UN Appoints Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi As Sustainable Development Goals Advocate

The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi as one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals Advocates.

Satyarathi's appointment is being hailed as a crucial step to support the outreach on critical issues like combatting child labour, reported The Times of India.

Highlighting the fact that COVID-19 has derailed the global progress made so far in attaining the 2030 vision, Guterres said that the choices that are taken today would act as the deciding factor in either leading the countries to their goal of building a 'greener and safer world' or would lead to a 'future of perpetual crisis'.

160 Million In Child Labour

The 17 Advocates are influential and robust figures who can use their voices and expertise to create awareness for a better world and call for scalable action to achieve the SDGs by 2030.

Speaking to TOI, Kailash Satyaarthi said, "We need urgent measures to get governments to focus on the most marginalised children. With 160 million now in child labour, and millions more are at risk due to the impacts of COVID-19, this increase derails the world's promise to eliminate child labour by 2025 as promised in UN SDG 8.7 and therefore puts the entire 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at risk."

He further explained that the following two years will be crucial for children, and there is a need for a Social Protection Fund for children of low-income countries. Human trafficking is rising in India, and there is no need to allocate more funds for child protection services.

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