VP calls on UN to better organise aid for island nations

Vice President Dr Mohamed Waheed has called for the UN to implement a formal and transparent system for supporting small island developing states.

Dr Waheed addressed world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit in New York yesterday, and noted the challenges the Maldives would face following its graduation from the UN list of Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

The Vice President said a better organised system of UN support for SIDS was the answer to those challenges.

“There needs to be a far better organized, more efficient, more targeted, and more measurable system of United Nations support for Small Island Developing States”, said the Vice President, observing that the country had already achieved five out of the five out of the eight MDGs, the only country to do so in South Asia.

Dr Waheed observed “significant progress” in the areas of poverty eradication, primary education, child mortality and the combating of health and disease, but said the government was struggling to consolidate democracy and promote human rights and rule of law.

He stressed that promoting human rights, decentralization of government and administration, privatization, redistribution, promoting small and medium enterprises and competition were the foundations of government policy.

But he said the government had to address the challenges against these policies by the “powerful vested interests that once controlled the country.”