spots. So extra individuals are linked these days collectively. Digital economies are flourishing all over the world. And thru web connectivity, folks can demand their rights, which I see as a shiny spot.
CHANG: Effectively, throughout this U.N. Common Meeting session, what is going to you personally be looking forward to to get a way of how dedicated international locations are to pushing ahead on the Sustainable Growth Objectives?
TIWANA: Sadly, for the time being, in a number of international locations all over the world, we’ve dictatorial methods the place folks do not have a chance to demand their rights, and that results in large ranges of inequality. That results in networks of patronage and corruption. So what we’re hoping is that the U.N.’s management will rise to the event, use their powers of ethical persuasion to push ahead a path that’s extra democratic, that’s extra equitable for the remainder of the world.
CHANG: Mandeep Tiwana. He’s the U.N. consultant for the nonprofit civic engagement group CIVICUS. Thanks a lot, Mandeep.
TIWANA: Thanks.
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