Sheikh Hasina for new MDG for developing nations

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged the international community to formulate a new MDG with specific targets for economic emancipation of developing countries, particularly the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), within stipulated time frames.
"I believe from my experience that once economic emancipation is achieved, social development would follow as a natural course… the new economic MDG would be the base and core of all MDGs," she said at the first roundtable on 'Poverty, Hunger, and Gender Equality' at the General Assembly Hall of the UN Headquarters on Wednesday evening.
Terming poverty the number one enemy of mankind and source of most social disorders and terrorism, the Prime Minister said development partners have a vital role to play in combating the poverty and its offshoots.
She said: "Indeed, when the MDGs were being adopted, only social issues were considered, and not financing of the same, which is so essential for implementing the social targets."
Hasina, who was a signatory to the Millennium Declaration containing the eight-point MDGs adopted by the UNGA in 2000, said MDG-1 had three specific targets - to halve the proportion of people whose income was less than US$ 1 per day by 2015, achieve full and productive employment for all, including women and young people by 2015, and halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015.
"Unfortunately, we have failed to achieve any one of these three targets," she said, adding another billion people have been pushed below the poverty line due to the recent global economic meltdown.
The Prime Minister said the MDG Report depicts reduction of world poverty from 46 percent to 27 percent and in South Asia from 49 percent to 39 percent by 2005.
"The progress has been different in different countries, and even within an individual country depending on policies, and availability of funds to implement them."
In Bangladesh, she said, the government has adopted extensive programs targeting poverty while micro-credit and micro-financing have been intensified.