Yunus made SDG Advocacy Group member by Ban Ki Moon
NTV Online
Davos, Switzerland: The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has made Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus a member of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Advocacy Group for the promotion and implementation of the SDGs, says a press release from the Yunus Centre.
These goals were adopted last September during the UN General Assembly.
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon announced the formation of the Advocacy Group at Davos Open Forum on Thursday.
This Group has been entrusted with the responsibility to advise him and work with him to make sure SDGs become a household term all over the world, and that ordinary people can implement the decisions in their everyday lives.
The UN secretary general announced that the group will be co-chaired by Ghana Prime Minister Mahama and Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
Professor Muhammad Yunus, Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Ambassador Dho of Korea were already working as MDG Advocates and were invited by the Secretary General to become SDG advocates for their powerful advocacy efforts.
The new advocates invited by UN SG to join are Chinese businessman Jack Ma, Queen Mathilde of Belgium, Unilever CEO Paul Polman, Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi, pop singer Shakira, actor Forest Whittaker, British filmmaker and activist Richard Curtis, said the release.
In his remarks during the announcement Mohammad Yunus said that the world had to rethink and recreate the economic framework and institutions that had created poverty and other social problems, that these problems could be resolved permanently, and that it was necessary to involve the youth in order to achieve this.
Earlier in the day Yunus participated in a Panel on ‘Regions in Transformation : South Asia’ with the Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, and President of Asian Development Bank.
He also participated in a special breakfast panel on women's empowerment organized by Seneca women and met with Nobel Peace Prize winner from Tunisia Ouided Bouchamaoui to discuss Yunus social business programs in that country.