UN officials reveal how SDGs benefit people, refugees in Africa

A senior UN official has recently underscored the significance of development when it comes to the issue of displacement in Africa.

"I will be really one of those who advocate increasing investment in development, so that people will have basic service and necessities like access to education, to health care and to water and sanitation," Bience Gawanas, the Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa, said at a media roundtable conference on Africa. "We will make sure that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) benefit people in Africa, and especially those forcibly displaced people, Gawanas added.

Wafaa Saeed, deputy director of the Operations and Advocacy Division of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that "we need to make life better, in order to make people to return to their home."

By June 2018, Africa hosted 6.2 million refugees and asylum-seekers representing one-third of the world's refugee populations, and 15.5 million internally displaced persons.

The Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA), in collaboration with the African Union Commission, OCHA and other agencies, is organizing the next edition of the African Dialogue Series.

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