. . .a month later. . .oops!
Continuing with the Guardian.Co.Uk articles, one author posted an easy-to-follow guide to help readers pick out the key points of the debate:
- While there has been developments/progress on the MDGs, progress is unequal and usually leaves out the poorest.
- Policy makers are trying to take the politics out of the MDGs & not letting them get in the way of progress (which in the Coverage of the 3rd day, we will see that Amnesty International was not too happy about, as they wanted to bring Human Rights issues to the forefront)
- And he had links to 6 important documents, but the Unicef Document & the MDG Report card are the only ones of importance for the purpose of this committee (There is also this article that summaries what has been done for each goal)
Highlights from Day 3 :
- Ban ki-Moon launched a strategy on women’s and children’s health, with $40 billion worth of commitments from nations and private aid groups around the world
- Oxfam expressed skepticism about this project and how well the money would be allocated
- There was also some skepticism about Hilary Clinton’s initiative on clean stoves
- He also chaired a forum that brought together world leaders and captains of industry to see how the private sector can help in realising the MDGs (relates to MDG #8)
- There is also a video he posted about MDG #8 made by African children, going around asking various leaders what they think African needs in order to develop
- In general, NGOs reacted negatively to the summit (Oxfam, Amnesty International, WaterAid etc.)
- At the 7:41PM mark, the author posted an excerpt from a Reuters article about water sanitation–“The lack of clean drinking water and sanitation in the world’s poorest nations threatens UN goals to cut poverty and disease, and raises the risk of conflict, leaders and aid groups said on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, we did not see much discussion on the topics that we will be covering in our committee throughout the summit (did anyone else notice that there was a greater focus on improving the lives of women?) However, I do appreciate the contrasting view points presented in these updates–between developed nations, developing nations and NGOs, as we can especially see in this last day’s coverage.
Here is a post-summit article about how in the aftermath of the summit, world leaders will need to adhere to their pledges in order to further progress on the MDGs. It has some important data (like from the IMF) about the amount of aid given by countries, how pledges and the poorest areas have been affected by the financial crisis and so forth.
That was a lot of information to digest. Take a few days to read through the articles/documents. . .and now for your general entertainment, here’s a slide show from the Summit: Slideshow
One more month until VAMUN!
