Sri Lanka being committed to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 is now on a mission to strengthen democracy, fundamental rights, reconciliation and development for lasting peace, freedom and national integration.
Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake in his Budget Speech in 2017 said the government will set in programmes that will lay tremendous emphasis on social inclusion and sustainability in economic development and a commitment to achieve the UN SDGs by 2030 to ensure shelter, safe drinking water, and improved living standards for all.
 Irakli Khodeli |
The Programme Specialist at the UNESCO regional office in Jakarta, Irakli Khodeli, in an interview with the Daily News, on a recent visit to Sri Lanka said social inclusion was one of the most important goals included in the SDGs and added that strengthening social inclusion was vital for a country to ensure sustainable development, lasting peace, and reconciliation. Khodeli is also engaged in promoting social inclusion through public policies in the ASEAN region, in cooperation with the relevant stakeholders – National governments, civil society organisations, Universities, and Research Centres.
Excerpts of the Interview:
Q: What is the reason for your visit to Sri Lanka?
A: For the first time in Sri Lanka, an “Ethical Teachers” training course was introduced to advance the quality of ethics education by building professional capacities of ethical teachers in the country and the wider South Asian region. This is for mostly at the university level.
It is based on the understanding of bio ethics and was mostly taught in the medical and law facilities as an additional course. But now it has suddenly become a requirement.
Q: What is ethics education?
A: Ethics education is not something that you can teach like you teach biology or physics. It is complex and it has to make the students understand the value of ethics in complex situations. Many countries have shown interest in this including Sri Lanka. The professors or PhD students who intend to teach ethics are part of the course.
Q: You are also engaged in promoting social inclusion. What is it and how does it fit into the SDGs?
A: Anything and everything under the sun seems to have been included in the goals. But if you were to find one important thing in it, that would be social inclusion.
There are 17 goals and goal 16 (promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels), is specifically dedicated to social inclusion. But other SDGs are also indirectly related to it. Promoting equality within the country as well as between the countries is also taken into consideration.
The word inclusiveness is part and parcel of the 2030 agenda. It is important to note that this is in contrast to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Growth of a country was the highlight of those goals. The reason why inclusiveness is given the higher priority is that we have realised that the gap between the have and the have not has been increased and that keeps widening. A lot of people were pulled out of poverty
through MDGs but at the same time, the gap between the societies widened. Unequal societies lead to social pressures and stabilities.
The world has understood that you have to consider how the benefits of the economic growth should be distributed in society that nobody is left behind.
Q: Why is social inclusion so important?
A: Social inclusion is also a matter of criticism. When talking about MDGs, it is easy to define. But it is not easy to measure social inclusion. Matters related to social inclusion deal with complexities and unpredictability.
At UNESCO, we are trying to bring in the knowledge related to social inclusion to the policymakers.
We are also working together with the policymakers to make them understand what is social inclusion and the good practices that can be implemented. Measuring is always done with statistics, data and evidence. We are making progress.
If you look at the 2030 agenda, one of the vital things highlighted is the social inclusion. It is important within as well as outside the country. This is contrast to the MDGs, which focused mostly on the growth of a country.
Unequal societies lead to violence and other chaos.
So, the world has realised that you have to consider the values of social inclusion. It is also vital for the sustainable growth of a country.
Q: It is important to deal with the policymakers in order to implement the initiatives. What are the challenges faced when dealing with the policymakers in general?
A: There are two major challenges. First is the evidence. It is very hard to collect evidence to measure inclusion. It is much easier for the governments to act on certain political commitments. Evidence for social inclusion becomes difficult as it is hard to identify what is the type of evidence that we are looking for as it is fragmented often.
There is evidence but it is collected by different institutions, ministries and government agencies. When they collect evidence, the most vulnerable and disadvantage part of population didn’t figure into this evidence. It is hard to detect, and that is the reason why it is very important to design data and evidence collection in a way that captures the needs of the most destitute as well.
Another challenge is how to procedurally engage all stakeholders in the programme. It is important to note that social inclusion is not only the aim but is it also a process. And it has been proven that if you don’t follow the process you will not have a suitable end result.
You will not have a social inclusive policy in education, for an example, if you don’t have a social inclusive policy formulating and designing it. If you don’t ask the people who are affected by this policy, we are not going to know what their problem is. Cost of decision making increases with the number of people involved in it. Sometimes, the policies are not made in a very inclusive manner and it is driven by political considerations. It is a challenging when it comes to making policies that are optimally inclusive for all stakeholders. UNESCO is currently working with that.
Q: Generally, are governments supportive towards such initiatives?
A: I think governments are increasingly conscious of the needs to promote social inclusion. It really goes to the foundation of the stability of the country to have a social inclusive society. I cannot name a country where the government is not aware that less social inclusion you have, the more unstable the government will be. Therefore, your own standing as the government will be affected. Even authoritarian governments seek to know what people think because if you avoid the population that is destitute and vulnerable, you will be facing unrest in the long run.
Governments do care about the SDGs and many have taken initiatives to internalise them. And governments feel ownership of this. They are also trying to align their development plans to the SDGs. One cannot be true to the SDGs if he is not true to social inclusion.
Q: What is your opinion on the development of sustainable science and livelihoods with global changes in climate?
A: I would like to answer that question in the perspective of social and human sciences. Sustainability science is a inter disciplinary emerging field that helps to focus on social and environmental problems of future generations while addressing social problems like poverty, making sure that we don’t deplete the large support systems for tomorrow.
Sustainability science is about brining science for the benefit of people. It is like putting human face to science. In this design, you also have to include the local government, as at the end, it will be the government’s responsibility to enact the decisions. You have to include universities, research centres and knowledge producers where they can share vital information. Also it should involve private sector as they are also part of the problem.
This inclusive approach is to identify the problem and solve it. It is also important to consider the role of values and ethics. Now we are turning towards science to deal with the serious problems we are facing in terms of climate change and other environmental problems. We need science to address the problems we have created.
Q: When talking about social inclusion, do you think social exclusion is also rapidly increasing among the people?
A: Social inclusion and exclusion go hand in hand with each other. It is the vulnerable population that have been socially excluded.
Q: Language is one of the vital aspects of social inclusion. Sri Lanka also faced a 30-year-long war. Currently in the phase of reconciliation, one of the major gaps that still need to be filled is the language. How important is language for social inclusion?
A: Language relates to social inclusion and cultural diversity. We have 6,000 languages in the world and that shows the tremendous cultural diversity among human beings. People should embrace the difference. Diversity can be a big strength of a society. Many countries have more than one official language other than citizens of that country speak. It is possible to have strong multi-lingual societies.
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