Pakistan has called for "bold decisions" to deal with a series of global crises, financial, food, energy, environment, afflicting many nations, especially the developing countries.
"The challenges we confront are huge. The response of the international community must be commensurate. It will require bold leadership and bold decisions," Ambassador Munir Akram said in a well-reasoned speech at the high-level segment of the Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc), the economic arm of the UN.
"History will record whether we, the Members of the United Nations, lived up to these challenges, or succumbed to them, through inertia and narrow and self-defeating self-interest," he added. Meanwhile, the 54-member Ecosoc, concluding on Friday its high-level segment in which many government ministers, participated, called for "urgent individual and collective actions" to stem the risks and place the global economy on a firm sustainable foundation.
Adopting by consensus a Declaration on the theme of the Council's 2008 session, implementing the internationally agreed goals and commitments in regard to sustainable development, the ministers recognised that they were meeting at a critical juncture in our efforts to realise those goals, including the millennium development goals.
They further recognised that all nations faced multiple development challenges because of current financial instability and uncertainty; slowing global economic growth; rising food and fuel prices; and the impacts of environmental degradation and climate change.
"All of these challenges require early concerted action. We are concerned about the negative impacts on sustainable economic growth and sustainable development, particularly in developing countries," the Declaration said.
It noted that ministers, who had been meeting at UN Headquarters in New York since Monday, were also concerned that the current global crises might further widen inequalities both among and within nations.
Speaking in the high-level debate, the Pakistan Ambassador said it was important to ensure that the response of the major industrial countries to the financial crisis facing their economies did not comprise a resort to a new protectionism against developing countries. Ambassador Akram said Pakistan was disappointed that the G-8 communiqué appeared to have stepped away from the commitment made at the 2005 Gleneagles Summit to double ODA.
The Doha Review Conference on Financing for Development would provide an important opportunity to address the imbalances, inequities and contradictory policies that were at the root of the current financial turmoil.
The Doha Conference should not merely review implementation of the Monterrey Consensus - itself a depressing picture - but also address challenges that had appeared in the last five years, he stressed. It should first consider comprehensive reform of the international financial system and make a serious effort to restructure the global trading system.
Further, he said, the Conference should address constraints on access to technology that was vital for development. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) agreement should be reviewed to ensure that it contributed to development rather than constraining it. Pakistan, Ambassador Akram said, also looked forward to a strategy to address the food crisis taking place in the country and an equitable approach to deal with ever increasing energy prices.
In that pursuit, the United Nations must take the lead in generating the two most vital requirements: money and technology. On climate change, Akram said, developing countries could not be asked to consign their people to perpetual poverty. They must be helped to create a climate-friendly development model, he said, adding that challenges ahead were huge and the global community's response must be commensurate.
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