Premier's award for sustainable development ceremony on Friday

New York, Sep. 22 (BNA): The His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa Award for Sustainable Development will be presented during a grand ceremony organized by Bahrain at the United Nations headquarters in New York on September 23. The ceremony, on the sidelines of the 71st UN General Assembly session, will be under the theme "The Sustainable Development Goals: a universal push to transform our world" in the presence of high level participants in the General Assembly session, permanent representatives to the United Nations and Senior United Nations officials. Professor Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka , Member of Parliament for Muleba South, (CCM), Tanzania, former Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, former UN Under-Secretary and immediate former Executive Director of UN-habitat, will be bestowed with the "His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa Award for Sustainable Development" in recognition of her achievements which meet the criteria of the Award’s objectives of achieving development projects by individuals and institutions and succeeding in providing creative solutions that contribute to achieving sustainable development. Professor Tibaijuka was selected in recognition of her role and contributions, to achieving urban and sustainable development, in addition to her concerted effort in consolidating cooperation among various countries across the world, which resulted in her receiving awards and certificates from governmental, international and academic agencies. The "HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa Award for Sustainable Development" is consistent with HRH the Prime Minister’s vision to achieve sustainable development inline with the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 adopted by world leaders during the September 2015 UN Sustainable Development Summit. It aims at enhancing international cooperation, through the exchange and transfer of experiences and lessons learned. By launching the Award, HRH the Prime Minister encourages the international community to shoulder its responsibilities towards achieving sustainable development, especially in the least developed countries. The "His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa Award for Sustainable Development" was first announced in Geneva in July 2007 during a ceremony in which HRH the Prime Minister was bestowed with the Prestigious 2006 Special Citation of the Habitat Scroll of Honor Award from the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. The inaugural winner of the Award was "The Green Brigade" Project in Burkina Faso in 2008. His Royal Highness presented the Award to the winners at the Fourth Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF4) held in Nanking, China. The project was aimed at improving the city environment of Ouagadougou by providing for secure employment to a group of 1200 women. The second winner of HRH’s award was the Brazilian Bento Rubião Foundation for their "Right to Land and Right to Housing" programmes in 2010. These programmes are aimed at ensuring the right of the poor to dignified housing by providing technical assistance for housing construction through mutual aid and participatory processes