East and South-East Asia MDG Forum

MDG Forum, Hanoi While many East and South-East Asian countries have made tremendous progress in reducing income poverty, the region's less developed countries and economies in transition still face difficult challenges in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Inequalities within some countries have also widened.

Participants at a East and South-East Asia MDG Forum in Hanoi, Viet Nam, have called on governments in the region to do more to 'reach the unreached' by improving educational and health care services. Participants also called for increased efforts to protect the subregion's quickly dwindling forests. The recommendations came at the close of the forum, 1-2 March.

The East and South-East Asian MDG Forum brings together a unique mix of high level government officials, representatives of civil society, and the media to assess progress towards MDGs in the region, and to identify key remaining challenges. Participants are expected to produce an action plan for East and South-East Asia to meet the MDGs by 2015. At the Forum more than 100 participants from 12 countries identified common 'road blocks' to universal primary and secondary education, health care for mothers and children, equal treatment of women, sustainable use of forests, and obtaining the human and financial resources to meet common development goals.

UNESCAP Executive Secretary Kim Hak-Su told the Forum that the Action Plan identified key areas where urgent actions are needed, which would be included in developing and refining a regional road map to meeting the MDGs.

Mr. Ayumi Konishi, Asian Development Bank's (ADB) County Director for Viet Nam, told participants that all stakeholders need to redouble their efforts so that the region can achieve all of the MDGs, and that ADB would fully support this effort.

UNDP's Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, David Lockwood, said he was pleased that gender equality was earnestly deliberated in the Forum.

Other points in the Plan of Action include recommendations to improve the quality and availability of teachers, especially in rural and remote areas, to disadvantaged groups such as minorities, child workers and the disabled; improve accessibility of health care facilities in remote and mountainous areas; change traditional/cultural perceptions of women's role in politics, and train women elected officials at the local level to enter national-level politics; consider economic instruments such as fees or taxes to support the sustainable use of forests and water resources; create new and strengthen existing South/South partnerships in the subregion.

The Forum is part of a tripartite MDG initiative by UNESCAP, UNDP and ADB. A South Asia regional forum was held in Nepal in October in 2006; a Central Asia Forum is being planned for later this year.

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