Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministerial Meeting was held in Kigali, Rwanda. The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is taking place after four years, making it the first such Commonwealth gathering in the post Pandemic period. During the meeting, issues of common concern including sustainable and inclusive development, post-Covid recovery and democracy, peace and governance came under discussion. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar participated in the meeting and during her address she called for recognizing democracy, rule of law, good governance and respect for human rights as bedrocks of peace and stability within and among the nations. The 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, adopted nearly seven years ago remained an important agenda of discussion during the meeting. The world achieves half of the SDG’s goals, but the COVID-19 health pandemic and its dire social and economic fallout, or the war in Ukraine slow down the achievement of SDGs goals completely. These two acute crises add to the devastation wrought by the ongoing triple environmental crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and to the reality that we are not doing what we need to do long before the pandemic hit are also the reasons for our failure. Disease ignores borders, conflict in one region contributes to hunger in another, and environmental degradation and unsustainable consumption patterns threaten the lives and livelihoods of all. Inequality has deepened, within and among countries. While developed countries can borrow for their recoveries at ultra-low interest rates, most developing countries could not afford to do the same. These countries continue to face increasingly high costs of lending and have had to cut their education and health budgets and other SDG investments. Each of these crises is a wake-up call, reminding us that we must act together in our fully globalized and interdependent world. It is a need of the hour for the global community to work together for the benefit of human society and achieve SDGs goals.
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