Minister for Trade and Development Joe Costello has urged the international community to step up efforts to tackle hunger and malnutrition as the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches.
The minister pledged that Ireland would build on the important progress made during the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union this year.
Speaking at the Institute for International and European Affairs in Dublin recently in the first of a series of talks in development issues, Minister Costello detailed Ireland’s key achievements in the area of international development.
He also set out Irish and EU objectives to guide work in the lead-up to 2015, when the international community will agree a framework to replace the Millennium Development Goals.
“Tackling global hunger, and in particular the scourge of under-nutrition, has been a central focus of the Irish presidency,” he said. “While as a global community, we have made some good progress under the MDGs, the reality is that 1 billion people still live in extreme poverty and 870 million people live with hunger.”
Minister Costello said the EU Foreign Affairs Council on Development in May had reached important conclusions on the EU’s approach to development in the years ahead.
“Honouring our pledges will help us to ensure that we can realise the vision of a world free from hunger and under-nutrition in our lifetime, a world where all children get the chance to survive, grow, and reach their full potential.”
Minister Costello also set out the key elements of Ireland’s new national policy on development, which was launched under the title ‘One World, One Future’.
