Development

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message for the eleventh Summit of the Developing-8 (D-8) Organization for Economic Cooperation, in Cairo today:

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to Parliament of Lesotho, in Maseru today:

In Haiti’s capital, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners have distributed more than 900,000 litres of water to more than 60,000 [displaced] people in 26 sites over the last week. The World Food Programme (WFP) has provided more than 95,000 hot meals to some 24,000 displaced people across four sites.

In South Sudan, the United Nations peacekeeping mission there reports that the country has launched its first national task force to combat gender-based and conflict related sexual violence, with the support of the Organization.

The just released UN Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report says that nations must dramatically increase climate adaptation efforts and urgently close the $187-359 billion per year gap that exists between adaptation finance needs and current international public adaptation finance flows.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) says that one year into the Gaza war, the humanitarian crisis has reached a catastrophic level — with unprecedented casualties, widespread destruction and severe food insecurity.

As myriad global crises spark alarming levels of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, unprecedented investments are needed to reverse this trend so as to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), speakers told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) as it took up poverty eradication, agriculture development, food security and nutrition.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative today released the 2024 Multidimensional Poverty Index, which finds that 1.1 billion people across 112 countries live in multidimensional poverty. Over half of the 1.1 billion poor (584 million) are children under the age of 18.

With only 17 per cent of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets on track, the United Nations system and Member States must enhance and coordinate efforts to rescue them, speakers told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today as it took up the Secretary-General’s reports on the state of development.

Delegates in the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today spotlighted the numerous challenges facing developing countries — such as armed conflict, climate change, poverty and food insecurity — and shared national and global initiatives aimed at safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable, as their discussion on social development continued.