UN cannot achieve goals without peace, Davutoglu says

NEW YORK

The UN's global goals to combat poverty, inequality and climate change cannot be realized without peace and security, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Sunday.

Addressing the UN General Assembly on the final day of a development summit, Davutoglu said: “Crucially, the 2030 agenda recognizes what we have been witnessing for years - that sustainable development cannot be realized without peace and security and that peace and security will be at risk without sustainable development.”

The world body adopted Friday an ambitious set of development goals to end poverty, fight social inequality and fix climate change by 2030.

Davutoglu singled out Syria as an example of a humanitarian tragedy caused by a lack of security and stability in the Middle East, resulting in Europe's largest refugee crises since World War II.

The civil war in Syria has claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2011 and created a security vacuum that has paved the way for extremist groups such as Daesh to gain a foothold in the region.

The UN refugee agency says 95 percent of the latest million Syrian refugees have gone to Turkey, which now hosts more refugees than any other country in the world.

Davutoglu said Turkey had spent almost $8 million on the refugees it hosts with very little contribution from the international community.

“We cannot reach our sustainable development goals without first addressing complex humanitarian emergencies,” he said. “That is why a stronger emphasis on humanitarian development is strongly needed.

“That is why Turkish humanitarian diplomacy combines humanitarian and development assistance programs within a collective strategy, particularly towards countries in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Turkey is to hold the World Humanitarian Summit in May next year that will seek to find new ways to tackle the world's humanitarian needs.

Davutoglu said the UN needed to engineer a “paradigm shift” to unlock the resources needed to fund sustainable development goals.