A Call to Our Arab Nations To Move from the Millennium Goals and Sustainable Development to Necessary Development

The most important lesson we can learn from this global chaos is that it is not wise to continue discussing sustainable development in our order-less modern world. National duties require every decision-maker to start working on the necessary national development goals.

I have reached this conclusion during my participation in the formulation of the Millennium Goals as the head of the United Nations Information and Communications Technology Task Force (UN ICT TF), which were supposed to be achieved by 2015, followed by my 2015 participation in formulating the sustainable development goals that the world aims to achieve by 2030 as the then President of the United Nations Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (UNGAID).

I also reached this conclusion when the Millennium Development Goals were not achieved in 2015, followed by the realization of the impossibility of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030, and that it is no longer acceptable to ignore this global failure due to the collapse of the global system, which led to the absence of a proper world order.

Therefore, until a new world order is established and a global leadership imposes its standards, we must realize that it is time to turn to the necessary development goals that can only be achieved through self-sufficiency in food, medicine, and technology.

This transition is based on reason, conscience, responsibility, and duty as it is the only way to achieve equal national interests in every country in the world. Needless to say, I participated in the World Trade Organization’s Council of Experts to formulate the concept of the “Supply Chain”, which has now been extinguished due to the unilateral sanctions imposed by countries on the movement of products and services across borders, thus canceling this policy (i.e supply) that was, for us, an essential tool for sustainable development, and it became governed by the wills and decisions of unilateral states.

It is my duty to call for abandoning the market principles that recommend that we import low-cost products instead of producing them locally. This idea that international organizations and global economic experts call for has become a thing of the past. Now, the best and most useful principle for every country is self-sufficiency, not only to face sanctions or blockades, but also to avoid the consequences of interrupted supply chains.

Every country in the world, regardless of its capabilities or resources, can produce the minimum required to achieve self-security in basic food, medicines, and technologies to ensure its independence from the injustices of this world that is ruled by the “survival of the strongest” instead of “survival of the fittest”.