Order ID 6463784949 Type Essay Writer Level Masters Style APA/MLA/Harvard/Chicago Sources/References 6 Number of Pages 5-10 Pages Description/Paper Instructions Sustainable Development Goals, Afghanistan
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) campaign proposes the action plans for people’s prosperity. The United Nations explains that eradicating poverty in every dimension is a global challenge and a vital requirement for promoting the sustainable development. The SDG program provides a framework that aims to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Some aspects of SDG include stipulating missions to acknowledge all human rights, achieve a gender balance while empowering women and girls, and end the poverty in the world (United Nations Statistics Division, n.d.). These tenets of SDG form the integrated and inseparable part of the three scopes of the sustainable development that includes the economic, social, and environmental aspects.
Also, Afghanistan continues to emerge from a conflict that has continually affected the country. The country struggles to maintain, promote, and even protect the dignity and freedom of its citizens. As a result, Afghanistan has failed to meet the essential provision of a free state or also protect the local communities from hunger and violence. The SDG-responsible structure comprises of the president as the head state supported by the Council of Ministers. The Cabinet is again the immediate senior executive department that works directly with the Ministry of Economy that also acts as the SDG secretariat. In attaining the SDG, the government needs to ensure that it implements and pursues goals under the Ministry of Finance that incorporates national budgeting from the various entities.
The development and even implementation of the SDGs depend on the nature of the commitment for the Afghanistan government. In many views, the state thrives on depending economy, which means that without a commitment from the government, the implementation of the SDG program seems to be a significant challenge for the country (United Nations, 2017). Countries that have achieved the SGD program continues to conduct a kind of policy implementation with the progress of various economic sectors. Afghanistan lacks the technical capacity to make the necessary evaluation and assessments, which has a critical impact on the government functioning and delivery of various services (United Nations, 2017). The sectorial agencies of Afghanistan fail to make a realistic and accurate data baseline. The baselines have relevant to the departments assigned with the mandate to impact the various changes in the economy. As a low-income country, Afghanistan has failed to realize the ЫDG 1 which aims to eliminate poverty everywhere and the situation arises from such challenges as conflict, corruption, and debt considerations. Nonetheless, the country has made some progress towards the attainment of the MDG 1 that includes the development of different programs and initiating projects in communities to eradicate poverty.
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Progress towards the SDG 1
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to improve conditions in poor and vulnerable countries such as Afghanistan. The United Nations system supports cross-institutional collaborations by working with the World Bank in supporting poor countries (UNDP, 2015). They encourage an understanding of cross-sectorial work aligning different targets and goals. As a result, they have managed to promote the global development and advocacy in Afghanistan.
The SDG1 is part of the 2030 vision which aims at ending poverty and ensuring that people gain the access to basic commodities. The international poverty line based on the purchasing power parity
- of the US dollar is $1.90 per day (United Nations, 2017). In 2002, the world registered a significant improvement concerning a drop in the number of people living below the poverty line that moved from 26% to 13% (United Nations, 2017). However, the situation never applies to Afghanistan that remains with many people living below the poverty line. The fact that Afghanistan is among the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and that it constantly experiences conflicts prevents the country from meeting the SGD1.
Also, the conflict contributed to the increase of poverty in Afghanistan. The number of people who live below the poverty line increased from 35.8% between 2011 and 2012 to 39.1% between 2013 and 2014 (United Nations, 2017). The percentage represented 1.3 million Afghans who joined the category of people living in poverty (United Nations, 2017). The effect of armed conflict in Afghanistan is devasting and it continually weakens the government institutions in this country. In fact, the conflict reduces the economic performance and negatively impacts the employment. In this case, Afghanistan continues to experience inequality and disparity concerning the provision of public services. The worst impact of conflict in this country is that it has weakened the link between people and government institutions. As a result, this situation has seen some individuals, particularly the youths, join anti-government organizations leading to a vicious cycle of conflict in this country.
Despite the challenge Afghanistan faces due to conflicts, the government has initiated various programs to help to eliminate poverty. For instance, The Poverty Analysis and Policy Committee (PAPC) is a crucial organ in the identification of possible ways to overcome this menace. The country has constituted this committee that consists of members from all other ministries to help to develop the best mechanisms for poverty eradication (United Nations, 2017). Some pertinent areas that the team addresses include the poverty analysis as well as policy development toward the poverty eradication. Further, the Afghan Citizen Charter Project is already in place to fight poverty, particularly at the
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national level. The program-related activities entail infrastructure improvement and the delivery of social services to various communities.
Afghanistan initiated three phases to support the implementation of the SDGs. The process began with the nationalization stage, where the government contextualized targets with indicators based on the national setting. The process entailed establishing the baselines and prioritizing on annual goals for the signs. The second stage started with the alignment of national strategies, policies, and plans aimed at achieving the national targets (Browne, 2017). The implementation phase meant that the country would implement federal programs and interventions intended to achieve these targets. The process would also support monitoring, evaluation, and report of its SDGs progress.
The implementation of these programs still faces many challenges. The country remains to experience a challenge in overcoming the existing economic constraints that contribute to poverty in the nation (United Nations, n.d.). The constraints limit the probability of the country to handle the SDG 1 goals. Also, in Afghanistan regions, community members struggle with high unemployment rates and missing productivity growth resulting in the lack of innovation opportunities (United Nations, 2017). The perennial problems that affect the country also revolve around diminished growth-oriented entrepreneurship that has continued to halt the stabilization of the country. The Afghan economy continues to offer more opportunities for wealthy and well-connected individuals as the expanse of the poor (Browne, 2017). Some prioritized groups in Afghanistan include the politically-connected groups and the business wielding politicians who influence the national economic markets (Ramez et al., 2019). Therefore, Afghanistan continues to struggle with the adoption and implementation of sustainable development goals, particularly SDG1 that aims to eradicate poverty from the country.
SDG1 Implementation Challenges
The central institutional structure for Afghanistan SDGs is the government. The Government operates on a development framework that supports national planning and budgeting based on eight sectors that have a direct link to the poverty eradication. The sectors include security, education, and health (United Nations, 2017). Others encompass social protection, infrastructure, agriculture as well as economic sectors. Thus, SDG 1 operates on the eight categories to avoid creating parallel systems that would further delay the main objective of eliminating poverty everywhere in Afghanistan.
Also, Afghanistan has an economic challenge that continues to affect its growth of the sustainability thereby making it hard to deal with poverty menace. Even though the World Bank commits to allocate funds towards the development of different projects, the Afghan community continues to experience challenges in directing the funds to appropriate projects (The World Bank,
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2019). The case of severe drought affects the country which has an issue with the food insecurity (UNDP, 2019). The United Nations Assistance Mission continues to record casualty numbers of war victims. In the statistic, an estimated 1.1 million Afghans have been displaced as a result of conflicts witnessed in recent years (UNDP, 2019). The undocumented population of refugees has also affected the stability of the country which continues to mount the significant pressure on the country economics. Documented populations also have affected the sectorial institutions, in that some of the communities fail to address the risks of host communities dealing with the displaced persons.
Afghanistan has also had significant challenges in translating specific targets of the sustainability program. Even though the government has tried to implement many of the objectives and indicators, the process of nationalization has led to the slow growth of most of its industrial sectors (Qadri & Khan, 2019). The core principles of Sustainability Development Goals revolve around embracing a holistic approach to the development. The Afghanistan government continually fails to identify the challenges and commitments that require integrated solutions. In many capacities, the government has had to deal with many economic issues. The country indicates that slow SDG progress has harmed the Afghan community. In this regard, the indicators to the Afghan current SDG progress reveals without an appropriate focus on the major economic sectors, the community may never recover from the current economic turmoil and this may severely affect the realization of the goal concerning ending poverty (Ramez et al., 2019). The country also operates with multi-sectorial committees that fail to deliberate on the country priority.
Another issue that hinders the realization of the poverty eradication goal is the economic deprivation witnessed in the country. It is also a result of the social exclusion system that has severe societal consequences on the nation. A country that achieves sustainable development goals has an overall inclusive policy that continually works for the immediate population which is a moiety comprising of the citizens (Sarwar & Nicolai, 2018). Afghanistan youths prefer to join the army or the terrorist groups that consider the population to be a high asset. For many teenagers, joining the terror groups has repaying awards that can help young people to overcome economic challenges. Sustainable development goals persuade the youths to secure better educational opportunities for solving the poverty menace when they join the economic labor force. Developed countries provide the education to all opportunities that later change the workforce and this fuels their economic growths. However, Afghanistan tends to sympathize with the local warlords on the fight against the central government (Rahmani & Tytarenko, 2018). As a result, they deal with remodelers, drug traffickers, and even the drug-connected politicians who eventually affect the state. Thus, to that extent, the central government
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redirects resources and funding meant for education to fighting corruption and terrorism which consistently exacerbates the poverty issue (Rahmani & Tytarenko, 2018). In Afghanistan, even the elite is engaged in corruption and resource grabbing, which continuously results in more deep-seated social tensions.
In the last years, Afghanistan has suffered from several economic crises which have resulted in slow economic growth thereby making it impossible to eradicate poverty. In the Middle East state, several agricultural projects continue to stagger and this interferes with the commercial production of the various regions (Rahmani & Tytarenko, 2018). The lack of adequate security has also tampered with investors’ confidence since many of the oversee entrepreneurs avoid making partnerships even with the Afghanistan-based corporations. The stable implementation plan of no poverty requires a working economy that can support the employment opportunities of the locals to alleviate poverty for the immediate community. Therefore, the intensifying political uncertainties also have dampened the private sector and the confidence reflected in the current investment rate of the country.
Despite low public debt, Afghanistan may not secure substantial loans to help to fight poverty. According to the United Nations Development Program (2019), Afghanistan has a low public debt which translates to an estimated 7% of the GDP. Several post-war states have high public debts associated with the instabilities of the central government to repay the liabilities. Even in cases of the low public debt level, multinational investors tend to consider the Islamic Republic as a high-risk nation to external debt as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund note. Thus, Afghanistan continues to rely on grant financing which continues to affect the growth of an interdependence factor. In this view, the high uncertainty levels of the financing department continue to reduce the credit-to-the-private-sector aspect. Afghanistan continues to experience a weak banking system as many of the institutions operate under a credit intermediation function (UNDP, 2016). The International Monetary Fund estimates that Afghanistan’s current position is at 12.8% when compared to the overall bank assets as of the year 2018 (UNDP, 2019). The approximations also indicate that the country has the excess liquidity of banks which stands at 63% of the financial institutions (UNDP, 2019). Even though the Central Bank continues to pursue measures to facilitate the access to credit, the country continues to deteriorate when estimated in its financial capabilities. The Central Bank in Afghanistan has also set measures to expand the eligibility list of collaterals to cover the public Credit Registry. The accumulating issues of the banking industry have an impact on the process of supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. Also, the Islamic Republic employment statistics indicate that about a quarter of the labor force remains unemployed. Concerning this case, education is significant and has economic befits for developing
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countries such as Afghanistan. The issues of unemployment also continue to affect the large Afghan population significantly.
Further, the countrys employment sectors provide few employment opportunities. The Afghan population struggles to grab 80% of employment opportunities (Browne, 2017). Others resort to compromising self or own account employment, day labors or even work with no pay. The significant part of the population in Afghanistan consists of young people aged between 15 and 30 years (Browne, 2017). This population enters the labor market with minimal skills, crowding the limited industrial sectors. The country has limited development resources which do not match the population growth. Consequently, the cited cases of unemployment continue to present the challenges in reaching the SDG 1.
Approaches to Meeting the SDG1
Poor Foreign Policy Implementation
The foreign policy on the adoption and implementation of the SDG1 has a significant impact on the growth of the Afghanistan economy. The foreign policy of any given country has a considerable effect on the growth of a nation. In different capacities, a sustainability development program relies on the wiliness to incorporate the transformative change within different territories. Foreign ministries have the responsibility to ensure that they can change and even adopt a policy that works in the best interest of their government (Qadri & Khan, 2019). Afghanistan is in the Asian continent bordering China, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The Islamic republican state also closely borders Iran, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan. The Afghan location explains the geopolitical conflict factor that may affect the countries support system. China has close relations with many European countries observing the different trade agreements. Some of the states have sanctions on a country such as Afghanistan, which implies that the Islamic Republic cannot rely on China for some of the trade deals.
Also, Afghanistan has had limitations in achieving SDG 1 due to a lack of accurate data and information. The country has had an inadequate technical capacity and limited resources to deliver the SDGs. Besides, the issues of insecurity have gravely contributed to the failure of the country to meet these targets (Browne, 2017). The country opts to achieve the goal late in 2020 (Browne, 2017). However, SDGs ought to be the targets that should be already met rather than a framework for the development process, which is the case in Afghanistan.
Poor Transition Management in Afghanistan SDG 1 Approach
In developing countries, the SDGs approaches play a critical role in transitioning economic changes. Interdependences continue to play a significant role in changing the sectorial departments that
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support a developmental model for the entire community (UNDP, 2016). The weak leadership in Afghanistan continues to affect the approach to creating a cross-governmental relationship that fosters the growth of the external relationship with other countries. The reality of the matter is most prevalent in conflict-affected countries. Afghanistan lags its peers in the developmental outcomes which has a direct impact on different economic sectors. The United Nations observes that Afghanistan leads to maternal mortality when placed on a global scale. As a post-conflict state, Afghanistan continues to lack development agendas. The country continues to fall under the fragile state that requires an appropriate foreign policy (United Nations, 2017). The challenges faced in the country originate from the lack of diplomatic tools within the international policymakers. Importantly, the slow progress of the country economy is closely related to the missing systematic assessment of its few achievements and established failures.
In the 2030 Agenda, SDG 1 is a center of focus for the involved parties. Afghanistan does not understand the two principals that are majorly the prerequisites to the sustainable development approach. In the Afghanistan case, it is evident that the strategy on SDGs in the state only continues to create the conflicts and instability (Browne, 2017). Therefore, the country continues to lag in the international arena as many of the security communities do not recognize it. The United Nations resolutions emphasize on the need to sustain peace in member states. The Security Council highlights concerns about Afghanistan that continually creates a geopolitical ramification which is insufficiently reflected in the SDG process.
The demands of the United Nations also mandate the Afghanistan Government to generate a strong political will to support SDG 1. Besides, the country should adopt a sequential approach to handle the corruption issues affecting the urban region (Rahmani & Tytarenko, 2018). Some of the possible ways to manage the current crisis are to ensure that they dismantle the criminal networks and overcome the self-serving elites. SDGs policies govern the security and stability of the nation. The Afghanistan Government bears the responsibility to protect the diverse racial groups within its territory (Qadri & Khan, 2019). The challenge for the Islamic Republic is that it continues to face many security threats emerging from the Taliban-led insurgency in the Sothern and Eastern regions of the country. The presence of the illegal armed groups continues to protect the illicit drug trade which affects the security of the country. Also, the militia operates on separate leadership levels that tamper with sustainable logistics support networks. The prevalent ideology amongst Afghanistan relies on the extremist ideology despite the backward approach to the economic development. Therefore, the country thrives on two
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leadership systems, namely the Taliban regime and the Afghan government that avail resources to fighting the international community forces operating in the country.
Conclusion
Afghanistan has continued to lag in the adoption and implementation of the SDG 1 that aims to ensure no poverty in the country. The country remains chaotic with a decentralized government that has failed to offer necessary provisions to its citizens. Sustainable Development Goals require significant resources and government involvement. However, Afghanistan continues to deal with challenges of insecurity growing from the insurgency groups. The country also has high rates of economic inactivity catalyzed by high illiteracy levels all that exacerbate poverty instead of alleviating the menace. Even though Afghanistan continues to struggle to retain the current status, it remains to have a sluggish economic outlook projected by the nominal GDP at Market Prices. The high inflation rate of the country also affects the implementation of the SDG objectives reducing the country prospective approach on a global scale.
Afghanistan also failed to meet the set required minimum wage employment statistics of the United Nations employment factor that needs defines the employment factor for the youthful population. In estimations, the harsh facts in Afghanistan indicate the employment reduction for the youth. The income of the average Afghanistan families falls way below the ordinary and expected country levels. Importantly, many of the community members do not struggle to achieve the supposed economic independence. The SDGs in Afghanistan need to operate on a framework that involves every stakeholder (government and non-government organizations, the civil society, the media, and even policy research institutions) to overcome the challenges. It is also essential to revise the current framework to eliminate the ideology of reporting indicators which will mean focusing on the implementation strategies that can eliminate poverty. The government should define the specific roles for the policy and research institutions that include knowledge provision of best practices, engaging in policymaking, and evaluating the current progress towards achieving the SDG 1. A crucial role of the government is to ensure that it holds organizations accountable for their actions in implementing the poverty-related goals.
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