It is my honour and privilege to address this Hall for the first time as Deputy Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea and on behalf of my Prime Minister, the Honourable James Marape. and the Government and the people of Papua New Guinea. I congratulate the President of the General Assembly and the Government and the people of Trinidad and Tobago on his successful election to preside over the General Assembly’s work at its seventy-eighth session. With his extensive diplomatic experience and the unique perspective of a fellow small island developing State, his chosen theme of peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability, with multilateralism at its core, resonates well with us. I wish him well in carrying out his mandate and assure him of our full support. I would also like to thank his predecessor. His Excellency Mr. Csaba Korosi. for ably leading our collective work over the previous year in a challenging environment. We wish him well in his future endeavours. Let me also extend our appreciation to the Secretary-General for his strategic foresight and dynamic and action-oriented leadership to shape a better, peaceful, prosperous and shared future for humankind and the planet through the primacy of multilateral cooperation at the United Nations.
Today we meet against the global backdrop of development indices at the national and international levels that all point in the wrong direction, and the road ahead is not easy for all of us. That therefore requires our individual and collective partnerships for our people, prosperity and planet. For Papua New Guinea, we continue to face a daunting situation vis-a-vis building back better in the aftermath of the coronavirus disease pandemic. That is compounded by the worsening climate crisis, the adverse socioeconomic and supply-chain-related impacts of the unacceptable war waged against Ukraine, the financial and economic burdens arising from the existing unfair and archaic international financial system and our own domestic challenges, which include economic growth, debt sustainability, meeting our people’s basic needs and providing social protection.
However, we are encouraged by the world coming together here to discuss and explore opportunities and solutions to surmount our shared development challenges. Mere rhetorical talkfests and hollow sounding promises are what we must avoid. Rather, let us use this opportunity to ensure that we put in place concrete, results-oriented and workable ways and means that will enable us to meet our citizens’ basic needs in an effective, timely and sustained manner and achieve our countries’ development aspirations while protecting our environment.
My Government has decided to take bold, decisive and pragmatic leadership and ownership in order to address our own development challenges head-on in critical areas such as economic growth, health services, education, the law and justice sector and infrastructure, including information and communications technology for e-Government. We have also taken such an approach to dealing with external shocks to our country and our people. Those issues are now being addressed through Papua New Guinea’s new five-year Medium- Term Development Plan Four for 2023-2027. which we launched in July, with a theme of national prosperity through growing the economy and 12 strategic priority areas of focus for our national development. The plan also clearly identifies the measures, including funding, that will be needed to attain our development priorities and aspirations.
We are embarking on growing our economy from its current level of $31 billion per year to $57 billion by 2030. and we aim to create an additional 1 million jobs countrywide. That will be catalysed by the diversification of our economy from the non-renewable energy sector, which is driven by mining, oil and gas. to complementary support from the renewables sector, including agriculture, fisheries, the service sector and concrete support for our small and medium-sized enterprises in the informal and formal sectors. It will also entail providing the necessary infrastructure, together with investment in education and health and special economic zones, with incentives for productive investment, to propel our country forward.
The national development plan, together with our overall long-term Vision 2050 strategic development road map. serve as the cornerstone for the future we want. They will deliver for us on improving our people’s quality of life, enhancing the country’s prosperity, peace and security and promoting better environmental protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation, in addition to enabling Papua New Guinea to become an upper-middle-income country by 2030 and to improve by 2050 our global ranking on the Human Development Index.
Our Medium-Term Development Plan Four also integrates and reaffirms my country’s strong commitment to accelerating and delivering on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which currently remains a serious concern for us because of the domestic impact of multiple global crises and our own national challenges. We are determined to ensure that our new development road map is a springboard for the progressive implementation of the 2030 Agenda in a more comprehensive, focused, resourceful and accountable manner.
Papua New Guinea has prioritized health as a core national development agenda, as spelled out in our new fourth Medium-Term Development Plan and the National Health Plan for 2021 to 2030. supported by relevant policies. It underlines our commitment to universal health coverage and quality and affordable health care, by focusing on people and their environment, engaging with social partners and sectors and increasing access to quality and affordable health services. That reaffirmed commitment followed our 2020 national review of the health-care system, which highlighted the need for the review and reform of policies and laws on health issues in the country and for a stronger health system in order to meet our people’s basic health needs and achieve universal health coverage by 2030. The review also underscored the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach for strengthening existing partnerships and building new ones in order to mobilize resources, appropriate technologies and financial support. including capacity-building and training opportunities, with a view to delivering the health outcomes we need for our people and our country, as well as the necessity of ensuring effective governance and accountability in the health sector, including transparency and proper oversight in procurement procedures and processes and delivery mechanisms, which are vital for eliminating overhead costs and malpractice in the health sector.
We continue to face major health-care-related challenges in the prevention and control of communicable and noncommunicable diseases, and in the area of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health. Tuberculosis also remains a serious concern in our country, and we have continued to witness increasing lifestyle- and cancer-related deaths in recent years. However, the health review and reforms and strategic privatization have made positive impacts, including by transforming our national health system and focusing on training more medical staff, including doctors and nurses. However, much more work remains to be done. We therefore welcome development partnership in the health sector, which is crucial for us given our limitations in terms of health-related experts and institutional and systemic capacity and resources. Those limitations continue to hinder the effective delivery of health care and services to our people, especially the rural majority. We look forward to harnessing the outcomes of the three health-related high-level meetings that just concluded in order to support our recovery from the pandemic and to deliver on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 in the country.
The importance of partnerships for national development, including on the SDGs — especially in a challenging global situation such as the one we face today — cannot be overstated. We therefore welcome genuine and durable partnerships from all stakeholders at all levels in supporting our development priorities and aspirations, including for the SDGs. In our view, however, development partnerships should be on a basis of equality, instead of being approached through a donor-recipient lens that undervalues the contributions of recipient countries. That will help build trust and confidence and enhance effective development partnership.
For Papua New Guinea, strategic development partnership is recognized in pillar 12 of our new Medium-Term Development Plan Four. We call on all our development partners to ensure that their official development assistance to Papua New Guinea is
aligned, under that framework, with the priorities set out in our own national development agenda, thereby averting unnecessary parallel efforts, and we call for cost-effective partnerships so that mutually beneficial outcomes may be achieved. Let me also use this occasion to acknowledge and thank all our valued development partners for their constructive partnerships and support for my country’s development efforts. We look forward to further strengthening our cooperative relations going forward.
Financing for development remains a serious challenge for us. as it is for many other developing countries, including in the aftermath of the pandemic. The growing divide between countries that can access affordable financing for development and those that cannot is a serious concern that must be addressed swiftly, if we are genuine about leaving no one behind. We also note the outcomes of the high-level meeting on financing for development and the SDG Summit, held at the level of Heads of State and Government earlier this week, and we strongly support the Secretary- General’s call for a $500 billion annual SDG stimulus to support developing countries. That call is most timely and relevant, given the challenging development circumstances that the world currently faces. If realized, gaining access to such funding support for developing States should be at speed, at scale and less onerous.
My country will need approximately $26 billion over the next five years in order to grow our national economy to reach our development aspiration of an annual economy of $57 billion, taking us progressively into the future and enabling us to deliver on our SDG commitment. According to the International Monetary Fund and other pundits. Papua New Guinea is rated as a high debt risk given our debt-to - gross-domestic-product (GDP) ratio. We recognize that concern, but we need to fund our development framework and its effective implementation in order to cater to the demands of our growing population.
We are taking on the leadership and ownership of our domestic-resource mobilization, including financing our development priorities, through measures such as tax reform and enhanced internal revenue collection; strengthening governance laws and policies to halt illicit financial flows; addressing systemic issues regarding foreign exchange; reviewing and revising our domestic laws and policies to ensure that our natural-resources development in the extractive industry is on fair, just and equitable terms; incentivizing public-private partnerships and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in the informal and formal sectors. That has enabled us to provide our core funding for development, complemented by a small fraction of external financial support from our development partners. We are also working with the International Monetary Fund and other bilateral development partners to move from a deficit budget to a more balanced one in order to cushion the impact of debt servicing on the delivery of our development needs.
We must ensure that the financial resources needed to advance our national development agenda, including for the SDGs. are accessible, affordable and delivered on a sustained, predictable basis for countries to access. We also welcome development financing partnerships through debt-for-nature swaps as an important tool for addressing our debt issues while conserving our natural ecosystems. We cannot afford to sacrifice our peoples’ development needs by merely conserving our natural resources without appropriate incentives to cater to their needs.
Let me also underscore that it is not enough to demand that countries fix their domestic systems to support their development financing. It is also crucial that we effectively and urgently address the existing shortcomings of the international financial system that continue to be a bane of the financing-for-development needs of developing countries like my own. We therefore join other countries and the Secretary-General in calling for urgent and comprehensive reform of the international financial architecture in order to address the economic and financial challenges facing developing nations, especially small island developing States like Papua New Guinea. We further call on the international financial institutions and development partners to use the final report and recommendations of the High-Level Panel on the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index as a tool to take adequate account in their decision-making of the key factors of vulnerability, such as the adverse effects of climate change and natural disasters, rather than relying on GDP or gross national income per capita as the sole measure of a country’s development. We also strongly support the Bridgetown Initiative 2.0 as part of reforming the global financial system in order to improve the response to the climate crisis and specific development challenges, including access to affordable financing and debt relief.
One of my country’s ongoing concerns in the context of financing for development is about the unintended consequences arising from anti-money-laundering laws. For a small economy that is primarily rural and cash-based, such laws impede development growth in my country. We need to ensure that the application of one-size-fits-all money-laundering laws does not continue to be a hindrance to the economic growth and sustainable development of small developing countries such as my own. However, that does not imply a derogation of our duties in upholding the rule of law but rather the importance of ensuring that the financing we need for our national development does not become a victim of such laws.
The ongoing extreme and increasingly tragic weather and slow-onset events that have multiplied across the world — which the Secretary-General has aptly described as the era of global boiling — have emphasized the critical need for all of us to confront and address the climate crisis swiftly. From our highland regions to the coastal lowlands and offshore areas in our island communities, the ravages of the climate crisis — as seen in natural disasters, droughts, sea level rise and food insecurity and their impact on our economy — have continued unabated, despite our negligible greenhouse-gas emissions. That provided a backdrop to my country’s own second national climate summit, held last week in our capital with our development partners, on what we must do going forward, nationally and with other stakeholders. We applaud the Secretary-General’s strong and dedicated leadership on climate change, including at the Climate Ambition Summit held earlier this week. We also commend the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, the incoming and outgoing Chairs of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, on the ministerial meeting held on loss and damage, and we look forward to further engaging on that at COP 28.
Let me reiterate that Papua New Guinea’s position, like that of many of our fellow Pacific island countries, is that climate change is a key priority for us. as it remains the single greatest existential threat to the lives, livelihoods, security and well-being of our people. The critical importance and urgency of limiting global warming to 1.5°C through rapid, deep and sustained reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions cannot be overstated. It is critical to the survival of our smaller island nations in the Pacific. That is why Papua New Guinea strongly supported the Assembly’s adoption in March of its landmark resolution 77/276. submitted by our Melanesian neighbour. Vanuatu, on an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on climate change, and we look forward to its outcome. As home to 7 per cent of the world’s biodiversity. Papua New Guinea has an important role in conserving it. and our evolving national plans, policies, legislation and partnerships on climate change underscore that strong commitment. Again, that is reflected in our new fourth Medium-Term Development Plan and our strategic priority area 10 on climate change and the protection of the natural environment.
Papua New Guinea is indeed pleased to note that we have made much progress nationally on the climate-change front, which we take pride in. given our efforts to implement our targets under our nationally determined contributions so far. At the Climate Ambition Summit. Papua New Guinea announced its national commitments towards the 1.5°C global temperature goal and for climate justice. In brief, those included our milestone achievement in June 2022 of our 2050 net-zero target; the completion and launching earlier this year of our 2022-2030 national adaptation plan on climate-resilient agriculture, infrastructure and transport and health-sector responsiveness to climate-sensitive diseases; and our political commitments to using our marine and terrestrial natural resources to address climate change, including for a just transition to renewable energy.
We therefore call once again call, first, on high- carbon-emitting States and developed economies to do much better.
Secondly, developed countries must urgently deliver on their climate-finance commitment of $100 billion per year and ensure that the distribution of those funds is equitable, accessible and timely.
Thirdly, we urge international financial institutions and development partners, including the Green Climate Fund, to ensure that countries like mine have timely access to climate finance for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage in order to accomplish a just transition and ensure resilience to the effects of climate change.
Fourthly, we welcome international support for investments in the downstream processing of our natural resources, with a view to making the transformation we need in order to further support our enhanced climate ambition to achieve the global temperature goal and climate justice. At the Pacific regional level. Papua New Guinea urges the international community to contribute to the Pacific Resilience Facility — a regional financing facility set up to address disasters and climate-change threats on our Blue Pacific continent — and thanks our development partners who have contributed to it.
As a maritime nation. Papua New Guinea’s commitment to protecting and sustainably using the oceans and seas and their resources remains steadfast. Our fourth Medium-Term Development Plan, under strategic priority area 10. on climate change and protection of the natural environment, underscores that point. Not only does the ocean serve as a vital carbon sink, but it is also our main source of economic benefits, revenue generation and daily sustenance, providing food and income for our people and communities. As an example, our waters supply 18 per cent of the global tuna catch and 15 per cent of the global tuna trade.
We therefore strongly supported and welcomed the milestone adoption in June this year of the new global Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). We are pleased to have contributed to ensuring that areas important to us — such as high-seas pockets, extended continental shelves, rights to fisheries, capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology — were covered in the treaty. The BBNJ treaty also complements our own national protected areas and ocean policies, as well as our regional 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. We thank Singapore for its strategic and able leadership in presiding over the process, and we also commend the international community for rallying to support the BBNJ treaty after nearly two decades of intensive negotiations. We look forward to its early implementation and are therefore encouraged and impressed by the high number of countries that signed the treaty four days ago at the United Nations treaty event. We commend and congratulate them. Papua New Guinea will sign the new BBNJ treaty once our domestic procedural and legal processes are completed.
Papua New Guinea supports the convening of the next United Nations Ocean Conference, on SDG 14. to be led by France and Costa Rica. We are also supportive of the global efforts for a new binding global instrument on plastic pollution to further protect our marine ecosystem and will do our part to ensure its successful conclusion and eventual implementation. And as an integral part of our stewardship of the ocean and seas. 16 days ago my Government hosted the eighth biennial Pacific Tuna Forum, with the support of our fellow Pacific countries, regional and subregional organizations, the private sector and academia. We discussed the current status of the tuna industry and its sustainability in our region.
Like many other small island developing States. Papua New Guinea is increasingly concerned about the rise in sea levels related to climate change. Sea level rise is threatening not only the lives and livelihoods of our coastal communities and the country’s land territories, with consequent economic and other losses, but more fundamentally, the human rights of those of our people who are affected by it. The existing international law does not address that serious concern. We welcome the ongoing important work of the International Law Commission on the issue, to which we are committed to contributing further. In view of that. Papua New Guinea, together with our fellow members of the Pacific Islands Forum, is advancing efforts for another landmark Forum leaders’ declaration on statehood and the protection of people in the face of climate -change -related sea level rise. We look forward to our Forum leaders’ adoption of it later this year. We call on our development partners to work closely with us in equal partnership to further strengthen the protection and sustainable use of the ocean and seas.
At a time of challenging global and national circumstances, and given the evolving multiple crises everywhere, the protection and promotion of human rights, particularly for women and girls and those in vulnerable situations, must remain central for the international community. Papua New Guinea has a strong commitment to that important issue, which we demonstrated most recently in strategic priority area 11 of our fourth Medium-Term Development Plan, on population, youth and women’s empowerment. It demands that we increase the gender parity index for women in education, employment and business, combat incidents of gender-based violence and quadruple the number of women in leadership. Those priority activities will require an investment of approximately $50 million to deliver the much-needed results by 2027.
We are also continuing to work through our bipartisan parliamentary committee on gender-based violence, led by seven members of Parliament with the welcome and valuable support and partnership of the European Union and the United Nations system, particularly UN-Women. the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Development Programme under the Spotlight Initiative, which was launched in March 2020. Through an evidence-based approach, it addresses the unequal power relations between men and women with a focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
We have made good progress in areas such as reforming laws and policies and the justice system; health- and community-sector services; policing, medical and socio-psychological services; accessible legal support services; and shelters for the survivors of gender-based violence. However, much more remains to be done, and we are committed to doing our part going forward. We are also working with the United Nations human rights treaty bodies on our outstanding report on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. We thank our development partners in those efforts and urge others to join us in strengthening human rights in general and the rights of our women and girls more specifically.
The urgency of the need for a New Agenda for Peace, as called for by the Secretary-General in Our Common Agenda (A/75/982). is timely, and its importance for world peace and security cannot be overstated. Papua New Guinea strongly supports the Secretary-General’s call, given the sobering and increasingly worrisome disrespect that some States have shown for international law. including the Charter of the United Nations; the geopolitical tensions and divides; simmering and unresolved conflicts and associated human rights violations; escalating nuclear-weapon threats; and mistrust between and within countries. Without peace and security, our development aspirations under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and our respective development frameworks will be that much more difficult to achieve. That is a recipe for a catastrophic outcome that none of us want.
Never again must we repeat the horrors of the two world wars. We are seriously concerned about moves by certain countries towards the use of nuclear weapons. Such threats are unacceptable and to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. It is incumbent on us all to rally together in peaceful dialogue and in our common humanity, under the banner of the United Nations, to responsibly address all of those issues.
For my country, peace and security issues are a priority that is addressed through the law-and-justice sector of our Medium-Term Development Plan in strategic priority areas 5 and 6. Our strong commitment to peace and security has enabled us to increase funding and investment for capacity-building and training in this sector. For us. our founding foreign policy of being a friend to all and an enemy of none continues to guide us in the conduct of our foreign relations. Economic, trade and friendly relations with all countries are in our national interest. We are not interested in taking sides.
Papua New Guinea has also learned the importance of peace by peaceful means from its own internal situations. It is in that spirit that we continue to engage in our Bougainville peace process, which remains a high priority for our country. It continues to be addressed within the parameters of our Constitution and the mutually agreed road map for the peace process, which is capable of delivering peaceful and lasting political solutions for us. We are grateful for the United Nations system’s continuing valuable and constructive support, including through the Secretary-General’s Peace-building Fund and other development partners, to the Bougainville peace process and the new initiatives in two other parts of our country.
With regard to reform of the United Nations, we are supportive of efforts towards meaningful reform, such as the revitalization of the General Assembly and the intergovernmental negotiations process for reforming the Security Council, in order to address today’s realities and be more accountable for the greater good of all. However, we cannot afford lengthy and inconclusive processes such as we have seen in the Security Council intergovernmental negotiations. We must do much better.
Before I conclude, as a SIDS, we recognize the important efforts towards a SIDS-specific programme of action for the next decade and the convening of the fourth International Conference on SIDS in Antigua and Barbuda in May 2024. We join other SIDS in calling on development partners and the international community for assistance, including with funding, to support SIDS in charting their path forward to resilient prosperity and the future we want.
Lastly. I reaffirm Papua New Guinea’s commitment to doing its part in upholding the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations as a sovereign State equal to other nations. May God bless all of us and the United Nations.