ISLAMABAD: Senator Sania Nishtar has underlined the necessity for commitment from world leaders to border policies for socioeconomic recovery, decent job creation, social protection and poverty eradication to beat the crisis caused by Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Sania was speaking through video link at the UN General Assembly’s side meeting on “Jobs and Social Protection for Poverty Eradication — Financing for Development within the Era of Covid-19 and Beyond”. She represented Pakistan at the meeting also attended by the heads of state and government.
Presenting Pakistan’s perspective, Dr Sania said the poorest people and poorest countries had been hit the toughest by the pandemic, adding that the “world is now on a divergent path of recovery”.
“In Pakistan we’ve been lucky thus far , as we’ve been ready to contain the health and economic impacts of the pandemic through our policy of ‘smart lockdowns’ and social protection,” she said.
“Our economy is back on a healthy growth trajectory. And, Pakistan’s social protection programme, Ehsaas, is recognised as a worldwide model.”
Dr Sania urged the international community to market systemic and structural reforms within the global economic architecture. She presented the subsequent points: there’s got to expand the financial access of developing countries through a more equitable distribution of IMF quotas; lowering the value of personal loans to developing countries; halting and reversing illicit financial flows from developing countries; installing an equitable international tax regime; there’s need for enormous mobilisation of public and personal investment to facilitate the transition to green and digital economies; there’s got to reform the planet trade regime to enable developing countries to expand their exports to global markets on a preferential basis; and crises caused by the coronavirus be used as a chance to plan policies for social protection.
Dr Sania also talked about the thought presented jointly by Nigeria, Costa Rica , Turkey and Pakistan, with the cooperation of International Bank for Reconstruction and Development , for the establishment of universal system of social protection and knowledge platform. She urged each and each country to hitch the worldwide platform to include social protection as a policy instrument to “build back better”.
