Hina urges int’l community to join hands to realize much-elusive SDGs

Abida Shaheen

Islamabad: Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar on Thursday stressed the dire need for the international community to join hands to realize the much-elusive SDGs, face the impending climate-related crises and avert the possible next pandemics.

The minister of state, addressing the Annual Meeting of the European Council for Foreign Relations in Stockholm, regretted that at a time when the world needed to confront modern challenges with a united front, it was presenting a picture of a house divided due to great power competition.

The minister of state was a keynote speaker at the Public Panel on “what the next world order could look like”.

She underscored that developing countries, in particular, felt threatened by the global power contestation.

The major reason, she explained, was that instead of bringing the world together to meet common threats, the major powers were preoccupied with dividing the world into “us” and “them” in a race for political supremacy.

The minister of state called for a competition for finding solutions to common problems faced by the international community, instead of a competition for political hegemony.

MoS Hina Rabbani Khar called for addressing the unresolved disputes and legitimate aspirations of developing countries for a more inclusive and representative world order.

She said that the liberal International order was witnessing stresses marked by unmet expectations and mistrust due to the selective application of norms and re-emergence of great power contestation.

The Annual Meeting of the ECFR provided an opportunity to present Pakistan’s perspective on the issues of regional and global importance and interact with a diverse group of European decision-makers, academics and influencers.