In his key note speech to the seminar organized by Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kathmandu on National Implementation of Istanbul Program of Action (2011-2020), Minister for Home and Foreign Affairs Madhav Prasad Ghimire said the Oversight Committee will be headed by foreign minister. [break]The priorities once mainstreamed in the plans, policies and strategies will be brought to implementation by the sectoral line agencies to realize the targets set by the IPOA.
Minister Ghimire said that the effort will continue through the next budget cycle and the 13th National Plan to be launched from the next fiscal year. “All development partners, bilateral as well multilateral, are expected to align their valued support to these national priorities in line with the established international principles and accords,” he said. “To begin with, the UN Country Team can ensure that the priority areas of IPOA are duly mainstreamed in its country assistance strategy, and sectoral plans and policies.”
The fourth UN conference on the Least Developed Countries held in Istanbul, Turkey on May 9-13, 2011 had identified various eight priorities areas for action such as enhancing productive capacity, promoting agriculture, food security and rural development, trade, commodities, human and social development, facing multiple crises and other emerging challenges, mobilizing financial resources for development and capacity-building and ensuring good governance at all levels in the next 10 years. IPOA was adopted after holding broad negotiation among the LDCs, the development partners and the international organizations when Nepal was chairing the Global LDC Bureau.
The seminar on Friday was organized with a guest as UN Under Secretary-General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS) Gyan Chandra Acharya, who served as Nepal´s permanent representative and ambassador to United Nation till September 5, 2012. This is the first visit of Under Secretary General Acharya to Nepal after his appointment in the high post of the UN bureaucracy.
Minister Ghimire noted that the IPOA had made some important departures from the Paris and Brussels Programmes of Actions in making more specific commitments and a realistic list of deliverables.
“The overarching goals of overcoming the structural challenges of the economy, eradicating poverty, combating associated risks and vulnerabilities and enable around 50 percent of the LDCs graduate by 2020 is ambitious yet achievable, provided internal and external enabling environments are created in the mobilization of resources and their proper utilization ensured through good governance at all levels,” he said.
Adding that Nepal has been pursuing a broad-based, inclusive, equitable and sustainable economic path in its planning approaches, Ghimire said Nepal as a country just coming out of the decade-long violent conflict deserves special attention of the international community in its wider sustainable and inclusive development efforts.
He said that Nepal would be able to get fully involved in enhancing the development process once the elections to the Constituent Assembly are held and the writing of the constitution accomplished.
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