Stand Up for global unity against poverty

UN Millennium Campaign will partner with Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) to launch a joint movement during Stand Up 2010 on September 18.

Networks of both the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) campaign and NTB will come together to form a strong, and effective movement that will galvanise efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest through various actions of the stakeholders — partners of both parties — and the government, said the UN press release.

"It will be promoted through a carnival in Kathmandu at Tundikhel on September 18," it said adding that the two will work under the joint slogan — Tourism for Livelihood Opportunities for Poverty Alleviation.

In 2009, two million Nepalis showed solidarity and participated in the campaign. Last year, President Dr Ram Baran Yadav read a Stand Up Pledge with members of the Constituent Assembly that was followed by a concert in Tundikhel, where the pledge was read by eight Constituent Assembly members amid a variety of musical offerings like rock satsang and dohori songs.

When world leaders gather at the UN for the MDG Review Summit in September, the voices of their citizens will follow them, telling them, loudly and clearly, "We will no longer stay seated or silent in the face of poverty and broken promises to end it!"

At the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders agreed to achieve the eight MDGs in order to eradicate extreme poverty and its root causes by the year 2015. The demands and expectations of citizens around the world that they deliver on these commitments, made visible and audible throughout 2010, will culminate in the 'Stand Up 2010' mobilisation.

"Holding Stand Up the weekend before the Summit will allow us to drive our activities towards a high-profile Stand Up mobilisation with a direct link to and with the specific intention of impacting on the proceedings at the Summit itself," said the UN.