President Ashraf Ghani on Monday participated at Online Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement Contact Group in response to COVID-19.
The meeting with theme; “united against COVID-19”, which was via teleconference was presided over by president of Republic of Azerbaijan and current chair of the NAM, Mr. Ilham Aliyev.
President Ghani said, we offer deep appreciation for the medical profession in their heroic efforts and support the efforts of the global scientific community to win the race against Covid-19 in developing a vaccine. Our calling as public servants and our duty as heads of state and government make it imperative to think beyond the pain of the moment and to create the necessary alignments at the local, national, regional and global levels to meet the expectations of our fellow human beings and fellow citizens for providing relief, recovery and ushering of normalcy. To honor the spirit of non-alignment is to align the multilateral and national forms of cooperation and solidarity against Covid-19 and to resolve to prevent the collective gains of the movement against poverty, hunger, deprivation, inequality and instability. The specter of Covid-19 is haunting the humanity. We need aligned action to marshal the true sense of urgency to overcome it.
Afghanistan
To enable us to lead and manage the response in Afghanistan, we identified five phases: acknowledgement; diffusion; adversity; relief; and recovery, following the premise that the duration of each phase, the scale and scope of its impact and the response of the people will be uncertain. Intensive consultations enabled us to map our societal vulnerabilities and chart the expectations of our fellow citizens from their state. Working closely with actors in the market, we focused on ensuring of food security and coordination with our neighbors near and far to ensure the functioning of supply-chains and value chains. Using technology to engage public servants and elected officials across all levels of government enabled us to understand the expectations and to reallocate and reprogram resources to focus on public awareness, relief, recovery, regional connectivity and global partnerships and solidarity. As listing all the countries, organizations and individuals that have helped us will require time; let me express gratitude for the assistance rendered to us in this global and regional hour of need. As we are still in the phases of awareness and diffusion, we do not want to make predictions but focus all our efforts on possible adversity and relief and recovery.
War, unfortunately, casts a long shadow over focused efforts against Covid-19, for the Taliban have yet to accept our offer of a humanitarian ceasefire. We ask all members of the non-aligned movement to call upon the Taliban to cease the senseless violence and engage in the political process to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan and the region.
We, the Afghan people, who have suffered for 40 years from the games of polarization and proxy conflict, will like to transform our country into a platform of regional and global cooperation. Join us in this noble quest.
