UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) and UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) President Ambassador Munir Akram has called for scaling up financing from all sources for getting back on track for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adding that rebuilding better after the pandemic will not be an easy task.
He was speaking during a virtual joint meeting of the UN ECOSOC and the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) held on Saturday to discuss ways to forge solidarity and develop conflict-sensitive responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
The meeting also examined the nexus between the developmental and the security aspects of the crisis.
The international community, Ambassador Akram said, must display a willingness to address structural challenges and inequalities, which are the underlying causes of many of the economic challenges and threats to peace and security which abound across the world.
“We must have the political will to, for example, reform the financial architecture to build an inclusive and equitable debt management system to have preferential banking regulations for developing countries, to build a fair international tax regime, to end illicit financial flows, and to restructure the international trade regime to offer an equal opportunity for developing countries to grow their exports, and to grow their economies,” the ECOSOC president said.
Further, PBC Chairman Ambassador Robert Keith Rae also underscored the pandemic’s economic impact and called for an integrated and multi-sectorial global response that puts economic recovery and people’s livelihoods at the heart of peacebuilding.
“It’s not a good picture; many countries are one or two shocks away from falling into a deep crisis,” he said.
“It’s not a good picture; many countries are one or two shocks away from falling into a deep crisis,” he said.