United Nations
Bangabandhu Lounge opened at Bangladesh Permanent Mission at UN
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has inaugurated the newly established Bangabandhu Lounge at the Bangladesh Permanent Mission at the United Nations (UN) in New York.
The lounge has been set up marking the observance of Bangabandhu’s birth centenary.
Read:UN appreciates Dhaka’s proposal for showcasing women in peacekeeping
“The lounge houses a rich collection of books, photos, documentaries, and graphical displays on the life and work of the Father of the Nation. It demonstrates Bangabandhu’s trust and faith in multilateralism; particularly the UN,” said Dr Momen on Monday.
UN appreciates Dhaka’s proposal for showcasing women in peacekeeping
The United Nations has welcomed the proposal of Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen to invest in strategic communications showcasing women in peacekeeping in an effort to increase their participation in peacekeeping.
Dr Momen met UN Under Secretary General (Department of Operational Support) Atul Khare in New York on Monday and discussed the issue.
Read:Bangabandhu Lounge opened at Bangladesh Permanent Mission at UN
During the meeting, the Foreign Minister reiterated Bangladesh's commitment to peacekeeping and thanked the Under Secretary General for their support to Bangladesh, especially for including Bangladesh Biman to transport the peacekeepers to the field.
USG Khare expressed his deep appreciation to Bangladesh for their contribution to peacekeeping.
He appreciated Bangladesh for its leadership in implementing the UN's environmental strategy in the field.
Khare also praised Bangladesh's readiness to deploy peacekeepers with enabling assets.
Read:Violence, neglect increase for older persons during lockdown: UN expert
UN: Don’t forget to save species while fixing global warming
To save the planet, the world needs to tackle the crises of climate change and species loss together, taking measures that fix both and not just one, United Nations scientists said.
A joint report Thursday by separate U.N. scientific bodies that look at climate change and biodiversity loss found there are ways to simultaneously attack the two global problems, but some fixes to warming could accelerate extinctions of plants and animals.
For example, measures such as expansion of bioenergy crops like corn, or efforts to pull carbon dioxide from the air and bury it, could use so much land — twice the size of India — that the impact would be “fairly catastrophic on biodiversity,” said co-author and biologist Almut Arneth at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
Read:Forecast: 40% chance Earth to be hotter than Paris goal soon
Policy responses to climate change and biodiversity loss have long been siloed, with different government agencies responsible for each, said co-author Pamela McElwee, a human ecologist at Rutgers University.
The problems worsen each other, are intertwined and in the end hurt people, scientists said.
“Climate change and biodiversity loss are threatening human well-being as well as society,” said report co-chair Hans-Otto Portner, a German biologist who helps oversee the impacts group of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Earth’s naturally changing climate shaped what life developed, including humans, but once people in the industrialized world started pumping fossil fuels into the air, that triggered cascading problems, Portner said.
Read:Carbon storage offers hope for climate, cash for farmers
“It’s a high time to fix what we got wrong,” he said. “The climate system is off-track and the biodiversity is suffering.”
There are many measures that can address both problems at once, the report said.
“Protecting and restoring high-carbon ecosystems,” such as tropical forests and peatlands, should be high priority, said co-author Pete Smith, a plant and soil scientist at the University of Aberdeen.
While some climate solutions can increase species loss, scientists said efforts to curb extinctions don’t really harm the climate.
Read:‘Next big wave’: Radiation drugs track and kill cancer cells
Yunne Shin, director of research at French National Research Institute, said the bulk of measures taken to protect biodiversity will also help curb climate change. While she applauded growing interest in nature-based solutions, she said, conservation measures “must be accompanied by clear cuts in emissions.”
“This report is an important milestone,” said Simon Lewis, chairman of global change science at University College London, who was not part of the report.
“Finally the world’s bodies that synthesize scientific information on two of the most profound 21st century crises are working together,” he said. “Halting biodiversity loss is even harder than phasing out fossil fuel use.”
UN urges action to end AIDS, saying COVID-19 hurt progress
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a declaration Tuesday calling for urgent action to end AIDS by 2030, noting “with alarm” that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and pushed access to AIDS medicines, treatments and diagnosis further off track.
The declaration commits the assembly’s 193 member nations to implement the 18-page document, including reducing annual new HIV infections to under 370,000 and annual AIDS-related deaths to under 250,000 by 2025. It also calls for progress toward eliminating all forms of HIV-related stigma and discrimination and for urgent work toward an HIV vaccine and a cure for AIDS.
Without a huge increase in resources and coverage for those vulnerable and infected, “we will not end the AIDS epidemic by 2030,” the assembly warned.
It said the coronavirus pandemic has created setbacks in combating AIDS, “widening fault lines within a deeply unequal world and exposing the dangers of under-investment in public health, health systems and other essential public services for all and pandemic preparedness.”
Read: EXPLAINER: The US investigation into COVID-19 origins
While the international investment response to the pandemic is inadequate, it is nonetheless unprecedented, the assembly said.
The response to the coronavirus by many nations has demonstrated “the potential and urgency for greater investment” in responding to pandemics, underscoring “the imperative of increasing investments for public health systems, including responses to HIV and other diseases moving forward,” it said.
The assembly adopted the resolution at the opening session of a three-day high-level meeting on AIDS by a vote of 165-4, with Russia, Belarus, Syria and Nicaragua voting “no.”
Before the vote, the assembly overwhelmingly rejected three amendments proposed by Russia.
They would have eliminated references to human rights violations that perpetuate the global AIDS epidemic and a “rights-based” collaborative approach by UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end the AIDS pandemic They would also have dropped references to reforming discriminatory laws, including on the age of consent, on interventions to treat HIV among intravenous drug users including “opioid substitution therapy,” and on “expanding harm reduction programs.”
UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima welcomed the declaration’s adoption and told the assembly it “will be the basis of our work to end this pandemic that has ravaged communities for 40 years.”
Read: ‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
Calling AIDS “one of the deadliest pandemics of modern times,” she said 77.5 million people have been infected with HIV since the first case was reported in 1981 and nearly 35 million have died from AIDS.
“HIV rates are not following the trajectory that we together promised,” she said. “Indeed, amidst the fallout from the COVID crisis, we could even see a resurgent pandemic.”
Byanyima said COVID-19 showed that science moves “at the speed of political will” and urged speeded up spending on innovations for AIDS treatment, prevention, care and vaccines “as global public goods.”
On the plus side, the assembly’s declaration said that since 2001 there has been a 54% reduction in AIDS-related deaths and a 37% reduction in HIV infections globally, but it warned that “overall progress has slowed dangerously since 2016.”
The assembly expressed “deep concern” that in 2019 there were 1.7 million new infections compared to the 2020 global target of fewer than 500,000 infections and that new HIV infections have increased in at least 33 countries since 2016.
Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, has demonstrated the most progress in tackling the AIDS epidemic but it also remains the worst-affected region, the assembly said. It called for “urgent and exceptional action” to curb the infection’s devastating effects, especially on women, adolescent girls and children.
Read: WTO panel considers easing protections on COVID-19 vaccines
Assembly members welcomed progress in reducing HIV-infections and AIDS-related deaths in Asia and the Pacific, the Caribbean, Western and Central Europe and North America. But they noted that despite progress, “the Caribbean continues to have the highest prevalence outside sub-Saharan Africa,” while the number of new HIV infections is increasing in eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa.
Byanyima stressed the importance of ending inequalities in the availability of drugs, and ensuring that medicines that can prevent deaths of people living with HIV are manufactured by multiple producers at affordable prices, “especially in the global south, where the disease is concentrated.”
“This moment calls for us to work together across sectors, across countries,” she said. “Populism’s false promises are proving no match to biology: As COVID reminds us, we’re not just interconnected, we’re inseparable.”
“We cannot end AIDS in one country or one continent. We can only end AIDS everywhere,” Byanyima said.
WHO: High vaccination rates can help reduce risk of variants
A top World Health Organization official estimated Monday that COVID-19 vaccination coverage of at least 80% is needed to significantly lower the risk that “imported” coronavirus cases like those linked to new variants could spawn a cluster or a wider outbreak.
Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies chief, told a news conference that ultimately, “high levels of vaccination coverage are the way out of this pandemic.”
Many rich countries have been moving to vaccinate teenagers and children — who have lower risk of more dangerous cases of COVID-19 than the elderly or people with comorbidities — even as those same countries face pressure to share vaccines with poorer ones that lack them.
Britain, which has vastly reduced case counts thanks to an aggressive vaccination campaign, has seen a recent uptick in cases attributed largely to the so-called delta variant that originally appeared in India — a former British colony.
Read: WHO validates Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use
Ryan acknowledged that data wasn’t fully clear about the what percentage of vaccination coverage was necessary to fully have an impact on transmission.
“But ... it’s certainly north of 80% coverage to be in a position where you could be significantly affecting the risk of an imported case potentially generating secondary cases or causing a cluster or an outbreak,” he said.
“So it does require quite high levels of vaccination, particularly in the context of more transmissible variants, to be on the safe side,” Ryan added.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, noted the delta variant is spreading in more than 60 countries, and is more transmissible than the alpha variant, which first emerged in Britain.
Read: Covid: WHO renames UK and other variants with Greek letters
She cited “worrying trends of increased transmissibility, increased social mixing, relaxing of public health and social measures, and uneven and inequitable vaccine distribution around the world.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, meanwhile, called on leaders of the developed Group of Seven countries to help the U.N.-backed vaccination program against COVID-19 to boost access to doses in the developing world.
With G-7 leaders set to meet in England later this week, Tedros said they could help meet his target that at least 10% of the populations in every country are vaccinated by the end of September — and 30% by year-end.
“To reach these targets, we need an additional 250 million doses by September, and we need hundreds of million doses just in June and July,” he said, alluding to the summit involving Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Read:Bharat Biotech submits ‘90% of documents’ for WHO nod
“These seven nations have the power to meet these targets. I’m calling on the G-7 not just to commit to sharing those, but to commit to sharing them in June and July.”
At a time of continued tight supply of vaccines, Tedros also called on manufacturers to give the “first right of refusal” on new vaccine volumes to the U.N.-backed COVAX program, or to commit half of their volumes to COVAX this year.
He warned of a “two-track pandemic,” with mortality among older age groups declining in countries with higher vaccination rates even as rates have risen in the Americas, Africa and the Western Pacific region.
UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and in the country’s north, the U.N. humanitarian chief said, warning there’s a risk that hundreds of thousands of people or more will die.
Mark Lowcock said the economy has been destroyed along with businesses, crops and farms and there are no banking or telecommunications services.
“We are hearing of starvation-related deaths already,” he said in a statement Friday.
“People need to wake up,” Lowcock said. “The international community needs to really step up, including through the provision of money.”
Read: 'People are starving': New exodus in Ethiopia's Tigray area
No one knows how many thousands of civilians or combatants have been killed since months of political tensions between Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government exploded into war last November.
Eritrea, a longtime Tigray enemy, teamed up with neighboring Ethiopia in the conflict.
In late May, Lowcock painted a grim picture of Tigray since the war began, with an estimated 2 million people displaced, civilians killed and injured, rapes and other forms of “abhorrent sexual violence” widespread and systematic, and public and private infrastructure essential for civilians destroyed, including hospitals and agricultural land.
“There are now hundreds of thousands of people in northern Ethiopia in famine conditions,” Lowcock said. “That’s the worse famine problem the world has seen for a decade, since a quarter of a million Somalis lost their lives in the famine there in 2011. This now has horrible echoes of the colossal tragedy in Ethiopia in 1984.”
In the disastrous famine of 1984-85, about 2 million Africans died of starvation or famine-related ailments, about half of them in Ethiopia.
“There is now a risk of a loss of life running into the hundreds of thousands or worse,” Lowcock said.
Read: Amnesty report describes Axum massacre in Ethiopia’s Tigray
He said getting food and other humanitarian aid to all those in need is proving very difficult for aid agencies.
The United Nations and the Ethiopian government have helped about 2 million people in recent months in northern Ethiopia, mainly in government-controlled areas, he said.
But Lowcock said there are more than 1 million people in places controlled by Tigrayan opposition forces and “there have been deliberate, repeated, sustained attempts to prevent them getting food.”
In addition, there are places controlled by the Eritreans and other places controlled by militia groups where it is extremely difficult to deliver aid, he said.
“The access for aid workers is not there because of what men with guns and bombs are doing and what their political masters are telling them to do,” the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said.
Read: 'Extreme urgent need': Starvation haunts Ethiopia's Tigray
Lowcock said all the blockages need to be rolled back and the Eritreans, “who are responsible for a lot of this need to withdraw,” so aid can get through to those facing famine.
“Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed needs to do what he said he was going to do and force the Eritreans to leave Ethiopia,” he said.
Lowcock said leaders of the seven major industrialized nations -- the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy and Canada -- need to put the humanitarian crisis and threat of widespread famine in northern Ethiopia on the agenda of their summit from June 11-13 in Cornwall, England.
“Everyone needs to understand that were there to be a colossal tragedy of the sort that happened in 1984 the consequences would reach far and last long,” he said.
Bangladesh seeks TRIPS waiver to ramp up Covid vaccine production
Bangladesh has called for a temporary waiver from certain obligations under the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for the production of vaccines, medicines and other health technologies to effectively respond to the pandemic.
Bangladesh made the demand in the just concluded 74th virtual session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) held in Geneva.
Read: US unveils strategy for global vaccine sharing with Bangladesh, India on list
Intellectual property is currently a barrier to swiftly scaling up and diversifying the production of Covid-19 health products, including vaccines.
Bangladesh said the pharmaceutical industries across the developing countries, including Bangladesh, capable of producing vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics and other medical equipment should get licenses as well as technology and technical know-how to produce the vaccines and health technologies for Covid-19 and those items should be provided to other developing countries free of cost.
Besides, Bangladesh highlighted the timely and swift actions taken by the government of Sheikh Hasina, including health measures and stimulus packages, to combat the socio-economic impacts posed by the pandemic.
A Bangladesh delegation, led by Zahid Maleque, Minister for Health and Family Welfare, and in direct collaboration with the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh in Geneva, attended the virtual WHA, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday.
Read:COVAX Facility: Japan to provide 30mn vaccine doses to other countries
This year, the Assembly mainly focused on the production, supply and equitable distribution of vaccines to address the Covid-19 crisis.
In Syria camp, forgotten children are molded by IS ideology
At the sprawling al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, children pass their days roaming the dirt roads, playing with mock swords and black banners in imitation of Islamic State group militants. Few can read or write. For some, the only education is from mothers giving them IS propaganda.
It has been more than two years since the Islamic State group’s self-declared “caliphate” was brought down. And it has been more than two years that some 27,000 children have been left to languish in al-Hol camp, which houses families of IS members.
Most of them not yet teenagers, they are spending their childhood in a limbo of miserable conditions with no schools, no place to play or develop, and seemingly no international interest in resolving their situation.
Only one institution is left to mold them: remnants of the Islamic State group. IS operatives and sympathizers have networks within the camp, and the group has sleeper cells around eastern Syria that continue to wage a low-level insurgency, awaiting an opportunity for a revival.
Kurdish authorities and aid groups fear the camp will create a new generation of militants. They are pleading with home countries to take the women and children back. The problem is that home governments often see the children as posing a danger rather than as needing rescue.
Read: Israel says it strikes targets in Syria after missile attack
“These children are ISIS’s first victims,” said Save the Children’s Syria Response Director Sonia Khush. “A 4-year-old boy does not really have an ideology. He has protection and learning needs.”
“The camps are no place for children to live or grow up,” she said. “It does not allow them to learn, socialize or be children ... It does not allow them to heal from all that they have lived through.”
In the fenced-off camp, row after row of tents stretch for nearly a square mile. Conditions are rough. Multiple families are often crammed together; medical facilities are minimal, access to clean water and sanitation limited; the tents flood in the winter, and fires have broken out from use of gas stoves for cooking or heat.
Some 50,000 Syrians and Iraqis are housed there. Nearly 20,000 of them are children. Most of the rest are women, the wives and widows of fighters.
In a separate, heavily guarded section of the camp known as the annex are housed another 2,000 women from 57 other countries, considered the most die-hard IS supporters, along with their children, numbering 8,000.
The IS influence was clear during a rare visit by The Associated Press to the camp last month. Around a dozen young boys in the annex hurled stones at the team, which was accompanied by Kurdish guards. A few waved sharp pieces of metal like swords.
Read: 'No Sweets': For Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a tough Ramadan
“We will kill you because you are an infidel,” screamed one child who looked around 10. “You are the enemy of God. We are the Islamic State. You are a devil, and I will kill you with a knife. I will blow you up with a grenade.”
Another child slid his hand across his neck and said, “With the knife, God willing.”
At a market inside the annex where women sold shampoo, bottled water and used clothes, one woman looked at a reporter and said, “The Islamic State endures” — a slogan of the group.
During its nearly 5-year rule over much of Syria and Iraq, IS made a priority out of indoctrinating children in its brutal interpretation of Islamic law, aiming to entrench its “caliphate.” It trained children as fighters, taught them how to carry out beheadings using dolls, and even had them carry out killings of captives in propaganda videos.
A Russian-speaking woman in the annex, who identified herself as Madina Bakaraw, said she feared for the future of the children, including her own son and daughter.
“We want our children to learn. Our children should be able to read, to write, to count,” said the 42-year-old, who was fully covered in black, including her face and hands. She said her husband was dead but refused to say how. “We want to go home and want our children to have a childhood.”
The women in the camp are a mix. Some remain devoted to IS, but others became disillusioned by its brutal rule or by its defeat. Others were never ideologically committed but were brought into the “caliphate” by husbands or family.
Read:Pleas for more aid to Syria: 'We don't have nearly enough'
The camp began to be used to house the families of IS fighters in late 2018 as U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces recaptured territory in eastern Syria from the militants. In March 2019, they seized the last IS-held villages, ending the “caliphate” that the group declared over large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Since then, the Kurdish administrators running eastern Syria have struggled to repatriate camp residents in the face of local opposition to their return or because of the residents’ own fears of revenge attacks. Earlier this year, hundreds of Syrian families left the camp after a deal was reached with their tribes to accept them. Last month, 100 Iraqi families were repatriated to live in a camp in Iraq, but still face sharp opposition among their neighbors.
Some former Soviet Union states have let back some of their citizens, but other Arab, European and African countries have repatriated only minimal numbers or have refused.
“Those children are there through no fault of their own, and they should not pay the consequences of their parents’ choices,” Ted Chaiban, Mideast and North Africa director of the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, told the AP. Chaiban visited al-Hol in December.
The Kurdish-led administration says it doesn’t have the resources to maintain and guard the camp.
If home countries won’t repatriate, at least they should help set up facilities to improve children’s lives, said Shixmus Ehmed, head of the administration’s department for refugees and displaced.
Read:10 years on, Syria is a hungry nation
“We have suggested schools be opened, as well as rehabilitation programs and fields to do sports,” Ehmed said. “But so far, there is nothing.”
In the camp’s main section, UNICEF and Kurdish authorities had set up 25 learning centers, but they have been closed since March 2020 because of COVID-19. UNICEF and its partners have distributed books for kids to study on their own.
In the annex, authorities have been unable to set up learning centers. Instead, children there are largely taught by their mothers, mostly with IS ideology, according to U.N. and Kurdish officials.
Though the annex residents are considered the strongest IS supporters, the group has a presence in the main section housing Syrians and Iraqis as well.
In late March, the Kurdish-led forces assisted by U.S. forces swept through the camp, seizing 125 suspected IS operatives, including Iraqis and Syrians.
Those sleeper cells had been carrying out a campaign of killings against residents suspected of abandoning the group’s ideology, working as informants or defying its rules by, for example, working as prostitutes for survival. At least 47 people were killed this year, according to Kurdish-led forces, while U.S. officials put the number at 60.
Read: UN chief asks for continuing to reach all Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance
A Syrian woman who left the camp with her five grandchildren earlier this year told the AP she knew of several women killed for alleged prostitution. In each case, a masked man appeared at the woman’s tent, identified himself as an IS member and shot the woman in front of neighbors or even her children, she said.
“The next morning, news spread around the camp,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for her security.
She said it was common even in the main part of the camp to see children chanting “the Islamic State endures” and carrying a stick with a black bag tied to it to symbolize an IS flag.
Amal Mohammed, a 40-year-old Iraqi in the camp, said her wish is to return to Iraq where her daughters can live a normal life.
“What is the future of these children?” she said. “They will have no future ... Here they are learning nothing.”
2 senior UN officials in city; visit to Bhasan Char planned
Two senior officials of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, arrived here on Sunday on a four-day visit to see Rohingya situation both in Cox's Bazar Rohingya camps and Bhasan Char.
The UN officials are Gillian Triggs, the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Raouf Mazou, Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, a crucial role for overseeing UNHCR’s responses to refugee situations worldwide.
They will hold meetings with the officials in Dhaka and are planning to visit Cox's Bazar and Bhasan Char, a senior official told UNB, adding that the programmes are yet to be finalised.
Read:Global initiative launched to build sport Club Centres in Rohingya camps; beyond
They are likely to go to Bhasan Char first, most probably on Monday, said the official.
Bangladesh is hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar district and Bhasan Char and Bangladesh is expecting UN agencies engagement in Bhasan Char within next couple of months to provide humanitarian services there.
The government has a plan to shift 100000 Rohingyas in Bhasan Char gradually while around 20,000 are already shifted there.
Bhasan Char, a temporary shelter for Rohingyas until repatriation, remained unhurt with no casualty to personnel and livestock though cyclone Yaas caused damage to some extent in coastal areas.
Preparation to face challenges of Cyclone Yaas has become a proven guideline for facing future cyclones, says a senior official of the government adding that it brought confidence amongst all at Bhasan Char.
The Bhasan Char island also remained unaffected during cyclone Amphan though it caused damages in coastal districts of the country, he said.
During his recent visit, United Nations General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir highly appreciated Bangladesh's efforts for Rohingyas in Bhashan Char, saying it will be another example to the world on how to deal with the refugee issues.
“I really applaud the work done there – the quality of buildings and also taking all the precautions. I think this will be another example to the world on how to deal with refugee issues,” he said.
Bozkir hoped that this would work well for the Rohingya people, giving them a better condition in Bhashan Char.
Read: General Assembly has not forgotten Rohingya people: Bozkir
The UNGA President said he could not visit Bhasan Char but he saw a video on it and acknowledged the high-level of works there, including precautions and safety measures.
Bozkir appreciated Bangladesh’s role in the peacekeeping operations and sacrifices of the Bangladeshi peacekeepers for the peace and security of the world.
The UNGA President said he has admiration for Prime Minister Hasina for her political and humanitarian thinking and saluted the hospitality and courage that Bangladesh has shown to the Rohingya people.
FAO lauds Hasina's leadership in attaining food security in Bangladesh
Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO), has highly appreciated the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in attaining food security for 165 million people of Bangladesh despite being one of the top 10 most populous countries in the world.
He shared his deep appreciation during a ceremony marking the presentation of Letter of Credence by Md Shameem Ahsan, Bangladesh Ambassador to Italy, accrediting him as the Permanent Representative to FAO held in Rome recently.
“We can learn a lot from Bangladesh because their solutions are very economic, easy to adapt,” said the FAO Director-General.
Read: Campaign on right to food, health launched
Ambassador and PR Ahsan thanked DG Dongyu for receiving the credentials and also for sharing his candid analysis on recent attainments of Bangladesh.
He assured fullest support to the leadership of the DG to make the organisation more efficient, transparent and inclusive.
Recognising FAO’s valuable contributions to Bangladesh on food and nutrition security, food safety, agro environment, small holders farm productivity and income increase over the 40 years through various programmes/projects and even during the challenging period of Covid-19, Ambassador Ahsan appreciated FAO for their active support to develop the agriculture sector transformation plan in Bangladesh.
While thanking the Director-General to nominate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as the Co-chair of the “One Health Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)”, Ambassador Ahsan underlined the unique position of Bangladesh to play a leading role regionally in raising awareness and action to address AMR.
Permanent Representative of Bangladesh also briefed the Director-General about the burden Bangladesh has been bearing for the last 4 years by giving shelter to 1.1 million forcefully displaced Myanmar nationals (Rohingyas) on humanitarian ground and deeply appreciated FAO for supporting people in Cox’s Bazar to improve their livelihood and boost agricultural productions, assisting small holder farmers for their increased income and capacity development.
Read:Antimicrobial resistance can even threaten food security: PM Hasina
Mentioning about the 36th Asia Pacific FAO Regional Conference (APRC) scheduled for 8-11 March 2022 in Bangladesh, the Permanent Representative invited the Director-General which he accepted.
The event, held on a zoom platform, ended with the reiteration of assurances by both Bangladesh and FAO to work together closely in the coming days to eradicate poverty and hunger around the globe.
Manash Mitra, Economic Counsellor and Alternate Permanent Representative to FAO and Sikder Mohammad Ashrafur Rahman, Counsellor and Head of Chancery, were present on the occasion.