Positions of interest

The country position statements of the UN 2005 World Summit are out.

2 that were of particular interest to me - no surprises here: Azerbaijan and Singapore.

The specificity of Azerbaijan's reference to youth - squarely in the Millennium Development Goals - was just fantastic. The excerpt from para 2 of Mammadyarov's speech:

Azerbaijan considers the development as a central goal and, to this end, reiterates its commitment to fully implement the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We believe that more active involvement of all segments of society, particularly of the youth, is crucial in the process of implementation of the national development agendas and the achievement of MDGs.

All that damned lobbying actually counted for something.

So, it was subsequently a bit of a schizophrenic flip to then read Singapore's speech, containing no mention of stakeholder inclusion whatsoever in the development agenda. Not that I didn't already know - but looking at the actual copy of the speech... was a little heartbreaking.

In all fairness, the overall speech was not too bad, particularly in the way H.E. Jayakumar educed three core issues in the Outcome Document - management, human rights, and peacebuliding - and made rather valid points on them.

There was this bit, though, which jumped out at me:

The empowerment of our peoples with economic, social as well as political and civil rights must be both the end and the means of development.

Huh. This should make for interesting future reference.

Also:

The manner in which internal developments in one state have wider ramifications is only one illustration of how narrow notions of sovereignty no longer hold.

I think this one would have particular significance in the context of Singapore's current lack of commitment to specific international covenants on human rights, and of the typical sovereignty arguments that are used as shields against the perceived spears of "those western ideas of justice".


Technorati: United Nations, Singapore, Azerbaijan, youth