It is a great honour for me to address this seventy-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly, where we have once again come together as a community of nations to renew our commitment to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals.
We are meeting at a time when we have just passed through a period of tragedy brought about by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which has claimed lives all over the world. We thank God that this period is subsiding. We must praise the countries of the world for uniting to fight the pandemic up to this point, where it is on the verge of being eradicated. The development and supply of COVID-19 vaccines has proved very useful, especially with regard to prevention interventions. We also applaud the United Nations for being instrumental while working under extremely difficult conditions. It remained resolute in assisting countries, and it is safe to say we are where we are today because of its efforts. Despite those challenges, it is encouraging to think that there have been some positives to take away from that experience. In the case of Eswatini, we were compelled to develop testing laboratories and oxygen storage facilities, which are now very helpful in the fight against other health issues. We have witnessed the importance of the availability of oxygen, which has been used in saving the lives of snakebite victims and in other medical emergencies.
The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the midst of an HIV/AIDS pandemic, which we are still battling, and it affected various programmes that had been put in place. Eswatini has made great strides in the fight against HIV and AIDS. We became a shining example for the continent and the world at large after we attained the 95-95-95 UNAIDS treatment-cascade targets in 2020. We are now focused on ending the AIDS pandemic as a global health threat by 2030. That milestone would never have been possible without the support of the development partners that have been with the country since 1986 when our first AIDS case was announced.
It is unfortunate that even after COVID-19, when we were beginning to say that there was hope, we are now confronted with the conflicts that are going on all over the world. Their consequences include, among other things, a loss of life. Those conflicts and tensions have also contributed significantly to the rise in food prices globally. They are not unique to specific areas, as they persist in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. We hope to see an end to those clashes through peaceful settlements, and we must applaud the United Nations for its efforts to prevent them from escalating. Hopefully, there will be long-lasting and fruitful results emerging from the interventions of the United Nations. As we gather here in this Hall, we are all reminded of the main purpose of the Organization’s establishment, which was to reduce the tensions that lead to conflict around the world. We hope the aspirations of our forefathers will guide us in using the Organization to bring us together, so that we can resolve our differences where they exist and find lasting solutions. That will unquestionably be of great help to all humankind.
Those problems are a setback to the ongoing efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), given the negative impact of COVID-19 and the fact that various conflicts are also taking their own toll on those programmes. During the pandemic we witnessed the collapse of many economies, industry shutdowns and disrupted poverty alleviation projects that could not be implemented properly owing to the pandemic prevention measures. That meant that there was no movement of people or goods. Nevertheless, now that COVID-19 is subsiding, it is high time for all of us to once again renew our focus on the SDGs and implement them, as they will play a crucial role in helping our countries develop.
We also note the importance of the role that will have to be played by financial institutions in assisting countries in the recovery process, as most countries suffered a great deal, economically and financially, and are therefore now facing challenges in raising the resources to fund that recovery. We urge our financial institutions to remain open to receiving countries that need support for reviving their developmental programmes and to welcome their requests with sympathy for their plight in the face of the challenges they have encountered in dealing with COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. We do appreciate that in recent days we have seen the multilateral financial organizations become more welcoming to countries in need of budgetary
support. We trust that the world will continue to come together to contribute to resolving those challenges, as countries are dealing with great strains on their resources, which they will feel for some time to come.
Our theme for the Assembly at its seventy-seventh session is “A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges”. It fits very well with many of the issues we are facing in the world today. The Kingdom of Eswatini, like all other Member States, has not been immune to encounters that have heightened the pressure on our already stressed economies. They have derailed us from our pursuit of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Union Aspirations for 2063 — the Africa We Want. The theme should therefore serve to kick-start our economies towards recovery and enable us to create a sustainable future for our people. We in Eswatini are continuing our efforts to attract investment and support small and medium enterprises, as well as to create big industries. In doing so, we are aware of the need for reliable energy sources to help us achieve our investment goals, so that is one of the areas that we are working on developing as a region. We are also focused on remaining highly competitive, which is why we are ranked at the top of the World Bank’s ease of doing business index in Africa when it comes to trading across borders.
The Government has also put in place fiscal support measures to ensure that the costs of establishing businesses and their initial operating costs are drastically reduced through a range of options from fiscal to non-fiscal incentives. The creation of special economic zones has put us at an advantage to leverage our export potential through attracting export-oriented manufacturing projects. Eswatini is also well positioned as a launching pad to the African Continental Free Trade Area which seeks to boost intra-Africa trade with a market of 1.2 billion people and a combined gross domestic product of $2.2 trillion.
The country is also engaged in creating opportunities for our youth to address the issue of unemployment and poverty. There are opportunities to be explored in areas of information and communications technology, agriculture and the informal sector, to name but a few. The Kingdom of Eswatini welcomes the new programme by the United Nations Development Programme to support our youth in Africa who want to engage in entrepreneurship to mitigate the issues of poverty. This is a noble idea, and we are ready to embrace it.
Food security and ending hunger remain a priority for the Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini. We are deploying a double-pronged strategy to address this challenge by providing social safety nets for the most vulnerable groups. We have increased budget allocations, engaged in emergency food aid distribution, provided cash transfers to the elderly and vulnerable, and supported school feeding programmes and other support services for disadvantaged populations.
With regard to growth and development in agriculture, the key projects driven by these public investments include the acceleration of water harvesting and irrigation development, where an average of 1,000 hectares is developed with irrigation every year. We are also creating market-linked growth opportunities in agriculture for small and emerging farmers to produce and generate income to enhance their livelihoods.
The negative effects of climate change are compelling the Government to build more dams throughout the Kingdom for irrigation. Other initiatives include the rollout of input subsidies for staple food crops. The combination of these programmes has also increased the production of maize, our staple food, by 30 per cent for the 2021-2022 farming season, only 9 per cent short of our national target.
With global stability at stake, Africans have recognized the need to guard against opportunists who seek to take advantage of fragile economies to advance their agendas. Ours is a history littered with problems of the past and ongoing attempts to reinfiltrate our countries through covert and overt means. Eswatini is of the ardent belief that Africa must have permanent representation in the United Nations Security Council, a call made in the Ezulwini Consensus in 2005. Our position emanates from the fact that every democracy has its particularity and that societies are founded according to different cultural norms and values. We will not tire of the consideration and belated adoption of this call by the United Nations to bring in a proper perspective on the African polity.
It must be noted that, when the world faced the COVID-19 pandemic, no country was spared, which means we all needed to come together to find solutions. Unfortunately, Taiwan was unable to access some of the World Health Organization’s programmes and thereby implement the remedies that required their approval.
We continue to appeal for Taiwan to be considered for full participation in United Nations agencies. We are confident that the global village would benefit substantially from Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the United Nations system. The Kingdom of Eswatini calls upon the United Nations to make the necessary arrangements for Taiwan to significantly participate in relevant United Nations specialized agencies and mechanisms.
As I conclude, Eswatini remains confident in this global body’s ability to confront and overcome the challenges we face because most of them are human- made. We can achieve this through our full commitment to the ideals of the United Nations Charter. At this time, history is calling on each State Member of the United Nations to intensify its efforts to address our plight if we envisage triumphantly walking the path to 2030.
However, and most importantly, we must remain certain about one crucial thing: our success hinges on unity and respect for one another. Those are the key to all outcomes of this seventy-seventh session of the General Assembly. Despite our diversity, we are one big happy family. We need to give the world and our peoples hope and confidence that the United Nations has the full mandate to play its role in all global issues that affect humankind. May the Almighty God bless us all.