Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s opening remarks for the high-level dialogue “Ministries of Planning and Finance in Conversation: Towards greater coherence for Building Back Better and delivering the SDGs”, in Beirut today:
It is my pleasure to join you again for this important dialogue. I am pleased that we have such a broad wealth of experience represented in the policymakers and experts around the table and on screen.
We are meeting at a time of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has super-charged inequalities — both within countries and between regions. In the Arab region, COVID‑19 reversed the first signs of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And now the conflict in Ukraine brings new and cascading challenges to the region with skyrocketing prices for food, energy and other essential supplies.
Disruptions to supply chains — which were only beginning to recover from the impact of COVID-19 — are already a reality. In this region, heavily dependent on food imports, especially flour, the impact can already aggravate a situation of food insecurity for millions. As we heard from Rola [Dashti, Executive Secretary, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA)] this morning, six Arab countries import more than 40 per cent of their grain from Ukraine and Russia. And five Arab countries import more than 30 per cent of edible oil from these two countries.
Despite these multi-layered crises, however, many policymakers are still pursuing incremental and siloed approaches rather than holistic and systemic change. I was heartened this morning to hear Member States’ strong resolve and ambition to get us back on track to achieve the 2030 Agenda. And I was pleased that Member States embraced the Secretary-General’s recommendations in Our Common Agenda as opportunities to boost SDG implementation.
To achieve a sustainable and inclusive global recovery, all regions must be equally able to invest in and plan for a better future. They must be able to invest meaningfully in the real economy and build resilience against future shocks — including those brought about by the green and digital transitions. And they must place the SDGs at the centre of planning and financing strategies. I look forward to our discussion to explore how we can together outline concrete actions towards these objectives.
What solutions can we put in place to plan, implement and spend resources effectively to bolster resilience, reduce inequalities, and ensure countries can support just transitions across energy, food systems and digital access? Let me kick-start our discussion with three suggestions.
First, we need to create the fiscal space necessary for countries to invest in the SDGs. In the short term, this requires bold steps towards greater debt relief, including for vulnerable middle-income countries. To boost liquidity, we should immediately re-channel special drawing rights to countries that need them most. In the long term, we need to reform the global financial and debt architecture to level the playing field and ensure all regions can borrow, finance, and plan for the future.
This requires integrating disaster clauses into debt contracts, lowering the cost of borrowing for developing economies, and using innovative financing tools, such as the climate and SDG-debt swap mechanism pioneered by ESCWA. All public and private finance must be aligned with the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. National financing frameworks and country cooperation frameworks can play a part.
Second, we need to reassess our approach to subsidies. We must eliminate those that harm the environment while increasing those that bolster resilience. This means large-scale investments in universal social protection and job creation in the green, digital and care economies.
Third, we need to ensure women and girls are at the centre of our recovery efforts. They have faced additional challenges throughout the pandemic, and we have yet to absorb the medium- and long-term impacts on their well-being, education and economic participation.
In response to COVID‑19, 142 social assistance measures were implemented by Arab Governments, with a total investment of around $150 billion. However, only 1.2 per cent went to gender-responsive measures with women as direct beneficiaries.
If there is a silver lining to this pandemic, it is that it has shifted the goalposts of the possible. Huge investments in health systems, decent work, climate action, clean energy and sustainable development no longer seem out of reach. Resources have been unleashed, coordination among different ministries improved, and social protection coverage expanded.
To transform our world, we must transform the way we work together — as countries, as institutions and as ministries. We must find new ways of coordinating and breaking down silos to achieve inclusive and sustainable development.
I look forward to your ideas and suggestions.
