Varsity students to attend forum at UN headquarters in
New York.
By
Correspondent Paul Mabeja, Dodoma
The Guardian
22nd April 2015
The
University of Dodoma (UDOM).
Students from the University of Dodoma (UDOM) will
later this year attend a forum on formulation of the Post 2015 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDG) to be held at the United Nation headquarters in the
United States.
The students
will be selected from those who recently participated in the ‘Post- 2015
Consensus International Youth Forum’ which was held at the varsity in
collaboration with the UN-based Copenhagen Consensus Centre (CCC).
The forum
was meant to collect continental ideas for the formulation of the said global
development agenda.
Dr Paul
Mushi from the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) who chaired the forum here
yesterday said they have already submitted video clips to the UN that show
students’ contribution at the forum.
He said the
youth forum is a platform created by the Post 2015 consensus to enable young
people of between 18 and 30 years to present their views on the development of
the MDGs to the world, media, decision makers and national governments.
“Post 2015
youth forum gave youth the chance to present their views on development
targets, making use of experts’ economic analyses and cost-benefit ratios,
judgment on what are the most important priorities for the world and more,” he
cited.
He
said during the course of the forum, participants read newspaper articles on
various topics based on academic research papers and discussed what the
proposed targets mean for the world over the next 15 years.
“The students will use benefit-cost
rations as the basis for their judgment and their rating. The benefit
cost-ratio says how much social, economic and environmental benefits are
retuned for every dollar spent,” he explained. He said views gathered
from the youth will be taken back to the Copenhagen Consensus Centre (CCC) for
further consideration.
For his
part, Co-Facilitator of the forum, Assistant Lecturer at UDOM (College of
Education), Majiyd Suru said most students demonstrated intellectual maturity
in the course of the Forum.
He said they
covered some of the target areas like air pollution, biodiversity,
climate change, conflict and violence, date for development, education, energy,
food security, gender equality, governance and institutions, heath system and
chronic diseases to mention but a few.
He said in
the past, university students were not involved in prioritising the global
goals for their future, as such opportunities were only granted to ministry
officials at the central level of the country’s governance.
But with
increased participation of youth in the prioritisation of the goals, they will
no longer remain as implementers, but part of the changing processes of the
crucial global goals, particularly in economics, education and the social
equality.
“This forum
has given opportunity to the youth to be exposed to future global agendas
worldwide and hence, stand a chance to disseminate relevant educative
information to their counterparts through the use of media,” he said.
“The Forum
plays pivotal role in getting relevant and focused goals for the African
continent because the context differs,” he added. South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria
and Senegal are among countries that have previously participated in the
debate.
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