DOHA: The Forum of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) kicked off in Doha yesterday under the patronage of HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser and organised in cooperation with the Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA).
The forum will review the results of the fourth report of the MDGs in Qatar and establish the most important achievements and challenges.
In 2000 member states of United Nations agreed to a series of goals which were to be attained by 2015. These goals are: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.
Chairman of the QSA Sheikh Hamad bin Jabor bin Jassim Al Thani opened the two-day event highlighting that these goals reflect the aspirations of people to a better life and sustainable development.
Al Thani hoped that the forum will discuss the MDGs in depth after 2015, in addition to displaying achievements in terms of those objectives and to identifying the challenges that impede progress.
He called on all institutions in the country to discuss new targets, especially in terms of measuring methods.
"We would like to show our capable nation to the world, including the achievement of its international obligations to respond to sceptics as an Arab country in competition with other countries to host major international events," he added.
He called participants in the forum to come up with specific mechanisms of action to overcome the challenges and achieve more, and emphasised the need to prepare seriously for the post-2015 era. In the field of human development and occupation, Qatar ranked first among Arab countries and thirty-sixth globally.
"This shows the extent of development in various fields, especially the field of education and health and standard of living," he clarified.
He demanded hard work and fruitful cooperation to meet the remaining challenges and referred to two main goals: Qatari women's participation in public life and the emissions of carbon dioxide. Paolo Lembo, representative of the United Nations Development Programme, praised the efforts of QSA at the local level and the Arab world to find a distinct statistical system for Qatar and to find a common statistical structure for the Gulf and Arab countries.
Lembo also pointed out that countries that have made progress in the Millennium Development Goals are those that succeeded in designing a development plan consistent with their own circumstances and objectives.
Nada Jafar of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and Nasser bin Abdul Aziz Al Nassr, High Representative for the Alliance of Civilisations also took part in the opening discussion.
Jamal Abdulla Al Yafei, an official from the Supreme Council for Family Affairs, said that Qatar is following its own specific plan for empowering women to involve them more in the labour market, both in the public and private sector.
This department is also considering how women can manage their responsibilities in and out of their home. "We are trying to develop a new policy, maybe by giving them part-time jobs," he added. Forty percent of Qatari women are not working.
Local women work mainly in the health and education fields. "Sometimes they don't want to work with men; that's why we can also give them the option to work in separate areas," clarified the expert. In addition, there are more women than men in universities now.
© The Peninsula 2013
