Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus has called upon the world leaders to use the power of the youth, technology and social business to help achieve millennium development goals (MDGs) in all countries.
“We cannot take the chance to let the MDGs fail in any country,” he told a gathering on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York on Wednesday.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon convened the MDG Advocacy Group meeting at the UN headquarters.
Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser, first lady of Qatar, and Yunus were invited to outline the role of the Group towards achieving the MDGs set by the world leaders in 2001.
President of the General Assembly Prof Joseph Deiss of Switzerland chaired the meeting.
Yunus termed the MDGs the most important decisions ever taken on the basis of global consensus, to change the quality of lives of the world’s poor.
He suggested bringing young people of the world together with technology and social business to ensure that the goals are achieved across the globe, according to a statement of Yunus Centre released yesterday.
Social business is a non-dividend business model that could make up for a missing link in the existing economic theories that are fundamentally flawed and unable to deal with issues like financial, food and energy crises, said Yunus.
Yunus, who was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his fight against poverty, also urged the UN to get ready for the next level of MDGs where the world would set the target to eradicate poverty from every where.
On June 23 this year, Ban Ki-moon announced the establishment of the advocacy group of eminent persons to drum up global support towards achieving the eight MDGs by their target date of 2015.
