Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina urged the Commonwealth to take a pro-active role in removing inequalities and impediments to ensure justice in its member states with genuine global partnership for their real progress.
Stressing the importance of peace and genuine democracy for development, she said, “Increasing inequality of growth, impediments in the mobility of finances, goods and services, decreasing the role of the states in creating employments and under representation in global decision making process needs to be rectified with genuine global partnership based on justice and equal voice for real progress of the developing partners”.
The Prime Minister on Friday was addressing the Executive Session of the CHOGM, 2013 as the first speaker on the special CHOGM theme ‘Growth with Equity: Inclusive Development’ at the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Memorial Exhibition Centre in Colombo.
Hasina expressed her belief that the Commonwealth needs to take a pro-active role in advancing inclusive development in the member states as it has experience in social development, reports UNB.
“We, therefore, endorse the suggestions in the concept paper that the Commonwealth establish a facilitator mechanism at political level to address the challenges of MDGs and for implementing any successor framework of the MDGs,” she added.
Noting that for the inclusive development of a nation, peace is vital and it is only achievable with the prevalence of justice, the Prime Minister said justice, however, prevails when there is genuine democracy and inclusive empowerment of all people, irrespective of race, religion, caste or creed, and particularly of the voiceless, and the marginalized deprived.
In this context, she mentioned her peace model titled ‘Peoples’ Empowerment and Development: A Peace Model’ which was presented at the 66th session of the UNGA and adopted later.
The model contains six mutually reinforcing peace multipliers — eradication of poverty and hunger; reduction of inequality; mitigation of deprivation, inclusion of excluded people; acceleration of human development and elimination of terrorism.
“I feel that this model can also substantially contribute to any discourse of the Commonwealth on the concept of inclusive development,” she suggested.
Hasina thanked the government of Australia for its sound leadership during the last two years since the last CHOGM was held in Perth two years ago.
The Prime Minister also expressed deep appreciation to the Secretary General of Commonwealth for his diligent efforts in promoting democracy and development across the commonwealth.
