#The audacity face series

#The audacity face series

Another was the decade-long series of global conferences and summits on issues ranging from child rights to environment and sustainable development. The end of the Cold War opened new possibilities for international dialogue and initiative, and the report was one example. The report profoundly influenced the concept of development and how aid should be used to promote it.

Published in 1990 by the UN Development Program, the report argued that “People are the real wealth of a nation” GDP growth alone was not enough to ensure sustainable development without investment in people. Jolly’s work led to the founding of the Human Development Report by the distinguished Pakistan economist Mahbub ul Haq and the Nobel economics laureate Amartya Sen. His concerns were later amplified in “Structural Adjustment with a Human Face,” a study showing that after decades of progress through actions like immunization, children’s welfare was threatened by the Washington Consensus approach. In 1985, Richard Jolly, the deputy executive director of Unicef, alerted a conference of the Society for International Development to the damaging effect of adjustment. As a senior World Bank official said to me then, “We are treating a crisis of insolvency as a problem of liquidity.” But the orthodoxy of the Washington Consensus worsened matters as social expenditures were squeezed to meet fiscal targets. That was not the fault of the IMF and the World Bank. Both countries offered disastrous examples - nationalizing private enterprise, among them - of how not to manage an emerging economy. Many of the countries subjected to structural adjustment were in Africa, including Benin and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where I served as the UN resident coordinator. The UN in Crisis: Big Powers and Bad Influence.

Unesco Protects Borscht as a National Treasure of Ukraine.Should We Be Optimistic About the Recent UN Talks on Killer Robots?.

The survey indicated strong support for the SDGs, especially among young people, as well as for multilateral approaches to global problem-solving. This was evidenced by a survey of global opinion commissioned in conjunction with the UN’s 75th anniversary. According to the World Bank, “The economic effects of COVID-19 may have pushed more than 100 million more people into extreme poverty - the first significant increase in this measure in decades.”įortunately, the goals remain a globally accepted set of aspirations that can guide countries to a sustainable, equitable future - even in the pandemic and in the recovery.

The Atlas assesses progress toward the goals established by the UN in 2015. That’s how a story on Covid linked me to the World Bank’s Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I now get my daily news fix online, which I admit has its advantages, including easy access to relevant collateral reporting. Pending the resumption of normal service, I have gone digital. The pandemic and resulting disruption of newspaper deliveries and shuttering of cafes has obliged me to suspend my habits of a lifetime. GENEVA - One of the quiet pleasures of life is an early-morning cappuccino in the company of a good newspaper. The author, a former UN specialist, tells the backstory about the creation of the UN’s set of development goals, showing how the institution can still “resolve the existential challenges to our people and planet,” especially in the pandemic. A poll worker at a voting precinct in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on the last day of the country’s 2015 presidential election.