NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Mandeep Tiwana, who’s attending the UN common meeting because the consultant for the civic engagement group CIVICUS, concerning the 17 Sustainable Growth Targets.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Every September, the United Nations Normal Meeting convenes, and one of many gadgets on the agenda this yr is addressing the U.N.’s so-called Sustainable Growth Targets. There are 17 such targets, together with ending starvation, ending poverty and selling gender equality. This yr marks the midway level between 2015, when the U.N. member states adopted the targets, and 2030, when they’re supposed to really meet them. However issues are shifting slowly. Even U.N. Secretary Normal Antonio Guterres admitted earlier this yr that the world’s nations are, quote, “far off observe from attaining them.” One of many individuals maintaining a tally of that progress is Mandeep Tiwana. He is in New York and is attending the Normal 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 need to begin out – if you happen to may simply give us a quick description of what these 17 targets are.
TIWANA: So the 17 Sustainable Growth Targets embrace guarantees on ladies’s empowerment, schooling for ladies 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 couple of wide-ranging and impressive set of targets. I need to focus particularly on ending starvation as a result of a latest U.N. report estimates that 735 million individuals confronted starvation final yr, 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 numerous the world’s meals grains. It is also pushed up the costs of meals and gasoline all over the world. So even when meals is offered, individuals do not have the cash to purchase their meals.
CHANG: Proper. Effectively, if this battle ever does come to some form of decision, how a lot hope do you might have that actual progress will likely be made on assuaging starvation all through the world?
TIWANA: I do imagine that we are able to make progress, however for that, we’ll want management that’s keen to name out dictators. It is management that’s keen to problem totalitarianism and management that’s keen to guide by instance and be daring and brave.
CHANG: Effectively, on that subject of authoritarianism, because the 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 obtainable to ladies. So considered one of these different massive sustainable improvement targets 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 mainly controlling the federal government and in search of to behave as a political actor that’s someway respectable. So the worldwide group has much more work to do right here to make sure that there’s circumstances within the nation the place individuals’s aspirations could be met, the place the seeds of democracy, of individuals’s voices to be heard, could 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 vibrant spots for you? Are there any of those 17 targets that you just suppose the world may really obtain by this 2030 deadline?
TIWANA: Effectively, there are vibrant spots. So extra individuals are linked these days collectively. Digital economies are flourishing all over the world. And thru web connectivity, individuals can demand their rights, which I see as a vibrant spot.
CHANG: Effectively, throughout this U.N. Normal Meeting session, what’s going to you personally be looking ahead to to get a way of how dedicated international locations are to pushing ahead on the Sustainable Growth Targets?
TIWANA: Sadly, for the time being, in a number of international locations all over the world, we’ve got dictatorial methods the place individuals 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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