World leaders have adopted a set of development goals to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. At the UN, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to increase her country’s budget for development amidst the refugee crisis.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to eradicate extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, provide quality education to all and achieve economic growth by 2030. World leaders passed the ambitious agenda on Friday, which was the result of years of consultations with governments and civil society, during a high-level summit just before the week-long United Nations (UN) General Assembly marking the 70th anniversary of the UN.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for global partnership to achieve development goals, and pledged to increase Germany’s budget for development.
“Each and every one of us should work, and must work, to implement the agenda, so that people all over the world can live a life of dignity,” Merkel said.
Germany will stand by its obligation to allocate 0.7% of its gross domestic product (GDP) to finance development, and will also increase its development “substantially”, Merkel announced at the UN.
Addressing the refugee crisis, the German Chancellor underlined that the causes forcing people to flee their home countries have to be tackled. Millions of refugees were fleeing “raw terror and violence”. Merkel stressed that peace was a “key pre-requisite” for development.
Germany expects about 800,000 asylum applications in 2015 – according to some figures, that number could be as high as 1 million.
The German government and regional states have agreed on a package of measures on dealing with the mass influx of refugees. More money will flow to each state, depending on how many refugees arrive. Each of the federal states will receive €670 (about $751) per asylum seeker, per month.
On Saturday, Merkel is due to visit the Ground Zero memorial, dedicated to the terror attack on 11 September 2001 in New York.
das/lw (dpa, AFP)
