Putting MDGs back on track

President Paul Kagame, together with Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, have called for more efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ahead of the 2015 deadline.Kagame and Gillard made the call on Wednesday during the MDGs Advocacy Group’s third annual meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on the sidelines of the 67th session of the UN General Assembly.Both leaders are the co-chairs of MDGs’ Advocacy Group of eminent personalities established by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2010 to help him build political will and mobilise global action for the benefit of the poor and the most vulnerable.The Group is made up of personalities from the private sector, academia, governments and civil society.“We have seen a lot of improvements in different areas and a lot of organisational activities to mobilise resources to enable different countries where work needs to be done and we are seeing many positive results,” Kagame, told journalists after the meeting, during a news briefing with the Australian Prime Minister.“We are conscious that so many challenges still lie ahead and there is a lot of work to do and we were discussing looking at what has been done and achieved and the work needs be done ahead of achieving MDGs”.The Head of State noted that the Advocacy Group is energised to do what is necessary as people are committed to seeing this global and noble task carried out.He called for more participation in terms of what needs to be done, noting that people have to lay their hands on the very things that should be done and be able to do it for themselves.Kagame cited Rwanda, saying on top of giving one cow to every poor family in Rwanda, the government has gone along to distribute fertilisers and offer advice to farmers.“The more people you involve and the more organised you are, the interaction and organisation goes beyond borders and becomes global. If we work together, there is no reason why we cannot overcome problems, and that is how we have made it in our country,” he said.President Kagame praised the new momentum and new ideas in addition to the work done.He warned against losing focus following the recent global economic downturn, which had slowed progress towards the MDGs.The Head of State said: ‘We need to be innovative and find ways to do more with limited resources, and scale up what has been seen to work over the last decade... We must ensure the most vulnerable are not left behind”.At Wednesday’s meeting, the Advocacy Group discussed further areas for collaboration to accelerate achievement of the MDGs by 2015.Last year, they agreed on an action plan setting out a series of targeted actions in the fields of food security, environment, health, education and women empowerment.“We need to maximise our coordination for the short remaining period of time ahead of us and sharpen our focus on things that can be achieved in that remaining period of time,” said Prime Minister Julia Gillard.“We need to be very sure we are focused on achieving these goals, whatever goals lie beyond are built on strong possible platform.”“We have seen what can be accomplished when the international community works together; we have made real progress towards the MDGs, but we still have a lot to do and we are running out of time,” Gillard noted.The Australian premier stated that people can make a difference in performance regarding the health goals, through deployment of health workers and also set a focus on sanitation and agriculture transformation.A recently released United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) report titled “Committing to Child Survival” showed that Rwanda was on course to achieving the MDG 4 of reducing child mortality rates by two thirds by 2015.Last year, Rwanda achieved the MDG on sanitation, surpassing it by eight percent.See related story on page 4.

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Putting MDGs back on track