UN appoints advisory panel on post millennium development target date

New York, 1 Aug – (ANA) – Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his Liberian counterpart  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and British Prime Minister David Cameron  have been appointed co-chairs of a high-level panel set up by the United Nations to advise on the global development agenda beyond 2015, the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Panel will hold its first meeting at the end of next month and is expected to submit a report to the Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in the first half of 2013. The Panel is part of the Secretary-General’s post-2015 initiative mandated by the 2010 MDG Summit. Member States have called for open, inclusive consultations involving civil society, the private sector, academia and research institutions from all regions, in addition to the UN,  to advance the development agenda beyond 2015.  The work of the Panel will reflect new development challenges while also drawing on experience gained in implementing the MDGs, both in terms of results achieved and areas for improvement. The Panel’s work will be closely coordinated with that of the intergovernmental working group tasked to design Sustainable Development Goals, as agreed at the Rio +20 conference. The reports of both groups will be submitted to Member States for their further deliberations. Other members of the panel are  Fulbert Gero Amoussouga (Benin) Vanessa Petrelli Corrêa (Brazil) Yingfan Wang (China) Maria Angela Holguin (Colombia) Gisela Alonso (Cuba) Jean-Michel Severino (France) Horst Kohler (Germany) Naoto Kan (Japan) H.M. Queen Rania of Jordan (Jordan) Betty Maina (Kenya) Abhijit Banerjee (India) Andris Piebalgs (Latvia) Patricia Espinosa (Mexico) and Paul Polman (Netherlands) The rest are Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Nigeria) Elvira Nabiullina (Russian Federation)  Graça Machel (South Africa) Sung-Hwan Kim (Republic of Korea) Gunilla Carlsson (Sweden) Emilia Pires (Timor-Leste) Kadir Topbaş (Turkey) John Podesta (United States of America) Tawakel Karman (Yemen) and Amina J. Mohammed (ex officio) (ANA)

FA/ANA/1 August 2012---------