Queen Rania takes part in launch of action/2015

AMMAN — As a member of the UN secretary general’s high-level advisory panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, Her Majesty Queen Rania, along with a number of high profile activists, addressed a letter to world leaders urging them to create positive change at the international level to secure a better and safer future for the world.

The campaign, backed by a coalition of over 1,000 organisations in more than 120 countries, will call upon world leaders to build on the growing momentum and take key decisions to eradicate poverty, tackle inequality, and prevent dangerous climate change, according to a statement from Her Majesty’s office. 

To this purpose, the United Nations will hold two crucial summits this year: the UN Special Summit on Sustainable Development and the UN Climate Change Conference.

The list of co-signatories, constituting numerous high-profile activists, includes Mary Robinson, president of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice; Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Malala Yousafzai, co-founder of the Malala Fund and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate; UN Foundation Chairman Ted Turner; and Professor Jeffery Sachs, director of the Earth Institute.

A new calculation released by the action/2015 coalition shows that, even using relatively conservative scenarios, the number of people living in extreme poverty — on less than $1.25 a day — could be reduced dramatically from over a billion to 360 million by 2030. 

The same calculation revealed that about 4 per cent of the global population would live in extreme poverty, (compared to 17 per cent today) if critical policy choices on poverty investment, inequality and climate change are made this year and implemented thereafter.

In 2013, Queen Rania had also joined leaders from civil society, research institutes and academia from Arab countries in a two-day regional workshop in Amman to discuss the Post-2015 Development Priorities for the Arab world.