Trade can help put UN Sustainable Development Goals back on track

Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of World Trade Organization (WTO) said at the UN’s High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development lats week, that trade has an essential role to play in efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and revive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Trade played an important role in the historic development achievements and poverty reduction we saw during the thirty years before COVID-19. And trade will be at the centre of our efforts to end the pandemic,” she said. “Trade is a necessary ingredient in building back a stronger and more inclusive global economy, and reviving progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.”

“Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”

 “Reducing inequalities of all kinds is at the core of the SDGs,” she noted. “But the pandemic has widened inequalities inside households, within national economies, and across countries.” 

“At the global level, we see growing evidence of a K-shaped economic recovery,” she said and noted that ”…in June, while 1.1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered worldwide — a welcome 44% increase compared to May — only 15 million of those doses, or less than 1.4%, were administered in Africa. As of 2 July, people in low-income countries had received 1.3 doses per 100 residents, compared to nearly 83 doses per 100 in developed countries”.