Yemen tries to meetMillennium Development goals [Archives:2005/830/Community]
By Fahmia al-Fotih
For the Yemen Times
Yemen has prepared the First Five-year plan for 1996-2000 and the Second Five-year plan for 2001-2005, the Ministry of Planning & International Cooperation is currently preparing the third Five-year plan. Under the patronage of the Deputy Prime Minister, along with UNICEF a two-day workshop was concluded on March 24 on the ways for the Third Five-year plan 2006-2010 to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
That workshop targeted four governorates: Lahj, Aden, Abyan and Al-Thale for the representatives of the local councils and development partners from the private sector and the civil society organizations and media.
Dr. Mutahar al-Abassi, Deputy of the Ministry of Planning, delivered a speech stating the aim of the workshop as being to discuss with the local councils leaders how to connect local development plans with national plans.
Dr. al-Abassi led the two-day workshop and submitted his paper entitled “Trends of the Third Five-year plan for Development and Alleviating Poverty 2006-2010” that talked about the development challenges. These challenges include the population increase (3.5% annually, with around 51% of Yemeni population less than 15 years old), the scarcity of water, increasing unemployment, economic weakness, decreasing investments, a weak infrastructure, and imbalances in education between males and females, and urban and rural areas. The paper recommended public awareness campaigns, and encouraging people to move to water rich areas.
Mr. Sulaiman al-Katabri, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, also presented a paper titled “Methods of Preparing the Third Five-year plan for Development and Alleviating Poverty 2006-2010” in which he illustrated the basic goals of the plan.
Mr. Abduallah al-Khaithi, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, submitted a paper “The Indicators of the Local Development” within which a number of development indicators in education, heath and poverty were displayed.
Mr. Naseem al-Rahman, UNICEF representative, outlined the eight Millennium Development Goals: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary goals, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve material health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and to develop a global partnership for development.
The MDGs commit the international community to an expanded vision of development, when that vigorously promotes human development as the key to sustaining social and economic progress in all countries, and recognizes the importance of creating global partnership for development. The goals have been commonly accepted as a framework for measuring development progress.
He stressed on the importance of journalists to highlight the development issues and raise awareness among people.
Dr. Abduallah al-Zalab, commented that the “workshop is an important step to creating strong relationship between planners, decision-makers and media people. Such a workshop is a chance to [create an] open communication channel and share information… Shared information between the decision-makers and media people also gives the chance to enrich the law. The workshop has its aim to break the boundaries between the information resources and information seekers. The workshop in general was very good.”
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