SAARC member states, Myanmar gather for achieving SDGs in Dhaka

Speakers from the member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation or SAARC and Myanmar will discuss on Satruday ways to better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a special focus on tobacco control campaign.

IPU President Saber Hossain Chowdhury of Bangladesh stressed the need for collective efforts to ensure sustainable development across South Asia.

"We also need collective efforts for controlling tobacco consumption in the region."

Speakers from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanks will attend the summit. However, speaker from SAARC member Afghanistan is absent from the meeting.

In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expired at the end of 2015. The SDGs consist of 17 goals and 169 targets.

Inter-Parliament Union (IPU) in collaboration with the Bangladesh Parliament and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has been organizing the two-day summit.

In South Asia, the estimated number of tobacco users is 384 million, which accounts for over a third (34.8 percent) of the total tobacco users in the world. Endit