NEW DELHI, 02 December 2022, (TON):  India today said it would not allow "anybody to veto" the ties with US, dismissing China's objections to the ongoing joint military exercises in Uttarakhand's Auli.

A foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters "India exercises with whomsoever it chooses to and we do not give veto to third countries on this issue.”

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the joint exercises with the US in Auli has "nothing to do with the 1993 and 1996 agreements" with China.

Islamabad, 02 December 2022, (TON): Pakistan has strongly condemned the brazen terrorist attack on civilians in a madrassa in Samangan, Afghanistan which resulted in loss of precious lives and injuries to others.

In a statement, the foreign office spokesperson said Pakistan extends its sympathies and condolences to the Afghan people.

The spokesperson said Pakistan stands in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan and the bereaved families in this moment of grief. 

DHAKA, 02 December 2022, (TON): State Minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism Mahbub Ali said “the government gives top priority to creating a positive brand image of Bangladesh highlighting the country's huge tourism potential.”

He said "creating a positive tourism brand image of Bangladesh is the top priority now towards the development of the country's tourism potentials.”

The Association of Travel Agents of Bangladesh, an apex body of travel agents of the country, organized the fair titled "Bangladesh International Travel and Tourism Expo" at Bangabandhu International Conference Center, Dhaka scheduled for Thursday to Saturday.

DHAKA, 02 December 2022, (TON): UAE Ambassador to Bangladesh Abdulla Ali ALHmoudi has said the ties between his country and Bangladesh are based on the principles of cooperation and mutual respect.

He added "the partnership between the countries and peoples reached a new height in recent years. The mutual visits of the leaders and officials of the two countries, and the ever-increasing trade, economic and cultural exchanges, are powerful indicators of the strength of bilateral relations in various fields.” 

He said "the UAE and Bangladesh have enjoyed deep-rooted historical relations since 1971, and both of our governments strengthened the bilateral relations in various sectors.”

DHAKA, 02 December 2022, (TON): Outgoing Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ito Naoki has said “he sincerely hopes that the safe, voluntary and dignified repatriation to Myanmar will happen soon.”

He said "as the crisis is turning into its sixth year, it is essential to keep the attention of the global community, while multiple emergencies have been taking place in different parts of the world.”

The envoy said Japan will continue to work toward the resolution of the Rohingya issue.

He said “education, skills development and livelihood opportunities are the critical areas of responses for the resilience of the Rohingyas.”

By Ali Husnain
Sri Lanka is a lower-middle-income country that is currently experiencing an economic crisis that threatens to erode decades of development achievements, including in poverty reduction, and considerable progress made towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite its impressive human development indicators, increased focus is needed to address food insecurity and malnutrition, increase women’s labor force participation and reduce inequality.
The demographic changes those happened in Sri Lanka were being expected to affect Sri Lanka’s health and social welfare systems in the medium term and they did as well. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicted that by 2030 one in every five people in Sri Lanka will be age 60 or older. The ongoing economic crisis have exacerbated gender inequality and worsened power imbalances, which are likely to increase as the economy continues to contract. Only 32 percent of women are economically active, compared to 72 percent of men. This inequality stems from the unequal care burden on women, which is four times higher than a man living in Sri Lanka. Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission The economic, social and health impacts of compounded vulnerabilities and risks disproportionately affect rural women, hampering their economic empowerment, food and nutrition security and the realization of their human rights.
The country strategic plan for 2023–2027 seeks to provide protective food assistance and other support as required in the short term and to restore and improve food security and nutrition by developing in-country capacity and reducing vulnerability through an integrated resilience and nutrition-sensitive approach that layers and sequences programming. The plan embodies the humanitarian development peace nexus by enabling the Government to establish stronger systems that reduce the impact of shocks while fostering gender equality, increasing the population’s ability to recover and ensuring lasting peace. The country strategic plan seeks to address immediate and medium to long term needs through a systems approach to capacity strengthening. Leveraging its comparative advantages in Sri Lanka, WFP will deliver four outcomes such as vulnerable communities in Sri Lanka meet their food, nutrition and other essential needs during and after crises. Targeted groups in Sri Lanka have improved nutrition from strengthened nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific programmes focusing on, in particular, the first 8,000 days of life. Communities in Sri Lanka have strengthened resilience and reduced vulnerability to natural hazards, climate change and other risks with improved sustainability of livelihoods And By 2027, national and sub-national institutions and stakeholders in Sri Lanka have enhanced capacity to enable adaptive and resilient food systems to improve food security and nutrition. The country strategic plan, developed in consultation with the Government and other stakeholders, is strategically aligned with the national policy framework, the United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework for 2023–2027 for Sri Lanka and the WFP strategic plan for 2022–2025. It is informed by contextual, gender and gap analyses, especially the 2021 United Nations common country analysis.

Moreover, the ruling parties and successive governments have subscribed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) feature prominently in Sri Lanka’s national development strategies. In 2017 the Sustainable Development Council was established to coordinate, facilitate, monitor, evaluate and report on the implementation of the SDGs in Sri Lanka. The country presented its first voluntary national review of its progress towards the SDGs in 2018 and the second in July 2022. According to the 2021 Sustainable Development Report and before the current crisis, Sri Lanka ranked 87 of 165 countries on the SDG Index, with a score of 68. The study reports ongoing yet uneven progress towards the SDGs, which is slowest in the areas of nutrition (SDG 2), female labour force participation (SDG 5) and equality (SDG 10) Sustainable food systems. To increase the availability of nutritious food, the Government is encouraging farmers to increase their productivity. 2018 has filled the Nutrient Gap study highlighted that 20 percent of households were unable to afford a minimum nutritious diet, with higher percentages reported in the estate sector Capacity strengthening. The Government has started to reform the social protection system, moving towards a modern, adaptive and unified system with less fragmentation and better coordination between ministries.
Moreover, the proposed new agriculture policy is seen as a way to achieve the policy Coherence needed to transform the national food system. However, policies related to food security continue to be fragmented. Similar challenges exist in relation to climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and social protection. Debt servicing has come at the expense of investment in social programmes, and official development assistance has been declining. Public–private partnerships have mostly focused on infrastructure development projects; however, they could be used to fund socioeconomic programmes. The United Nations food systems summit offered an opportunity in 2021 to renew partnerships on food security and climate resilience. The Government reaffirmed its commitment to addressing food insecurity and under nutrition at the 2021 Nutrition for Growth Summit 26 and in 2022 pledged its commitment to the global school meals coalition established at the food systems summit. Sri Lanka presented.
Government committed to reducing household food insecurity by 50 percent from the 2009 baseline; the Government also committed to reducing the prevalence of low birth weight to 12.5 percent, the prevalence of wasting to less than 5 percent and the prevalence of stunting to 10.8 percent by 2025.
Sri Lanka which is considered as low class state and underdeveloped drowned in the crises will rise up soon in the developmental stages as it has planned to work on sustainable development goals with strong determination. The internal developmental strategies have also boosted up its progress in the way of light extracting it out from the darkness.

By Usman Khan
On Monday, November 28, 2022, the United States of America delivered a further USD 3 million to Maldives in a ceremony at the Foreign Ministry. The US fresh additional assistance with the ninth amendment to the Development Objective Grant Agreement (DOAG) signed by Maldivian State Minister for Foreign Affairs and USAID Mission Director.
According to the Foreign Ministry, the additional USD 3 million will go to improve Maldives’ technical capacity to manage public finances and improve the resilience of Maldives’ economic and democratic governance. The DOAG, a landmark development cooperation agreement, was signed between the Maldives and the US on March 12, 2019.
The United States partners with the Government of Maldives to reinforce environmental resilience, implement financial and democratic improvements, and shape a robust civil society. USAID programs emphasize defending the environment, enlarging democratic governance, and firming public financial management.
Maldivian State Minister for Foreign Affairs and USAID Mission Director sign the ninth amendment to the DOAG on November 28, 2022. To date, eight amendments have been brought to this agreement, bringing the total contribution from the US to USD 25.94 million. The signing ceremony of the ninth amendment to the DOAG was witnessed by senior officials from the Foreign Ministry, the USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Asia, and officials from USAID Mission to the Maldives.
More information about the Maldives is available on the Maldives Page and from other Department of State publications and other sources listed at the end of this fact sheet. The United States established diplomatic relations with the Maldives in 1966 following its independence and has since enjoyed friendly ties. The United States has sought to support Maldives’ ongoing democratic initiatives, economic development, and social and environmental ambitions.
The United States recognizes the importance of promoting security in the Indian Ocean and has worked closely with the Maldives on a range of security-related issues, including counterterrorism. The United States and the Maldives signed the “Framework for U.S. Department of Defense-Maldives Ministry of Defense and Security Relationship” in September 2020. The U.S. Mission to Maldives, which is currently based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, operates an American Center in Male and is in the process of establishing a physical embassy in Maldives.
The U.S. foreign assistance resources aim primarily to strengthen democratic institutions, civil society, fiscal transparency, maritime security, counterterrorism, and law enforcement and above all to get Maldives support in Indo-specific.
Maldives has signed a trade and investment framework agreement with the United States and held its first meeting in October 2014, providing a forum to examine ways to enhance bilateral trade and investment. Maldives has been designated as a beneficiary country under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, under which a range of products that Maldives might seek to export would be eligible for duty-free entry to the United States. The GSP program provides an incentive for investors to produce in Maldives and export selected products duty-free to the U.S. market.
Maldives welcomes fresh foreign investment, although the ambiguity of codified law acts as a damper to new investment. Areas of opportunity for U.S. businesses include tourism, construction, and simple export-oriented manufacturing, such as garments and electrical appliance assembly. There is a shortage of local skilled labor, and most industrial labor has to be imported from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or elsewhere.
Maldives and the United States belong to a number of the same international organizations, including the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. Bilateral Representation Principal Embassy officials are listed in the Department’s Key Officers list. There is currently no Maldives Embassy in Washington, DC, but its permanent representative to the United Nations in New York is accredited currently as ambassador to the United States.

BRUSSELS, 01 December 2022, (TON): The European Union proposed to set up a U.N.-backed specialized court to investigate possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, and to use frozen Russian assets to rebuild the war-torn country.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said “in a video message that the EU will work with international partners to get the broadest international support possible for the tribunal, while continuing to support the work of the International Criminal Court.”

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, his military forces have been accused of abuses ranging from killings in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha to deadly attacks on civilian facilities, including the March 16 bombing of a theater in Mariupol that an Associated Press investigation established likely killed close to 600 people.

RIYADH, 01 December 2022, (TON): Saudi Minister of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing Majid Al-Hogail met Korean Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Won Hee-ryong as part of his Asian tour that began in Seoul.

The ministers discussed frameworks for enhancing cooperation in the municipal, housing and smart-city sectors, the importance of activating the executive program, and the exchange of experiences in a way that would serve the two countries.

Al-Hogail lauded the progress of the nations’ relations, the cooperation between them, and the advantages that resulted from the formation of strategic alliances and partnerships.

RIYADH, 01 December 2022, (TON): The Kingdom’s ministry said “Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met with his Kuwaiti counterpart Sheikh Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, and his accompanying delegation, during his official visit to the capital, Riyadh.”

During the meeting, the two sides stressed the importance of strengthening the joint action process between the two countries, in implementation of the directives of King Salman and Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, in a way that translates the strong and well-established relations between both countries, and achieves the aspirations of the two peoples toward further progress and prosperity, the ministry said in a statement.

Prince Faisal held an official dinner banquet in honor of the Kuwaiti Foreign Minister and his delegation.