Leave no one behind — those four words are the promise at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. That is the principle to which this United Nations body is committed. But today, more than three and a half years after that commitment was made, smaller nations and younger democracies around the world already feel that was an empty promise. Today not only do smaller nations and younger democracies, such as Malawi, still feel that they have been left behind, but they feel much farther behind than they were before.
For instance, we all know that climate change is a global problem that will never be solved unless all nations solve it together. Yet, months after Malawi and its Sustainable Development Goal gains were set backwards by two tropical storms in quick succession, we have been left behind. We all know that pandemics are a global problem that will never be solved unless all nations solve it together. Yet, in the roll-out of vaccines and the application of travel restrictions, we have been left behind.
We all know that regional insecurity is a global problem that will never be solved unless all nations solve it together. Yet, in terms of participation in Security Council decisions that affect us, we have been left behind. We all know that food shortage is a global problem that will never be solved until all nations solve it together. Yet, in the allocation of international facilities for agro-based and debt-distressed economies, we have been left behind.
As a result of our collective negligence, the global economy is now a house on fire. Yet we continue to use evacuation methods that rush some nations out to safety while leaving the rest of us behind to fend for ourselves in the burning building. However, if we are truly one United Nations family, then leaving no one behind must be practiced, not just preached. If we are truly one United Nations family, we must reject any attempts to politicize human suffering by lobbying us to refuse the help of those some find politically offensive.
If we are truly one United Nations family, we must abandon political posturing and welcome more helping hands in resolving the problems that the permanent members of the Security Council have sometimes created and failed to solve alone, namely, the failure to stop environmental degradation, prevent unjust wars, lift unsustainable debt burdens, prevent food insecurity and contain pandemics.
How do we get back on track? As I see it, with so many left behind, the only thing to do is to concentrate United Nations support on the most vulnerable who are lagging behind so that they can catch up. Malawi stands ready to do its part in using any new support it receives to make up for lost ground and catch up.
On addressing the current global food crisis, Malawi is ready to catch up, having just joined the Feed the Future initiative, which will give us access to new financing in the next few years to use Malawi’s vast arable land and large volumes of fresh water to develop mega farms that will feed the world and lift millions of our farmers out of subsistence living. We are delighted that many private sector investors are flocking to us to join the agricultural revolution that is coming to Malawi, as well as investors in mining, who know that the recent discovery in Malawi of the largest deposit of rutile in the world means that Malawi’s economic rise is imminent.
On climate change mitigation and adaptation, Malawi is ready to catch up. With the twenty-seventh session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held imminently in Sharm-El-Sheikh, we call for action on the pledges that have already been made so that Malawi and other least developed countries (LDCs) can build resilience to climate-change induced events, such as floods, droughts, pests and cyclones — all projected to become more frequent and more severe.
Those disasters reverse years of developmental gains. Cyclones Ana and Gombe alone destroyed strategic infrastructure and community assets and displaced thousands of households. One fifth of our people are currently at risk of acute food shortage — 3.6 million Malawians face hunger from next month until March. As we prepare to deploy food assistance from our strategic reserves, we welcome members’ support through early-warning systems for generating and managing climate data to reduce the impact of disasters, as well as technical and financial capacity-building on weather data analysis, modelling and forecasting to address the barriers faced by farmers in accessing useful information.
Our ongoing institutionalization of our national climate change fund should help in that regard, as will other measures for making climate financing predictable. Although Malawi and other least developed countries contribute the least to climate change, we are committed to the global climate agenda. Malawi’s own ambition is to cut carbon emissions by half before the year 2040, and we therefore call for support for our efforts to transition to clean and green energy.
On dealing with the evolving challenge of the coronavirus disease, Malawi is again ready to catch up. Crucial to that effort is obtaining access to vaccines, and members’ support to our efforts to catch up in that area will strengthen our vaccine-delivery systems in general.
However, the critical need for us is to strengthen health systems more broadly in order to build resilience against future pandemics, which calls for investment in health infrastructure and research. In that context, the news that six African States have been chosen to produce messenger RNA vaccines in Africa is music to my ears. I am proud of Malawi’s advocacy of that approach, as well as Malawi’s role as a co-pioneer of An Accord for a Healthier World, which was announced by Pfizer in Davos four months ago and aims to bring quality medicines to 1.2 billion people in low- income countries.
Those action-oriented partnerships are examples of the importance of Sustainable Development Goal 17 in the advancement of all other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We own the SDGs fully, and Malawi has so far undertaken two voluntary national reviews since 2020 in order to strengthen its national ownership of the SDGs. However, we see global private-public partnerships as essential to reclaiming the gains we have lost towards achieving the SDGs in the recent months of global crises.
It is because of our collaborative approach that we are on track to implement 60 per cent of the Goals. We are now in the process of reviewing the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for the period 2024 to 2028 so that it is responsive to national development plans, linked to the delivery of the SDGs. In that spirit of partnership, we also plan to make full use of the Doha Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2022-2031 in order to catch up even more on achieving the SDGs.
Speaking of LDCs, it is my pleasure as Chair to invite members to the fifth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries, to be held in Doha in March 2023, where even more partnerships will be forged around creating solutions for vulnerable countries.
One problem in desperate need of a solution for the most vulnerable LDCs is the unsustainable debt levels and distress they bear. It is not for nothing that the scriptures, which are regarded as sacred in more than half the world, describe unsustainable debt as a form of slavery. As leaders of generations past worked together to end old forms of slavery, we must also work together to end this new form.
Recently, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund called on the world’s major lenders to show leadership by relieving vulnerable countries of the debts that shackle them, because even loans that were given and received in good faith have become unsustainable in the recent and current climate of relentless and unforeseen external shocks.
I therefore join her in reiterating that call and commend the People’s Republic of China for leading by example by fulfilling the pledge it made at last year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to forgive interest- free loans owed by 17 African countries. Let that be the beginning of breaking the chains holding vulnerable countries back, not the end, because when we say that we are leaving no one behind, that is one way to put our money where our mouth is.
Let me hasten to add that, as President of a country that stands to benefit from debt-relief measures, I do not regard my country as entitled to such. In fact, I am fully committed to being held accountable for the responsible use of those lifejackets. I recognize that we must also prove ourselves worthy of such assistance by using it to cushion our citizens against the worsening financial volatility, trade cost and human suffering that debt and other external factors cause.
Indeed, there must be no Member State in our midst that is beyond scrutiny or exempt from accountability. For that to become a reality, United States President Biden’s recent call for the United Nations family to defend the rights of smaller nations as equals of larger ones must not only be applauded, but it must be uploaded.
As African Member States, we do not wish to gather here next year with no progress made on the African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus, which demands two permanent seats with veto power and five non-permanent seats for Africa. Following the strong
signal of support from the Government of the United States, we expect to see that matter on its way to the Security Council to be proposed, discussed and decided.
That is the United Nations we want. That is the United Nations the world needs — a reformed United Nations that practices the equality and democracy it preaches; a reformed United Nations that is not constantly polarized by nuclear Powers, stuck in Cold War mindsets; a reformed United Nations that uses its multilateral muscle to give equal attention to the interlocking issues of public health, food insecurity, climate change and conflict, regardless of where they emerge or whom they affect; a reformed United Nations that gives equal weight to all States Members that give it meaning, not just those that give it money. That is because we are one humankind, facing the same storm in the same boat.
In that spirit of one humankind, let me conclude by expressing my country’s deepest condolences to the British royal family and to the people and the Government of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, who was laid to rest on the eve of the Assembly’s high- level debate week.
I thank Mr. Csaba Korosi, President of the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session, for this opportunity, and I congratulate him on his election, as I wish outgoing President Abdulla Shahid the very best in his continued service to humankind and the cause of leaving no one behind.