Documents/Papers

Presented by: Dr. Arjun K. Karki, President, NGO Federation of Nepal, on 3 August, 2005, opening session

Democracy and Human Rights are pre-requisite for achieving MDGs

Madame Chair, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,

Asia Pacific, a region of diversity and dynamism in terms of people, culture, and natural resources is home to majority of the world's poor living in conditions of conflicts, violence, political instability and continuous human rights violations.

The Millennium Declaration provides space for addressing freedom from want, fear and freedom to live in dignity within a holistic human rights framework. However, the continuing realities of our countries are that majority of children are still without food, millions are out of school, girls and women still face discrimination, 20 children die every minute of preventable poverty and diseases, 2 women die every hour during pregnancies or deliveries, 100 million girls and women are missing (due to reasons like female infanticides) in this region, and increasing AIDS and other epidemics.

Madame chair,

Noting that unequal power and elite politics create the social-economic basis of poverty and injustice, we believe that such issues cannot be dealt with properly without addressing the structural causes, revisiting current development paradigm and demonstrating commitments for fundamental rights. We would like to remind that there are more people killed by poverty, hunger and diseases than conflicts, war and natural disasters.

We are also concerned about the myopic and misconceived notions of security dominating the negotiations and functioning of states and eroding our developmental gains. The focus should be on human and ecological security.

It is paradoxical that even after five years of Millennium Declaration, more and more resources are being spent on military and arms in the name of state security than addressing the root causes of poverty, injustice and marginalisation. We are seriously concerned about the continuing political crises in the region for example in Afghanistan, Burma and most recently in Nepal. We urge the restoration of democratic government and rule of law in countries where it is lacking with urgent stress on Nepal. Your excellencies! Democracy and Human Rights are pre-requisite for achieving MDGs.

In the name of free trade, our countries have been heavily liberalized, creating more harm than benefits to the poor in this region.

Madame chair,

We therefore demand:

• More resources should go to development, addressing poverty, providing accessible and affordable social services than to military spending;
  
• Trade justice allowing poor countries in our region to set their own trade policies, enacting measures to secure food sovereignty, guarantee access to essential medicines, strengthening corporate accountability;
  
• Institutionalisation of transparency, accountability and eradication of corruption through constitutional mechanisms at all levels;
  
• Immediate and unconditional cancellation of illegitimate debt of the developing and least developed countries through a transparent process;
  
• Implementation of commitments of developed countries for 0.7% UN target for ODA and fulfil the higher commitment for LDCs;
  
• Agriculture be taken out of the WTO negotiations to protect the increased vulnerability of the farmers against dumping and agricultural export subsidies;
  
• Stop privatisation of sources of peoples livelihood and public services;
  
• Implementation and formulation of environmental sustainability targets in the MDGs;
  
• Affirmation of the centrality of gender justice and women's empowerment in achieving all MDGs; guarantee women's right to property, land and inheritance, elimination of violence against women and recognition of fundamental reproductive and health rights;
  
• Focus of UN reforms should be on democratising processes and structures and must not be limited to the security council expansion;
  
• Further strengthening of the existing spaces for civil society participation in the UN as affirmed in the Millennium Declaration;

We believe that the Goals highlighted in the millennium declaration are achievable and we must urgently address these and not wait for 2015!

Let September 2005 be a WORLD SUMMIT FOR ACTION and not another summit of words! We demand actions not words!

Thank you very much!