The fraternity of developmental sector, including lawmakers, government departments, donors and civil society organisations held a meeting at the National Assembly to initiate an open, inclusive and transparent consultation process at federal and provincial levels with all key stakeholders with respect to current status of MDGs 2015 and post-MDGs 2015 scenario.
The dialogue was initiated in light of the direction of the Honorable Speaker, National Assembly, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq.
Earlier, Sadiq formed a task group on MDGs under the convenorship of MNA Marriyum Aurangzeb. This initiative was especially taken by the speaker to give a boost to the ongoing efforts of accelerating the pace of work on the MDGs by invoking the dictum of parliament oversight.
In year 2000, 189 countries pledged to free people from extreme poverty and multiple depreciations. The pledge resulted into MDGs 2015 Declaration, including eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/aids, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.
Pakistan committed to 16 targets and 41 indicators against which progress towards achieving the eight goals of the MDG’s is measured. Time series data available for 33 of these indicators reveal that Pakistan is on track to achieve the targets on 9 indicators, whereas its progress on 24 indicators is off track.
The objective of the task group is to review the progress in respective MDGs against the set targets, milestones, challenges and lessons learnt, share analysis and recommendation on the way forward for MDG 2013-15. The planned series of consultation will culminate in compilation of transformational recommendation from stakeholders on post-2015 MDG strategy that will enable continuous discourse with the UN, the Inter Parliamentary Union, Common Wealth Parliamentary Association.
Furthermore, the task group will keep and oversight on implementation of Millennium Acceleration Framework on Education 2013-2015 which is chosen as priority MDG for the period of 2013-2015. Similar task groups will be formed at the provincial levels to maintain a robust coordination between federation and Provinces which will further facilitate an inter-provincial coordination to track and monitor the MAF performance in future.
Marriyum gave a detailed presentation on the background of MDGs, status of Pakistan on each MDGs, challenges, lesson learnt and way forward. She also highlighted that Pakistan would miss a majority of the MDGs targets if “business as usual” continues until the deadline of 2015. She elaborated the importance of availability of credible, authentic, and comparable data, which plays a critical role to track, monitor and evaluate the social sector reforms to make informed policies. She highlighted that with the changing trends and positive will of the government she was hopeful that more proactive strategy will be adopted towards social sector reforms.
The meeting was attended by Zahra Wadood Fatemi, Rida Khan, Tahira Aurangzeb and Romina Khurshid Alam. The meeting was also attended by the representatives the line ministries, attached departments and related development sector organisations. They included the Cabinet Division, the Economic Affairs Division, the Planning and Development Division, the National Health Services regulations and coordination, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the Ministry of Education Trainings and Standards in the Higher Education, the Climate Change Division, the UNDP, PIDE, SDPI, WWF, WHO, the NCSW and the IUCN.
