‘Stakes Could Not Be Higher’, Deputy Secretary-General Tells Economic and Social Council, Stressing Need to Turbocharge Full Implementation of 2030 Agenda

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s remarks at the opening of the Economic and Social Council Segment on Operational Activities for Development today: 

I continue to deeply appreciate the opportunity to join this segment — as the Deputy Secretary-General, but much more importantly as the Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group that represents over 38 agencies, funds and programmes, and does an enormous amount of work to try to fulfil those ambitions of the SDGs and many more.  Therefore, this segment really does embody the partnership needed to strengthen the UN development system. 

I would like to thank the Economic and Social Council Bureau, especially the Vice-Chair, Ambassador Szcserski, and its members for your continued engagement and leadership. I would also like to give a special welcome to our youth representative, Chelsea Antwan.  We look very much forward to hearing your voice.

The Operational Activities for Development segment of the Economic and Social Council still remains one of the most significant segments of ECOSOC.   This segment plays a vital oversight role in reviewing how the United Nations development system is delivering on the promise to support countries in delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals.

We are meeting at a pivotal moment, where the stakes could not be higher. Last year, Member States were united in the Pact for the Future and in their commitment to strengthen collective efforts to turbocharge the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

Following this momentous signal of unity, Member States adopted the 2024 Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review, the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review — a landmark resolution that sets the strategic direction for the UN development system over the next four years. 

The Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review reflects a shared ambition to build on the progress that has been achieved since the 2018 repositioning of the development system.   The 2024 Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review reaffirms the central role of sustainable development in the work of the United Nation — and, of course, the urgency of accelerating action to meet the immediate and longer-term needs of countries. 

Member States gave critical guidance to strengthen coordination across the system; challenged us to deepen transparency and accountability; and sought to breathe new life into the Economic and Social Council Operational Activities for Development Segment.

We will rise to your challenge.  And in return, we ask that you continue to deepen your engagement in this session.

The Operational Activities for Development is a critical platform for Member States to hold the system accountable for results, and to share the lessons learned, and offer guidance that helps translate policy into impact on the ground.

This segment is key to ensuring that resident coordinators have the tools and the backing they need to lead, and that UN country teams are equipped to deliver coherent support, and that development system is more strategic, efficient, effective, and results oriented. 

I would like to underscore here that resident coordinators coordination, convening and leveraging for the scale and the urgency that is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  But at the same time, the kind of support we would need for UN country teams that will have to rise to operationalize that support that is needed for our countries. 

We hope to see UN80 in the coming weeks and months playing a role in making that more efficient and effective.  Quality funding and financing continue to be significant enablers of a unified country team.  The six transformative pathways are a means of enabling an effective and strategic response in any country. 

Critical investments with a catalytic impact are needed across food systems, energy access and affordability, digital connectivity, education, jobs and social protection, and climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.  The reverberating impact of these investments are needed now more than ever. 

UN80 is a further opportunity to strengthen our work in this respect.   I look forward to your engagement throughout this week as we collectively seek to drive forward ambition on the SDGs that will leave no one behind.  Together, we have the opportunity — and we have the responsibility — to ensure that the UN development system delivers fully on the promise for people, for planet, as we work towards a safer, more sustainable and prosperous world. 

Over the course of the next year, there are further opportunities for the international community to ground multilateral ambition. 

Through the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, we seek to agree steps that will unlock large-scale SDG investment to put the goals back on track and to reform the international financial architecture to make it more inclusive and effective in dealing with the shocks and the crises.  And we are watching closely the ambitions that we hope will come out of the current Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers meeting in Canada.

The Food Systems Stocktake +4 countries will come together to discuss how to move from plans to action, unlocking strategic investments for food systems transformation across all its dimensions — jobs, nutrition, adaptation to climate change in partnership with the private sector and international financial institutions.  Our co-hosts in Italy and Ethiopia are driving this forward on the continent and beyond.

In the World Social Summit, we look to go beyond what was agreed in Copenhagen and agree to commitments to strengthen the three pillars of social development, as articulated in the SDGs.  And we look forward to seeing all of you in Doha. 

At the Thirtieth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 30) later this year, we seek to bridge the gap between Baku and Belem by agreeing on actions that can mobilize the $1.3 trillion annually in climate finance by 2035.  We will build on the updated nationally determined contribution plans presented by Member States, mainstreaming climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience plans across all sectors of the economy.  Our host, Brazil, has already begun that strategic push with getting the economies, and the green economy, effectively up and running. 

I hope that you take most out of this segment, as we will be listening and we will be taking onboard your concerns, your reflections, your ideas, asking us the hard questions, sharing your guidance, and pressing us to go even further. 

As I come out of Angola where we held a meeting of all the resident coordinators in Africa, it was evident that progress has been made, but the expectations are so much higher given the crisis that we find ourselves in.  I believe we have the tools, we have the Members States commitments and frameworks to help us navigate this. 

We are determined to work with you on this as we move forward towards achieving Agenda 2030.