Challenges to Achieve MDGs Becoming More Complex: FM

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

ANTARA News

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said that members of the international community were facing increasingly complex challenges in their efforts to achieve their millennium development goals (MDGs) in the coming five years.

"Since the holding of a ministerial meeting in Jakarta in 2005, the global challenges being faced by the international community have become increasingly complex," the foreign minister said when he closed the Asia Pacific ministerial meeting on MDGs here on Wednesday.

He said that the world no longer faced traditional issues but more than that namely issues which were non traditional ones, which should be overcome simultaneously by the international society.

The minister said that the global challenges the world was facing today was unique, multidimensional and simultaneous.

"It can be ascertained that no single country in the world could settle the problem alone," he said.

The ministerial meeting on MDG was aimed at strengthening Indonesia`s role and consistence in advancing efforts to achieve the MDGs in the region.

Foreign ministers or relevant ministers of 30 countries in Asia and the Pacific region attended the meeting. The results of the meeting were also expected to support the process and contribute to the UN meeting to be held in New York on September 20-22 2010.

Indonesian Vice President Boediono when opening the meeting on Tuesday called on the developed countries to realize their commitments to the developing countries with regard to achieving the millennium development goals (MGs).

Boediono said their commitments made at the Monterrey meeting (in 2002) and Gleneagles meeting (2005) seemed to have been forgotten since the recent global crisis.

"Recovery differs from one country to another. Developed countries are now only growing one to two percent while the developing countries do so at an average of six to eight percent in 2010," he said.

Countries in the Asia Pacific region however were now still facing various development challenges and huge disparities among or within their societies.(*)