Jun 10, 2010
Upcoming Millennium Development Goal summit must include disability
With the timeframe for achieving the Millennium Development Goals drawing nearer (2015), the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders to attend a summit in New York on 20 – 22 September 2010. The vision behind this important meeting is to redouble efforts to meet the goals and now more than ever in the face of recent global economic turmoil there is a need to protect those most vulnerable to poverty. Ireland has a key role to play in this summit in its own right and also as part of the EU delegation.
On June 14th, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin will attend an EU Foreign Affairs meeting, which will determine Europe’s negotiation position for the United Nations. In advance of this, over recent months there has been a lot of NGO activity as to how best Ireland can advance its commitments made both in our development aid policy and our commitments to international treaty and resolutions. Agencies such as Trocaire held a high level roundtable asking what can the EU and Ireland do to speed up the progress towards achieving the goals? Most recently, 45 Irish development NGOs under the umbrella of Dochas wrote to Minister for Foreign Affairs urging that Ireland honours its commitment to international aid and give an undertaking to make all efforts to reach the agreed target of .07%
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from their inception have been about combating the severe deprivation faced by hundreds of millions of men, women and children who live in chronic poverty. This poverty can be of a material nature for example lack of food, lack of adequate medicine but it can also be poverty of expectation and of opportunity for example lack of access to education, maternal healthcare and gender equality. While the MDGs strive to reduce poverty and create opportunities to build safe secure livelihoods– for one distinct group of people this vision has been missed. This group is disabled people. Over the coming months in a lead up to the September summit, this blog will focus on each of the MDG goals and relate them to disability. Starting next Thursday with Millennium Development Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Related documents: Dochas submission about the summit and other related documents can be found here
UN MDG summit programme
