USP hosts second round of debate on the Post 2015 Development Agenda
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 | The winning team at the debate
that argued against the inclusion of human rights and culture in the post 2015 development agenda. |
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The School of Government, Development and International Affairs at the University of the South Pacific in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) held the second round of debate on “Pacific Perspectives on the Post 2015 Development Agenda” at the Laucala Campus on 17 October 2012.
The event was to mark the International Day for Eradication of Poverty as two student teams from the Faculty of Business and Economics debated on the topic, “Human Rights and culture should be integrated in the post 2015 development agenda.”
This formed the second round of debates on the post 2015 development agenda held at the University, following the first one in May this year.
The teams were judged on their delivery and quality of argument by a panel of judges composed of; Resina Katafono (Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat), Ahmed Moustafa (UNDP Pacific Centre), David Smith (UN ESCAP) and Nilesh Prakash (Government of Fiji).
The student team arguing for the motion made a strong case that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were based on human rights and there was no reason to exclude them from the next set of development goals.
The team cited Articles 25 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and said that the eight MDGs were inspired from these.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of eight goals agreed to by world leaders in 2000 that aim to free humanity from extreme poverty, diseases and illiteracy.
On the issue of culture, the team argued that all cultures espoused the common values of peace, harmony and sharing.
The team made up of undergraduate students said these should be integrated in the post 2015 development agenda to ensure an equitable sharing of resources which would address poverty and improve the well-being of people.
However, the winning team who argued against the motion made a stronger case regarding the measurability of human rights targets and the conflict between human rights and culture.
The team highlighted that that one of the biggest tensions between human rights and culture was that human rights were about individual rights whereas culture and cultural entitlements belonged collectively to a group of people.
The team also argued that including culture in the post 2015 development agenda would create confusion given the diversity of cultures globally.
They further argued that if human rights indicators were included in the post 2015 development agenda, there were no concrete means of measuring these and emphasized that including human rights targets and culture in the post 2015 development agenda would water down the urgency of fighting poverty.
The MDGs will come to an end in 2015 and the debate on how to establish new global development goals is now underway.
The Chief Guest, Resident Representative and UN Resident Coordinator for Fiji, Knut Ostby stated that the new set of goals will need to be broad and deal with social, economic and environmental issues.
“The new set of global development targets and indicators would signify an even more historic shift, embracing a more balanced and equal world, where we all have things to learn and in which all countries, crucially, are still developing,” Mr Ostby explained.
For this to become a reality, Mr Ostby added, “we depend on a healthy and inclusive global debate to create goals that serves the interests of all peoples.”
The debate was attended by students and academics at USP, development professionals and members of the general public.
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