Indonesia Needs to Promote Acceleration of SDGs in ASEAN-EU Partnership

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Teuku Rezasyah, a lecturer in International Relations at President University, believes that Indonesia needs to promote the acceleration of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the partnership between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union. “For Indonesia, the European Union is hoped to assist us in all SDG sectors, accelerating the SDGs, because these SDGs will reach their end in 2030,” Rezasyah told ANTARA in Jakarta on Tuesday. He stated that each ASEAN member has different rates of SDG achievement. And this needs to be recognised collectively, so that each member can help one another. Meanwhile, ASEAN also needs to recognise that the European Union has many experts and research outcomes related to progress in development for achieving the SDGs. Therefore, through the ASEAN-EU partnership discussed at the 25th ASEAN-EU Ministerial Meeting (AEMM) in Brunei Darussalam on 27-28 April, Rezasyah hopes Indonesia can encourage the European Union to share its research results to accelerate SDG achievement in ASEAN. “It is hoped that they share their research results with ASEAN. Because we must advance together. It is impossible for these two regions to be said to be competing. No longer possible. We help each other,” he said. The partnership between ASEAN and the European Union is considered increasingly important amid rising global fragmentation and rivalry, including amid the increasing power of China, which has a faster development rate compared to the European Union. At the same time, countries in ASEAN, especially Indonesia, are also striving to increase their development rates that are included in the SDG points, for example, the Free Nutritious Meals (MBG) programme that is being intensively promoted by the government, which falls under SDG point number 2, namely zero hunger. “For example, SDG number 2 project is zero hunger, right? Indonesia is practising it, right? That can be connected with similar practices that have existed in Europe,” he said. Therefore, Indonesia requires the best models from the European Union in managing food. In addition, cooperation also needs to be enhanced through sharing best practices in improving the quality of education, particularly in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field, among other cooperations that need to be strengthened between ASEAN and the European Union, Rezasyah said.