Development agenda must address causes of migrant crisis, says UN adviser
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Version 0 of 1. The world must recognise the central role that sustainable development can play in improving global security and tackling migration as it prepares to set the development agenda for the next 15 years, a senior UN official has warned. Amina J Mohammed, the UN secretary general’s special adviser on post-2015 development planning, urged individual nations to look at the bigger picture, as leaders met for the landmark financing for development conference in Ethiopia, in the run-up to September’s meeting to agree the new sustainable development goals (SDGs). “We have never been more insecure than we are today,” said Mohammed, who is from Nigeria. “We may not have as many wars as in the past but quite frankly, the type of conflict that we have puts everybody’s security at risk.” Related: Addis Ababa development finance summit: all you need to know Instead of spending vast amounts on trying to predict where the next attack would be coming from and mitigating its effects, said Mohammed, the international community should be trying to understand why such attacks were occurring in the first place. “We should be looking at not excluding people, not creating the environment where conflict breeds, and deal with that,” she said. “The sustainable development agenda is just that.” The sheer number of people crossing the Mediterranean, she added, underlined the need to address the causes of large-scale migration rather than focusing on its final stages. “It’s commendable that people want to save lives crossing the Mediterranean and that the navy fleet goes out – it’s brilliant that you’re going to get them at the other end – but what about stemming the tide?” she said. “How about using these goals to actually invest in the reasons why people would put their life at risk? That involves a global partnership; it’s the countries where they are coming from but also the investments that need to happen in those countries to make it so.” Mohammed said the finance conference would pave the way for what happens in September, adding that any failure in Addis Ababa to show goodwill and a commitment to genuine financial cooperation could have “dire” consequences. “It’s not that things wouldn’t happen; they would just happen without multilateralism and I strongly believe that we will go further than we will individually or bilaterally,” she said. “That’s what the world needs today: anything that happens in north-eastern Nigeria has ramifications for Africa and the rest of the world.” Related: 'We can be the first generation that ends poverty' Mohammed said the success of the SDGs’ predecessors – the millennium development goals (MDGs) – had shown what could be achieved when countries work together. But she conceded that progress has been mixed and thwarted by the global financial crisis, the Ebola outbreak and the violent insurgency waged by the Islamist group Boko Haram. If the “unfinished business” of the MDGs was to be addressed, she added, the SDGs would require motivation as much as money. “It’s quite a large menu and it’s one that’s needed to be served to respond to our global challenges,” she said. “But are you ready to pay for the bill? Where is the political commitment to do that? We’re not asking for rock-hard commitment of money on the table in Addis. We’re asking if you can give us the keys to unlock these resources.” Mohammed, who previously advised the president of Nigeria on the MDGs, said she hoped that the conference in Ethiopia would yield a renewed commitment to official development assistance and to targeting efforts at the least developed countries. She dismissed the familiar criticism that the SDGs – which currently comprise 17 goals – are too numerous and should be reduced to something more in line with the eight MDGs. “When people say, ‘Wow! That’s a huge agenda and there are too many goals and targets’, I understand all of that and I think it’s a legitimate discourse,” she said. It's commendable that people save the lives of those crossing the Mediterranean, but how about stemming the tide? “However, when the first question you have going beyond that a year later is still about the number of goals, then I think they’ve lost the plot. They’ve not looked past the number to see in fact what it is and how they can use them to effectively deliver on sustainable development.” Although the SDGs will be agreed when the UN general assembly meets in New York in September, the dozens – or even hundreds – of indicators through which they will be measured will not be set until March. Mohammed acknowledged that it would have been preferable to have a set of 100 global indicators had already been agreed, but stressed that the next few months and years will see a “paradigm shift” in sustainable development. “I suspect the next years will be a cacophony and what we’ll be working on is making it a symphony,” she said. “We need to find the optimism to drive this forward. If we remain with the cynicism that there has been around about how we cannot do this rather than how can we do this, I don’t think that we will make it.” The risks of failing to agree a coherent commitment for the next 15 years, she added, far outweighed the risks of political squabbling in the coming months. “We have to deal with the tough choices and the push back that we will get but we need to argue and negotiate it through until such time as everyone sees the red line is the sustainable development agenda and a more just, peaceful and equal world,” said Mohammed. “Inequality and exclusion are just so deadly: we can’t leave people or countries behind. It’s incredibly dangerous.” |