A young visionary and activist Eritrean Meron Semedar has been appearing on a number of international events and discussions representing Eritrea and Africa. On september 11, Meron (along with other seven representatives from different corners of the world) did a live dialogue with Mr. Annan on the topic of Young People’s Priorities for the Post-2015 Global Development Goals.

The Kofi Annan Dialogue Live is an unprecedented serious of online discussions between Kofi Annan and dynamic young leaders around the world. Broadcasted live on YouTube, Mr. Annan hopes that these discussions will highlight the views of the young generation, bring attention to the activities they are engaged in and eventually to bring about positive changes in local communities, and empower them to be effective leaders.

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established following the Millennium Development Summit of the United Nations in 2000. All 189 United Nations member states and many international organizations have agreed to achieve these goals by the year 2015. Currently the UN finds itself preparing for the post 2015 goals.

When the mic was given to Meron, he started by reflecting how the dictatorial regime is doing in fulfilling the MDG. In his discussion with Mr. Annan, he stipulated that Eritrea which is 22 years old since independence is among the very few African countries that is on the pace to achieve six out of the eight Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015. However it is worth viewing the cost of achieving those goals as every citizen is stuck in an indefinite national slavery. Meron continues to explain that most Eritrean Youth have been going through hopelessness for the past decade due to the failure of the current government. The failure by the government not to allow the youth to take leadership positions in the country’s development and alienating them from becoming a productive citizens also led to exodus. Meron highlighted that estimated 3000 to 4000 young Eritrean’s migrate every month in search of basic human rights and freedom out of a country with an estimated population of 4.5 million.

In his live dialogue with Mr. Annan, Meron discussed that, the most pressing priorities in the development of Eritrea are: implementing the constitution (rule of law), forming political reforms, allowing freedom of speech, assembly, association, press, demonstration, persecution and planting an honest, responsive, transparent, and inclusive government. Meron believes these priorities will help Eritrea achieve a good foundation for sustainable development.

Meron as a representative of his country Eritrea and the African continent gave some suggestion to Mr. Annan on what should be included in the upcoming MDG’s after collecting some inputs from young African youth. These include:

1. Redistribution of income gained from country’s natural resources into developing the nation. Meron lamented that the failure in doing so by many African governments that resulted in misusing Africa’s resources hence African resources have never been used to uplift African people out of poverty.
2. Regional partnership for exchanging resources, which Meron believes that this would enhance peace, prosperity and development between neighboring nations.
3. Free access of information to all citizens. Meron stipulated the greater need of internet and telecommunication needs in many parts of Africa.
4. Last but not least Meron described Youth unemployment and empowerment to be taken seriously and to find solutions.

In his response to Meron’s concerns, Mr Annan agreed and responded saying that

“Africa’s resources can be used to help improve development and growth in Africa, but first of all they have to manage the process transparently and avoid corrupt practices, to sign agreement with multinational cooperation that gives them fair return for the resources that are extracted from their country and we(Africa) need to improve intra-African trade so that we can trade with each other and figures and studies have indicated that if we can improve intra-African trade which is very low at the moment we can within the next ten years improve trade among us by about 250 to 300 Billion dollars.”

According to Mr Anan:

“some of the issues you raised the governance and the political issues in your country can only be tackled through the people of Eritrea forming civil societies, making civil societies organization to put pressure on their leaders and government to do the right, I know the situation in Eritrea is very difficult both in terms of politics and economics and that is why you are exposed to migration, but to tackle it you need strong social society organizations otherwise the leaders and the politicians are not going to give you any attention.”

Meron believes that young people can become more effective in the implementation process of the MDG’s by taking on a leadership positions, they also need to start own initiative in making at least one goal successful in their community and take on any challenge they face with an open mind and turn it into an opportunity.

Finaly Mr. Annan vowed that he will take the dialogue that he had with all the young people on the panel to the current United Nations Secretary General (His Excellency Ban Ki Moon) to be considered for the post 2015 MDG’s.

Follow the Event on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smBq2ucdt08&width=200&height=200

Tesfagabir Berhe Tesfu (George)

Durban/South Africa