It is my distinguished honour and pleasure on my own behalf and that of my 8 million plus people and Government, to join other global leaders in
addressing the General Assembly today I also take this time to extend our condolences to families in the countries represented here, my own included, that have lost someone owing to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and our get-well wishes to those who are sick. I also pay tribute to the global frontline workers and service personnel who have toiled over and beyond the call of duty to care for those who are sick and vulnerable, expressly our medical workers.
As this is my first attendance at this global forum, I am greatly humbled and warmly congratulate you, Mr. President, and the Government and the people of Maldives on your mandate, particularly as a small island developing State, to lead our collective work this session.
The current situation is compounded by the intensifying and worrisome global climate crisis, accelerated biodiversity losses and other humanitarian, peace, security and trade-related issues, which pose great challenges to the way we now manage our regional and global socioeconomic affairs.
Despite all those challenges, Mr. President, we are heartened by your foresight, commitment and leadership under your “Presidency of hope” vision and theme. We unequivocally pledge to support and partner you during your tenure as President of this forum.
I also thank your predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Volkan Bozkir, and the delegation of Turkey for his excellent leadership and outstanding work this past year under, of course, very challenging circumstances. We wish him and his family all the very best.
I want to place on record Papua New Guinea’s deep appreciation of and support for our friend the Secretary-General, His Excellency Antonio Guterres, for his continuing bold and decisive leadership of our work insofar as the United Nations mandate and Charter is concerned. His unanimous reappointment for another term starting next year is indeed a clear demonstration of the confidence and trust that the States Members of the United Nations, including my own country, have in his work ethic and strong leadership, which the Organization needs during this very challenging period. I thank him for his frank and sobering assessment of the challenges before us and his proposals on how we can confront those challenges practically and at the multilateral level.
I bring to you all greetings from Papua New Guinea, in the peaceful blue Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean, or the Blue Pacific continent, is home to marine and terrestrial biodiversity and is where the most vulnerable small island States are being exposed to the global threats of a rising sea level due to climate change and the health and associated economic woes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. I speak for Papua New Guinea, of course, but the issues will no doubt resonate with the small island States, including those of my Pacific brothers and sisters.
I believe, Mr. President, that you, too, will have some appreciation of what those issues are, because you yourself come from a small island State.
Our oceanic homes and our way of life are intertwined with the coastal ecosystem in its natural equilibrium. That equilibrium is now affected by human influence, not of the making of our small island States. But we are the first victims and the most affected because of our inherent vulnerabilities.
As we convene and continue to speak on climate change in our twenty-first century forums such as the General Assembly Hall, I wish to remind us all that little children and their families are living amid the seas of the earth in fear and uncertainty of what their future will be like, because in their lifetime they have seen their safe, arable land lost due to sea-level rise and are watching as the structures that their lives are built upon slip away.
It is time for the big carbon emitters of planet Earth to own up and apologize to the small island States and all other victims of climate change, and I make no apologies for that statement.
Today I make a call on all of us, especially to the big carbon-emitting nations, which are now enjoying their national economic transformations through industrialization, to pause, think and take responsibility in order to save our planet. I am comforted by the recent commitments made by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson on their respective nations’ intention to respond better to tackling climate-change issues.
I have also heard China’s positive response and note that it is good that we are now uniting to save our planet.
We have a collective responsibility to take action to save Earth. When astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on 20 July 1969, he would have looked back in the direction from whence he came, and I assume that he would not have seen his beloved home State, the United States of America; he would have seen his home planet — Planet Earth.
It is to ensure the survival of Earth that we must now take action. I want to make this statement: enough talk. We have to take action that is commensurate with the volume of emissions from our industries. The leaders of the big carbon-emitting nations must now lead the global effort in rebalancing the environmental equilibrium. That is a hard ask but is really a necessary call for leadership and champions.
I point to all nations on earth to embrace the unity of humankind in order to save our planet, because what happens in Africa will and does affect Europe; whatever happens in Asia will affect America; and whatever happens in the Middle East will affect those of us in the Pacific, and vice versa.
We live on one planet, one atmospheric envelope, one interlinked environmental ecosystem — hence as one humankind we must rise up and unite to preserve our one planet, our home. Not to do so would be foolishness and would be at the expense of our children and their children, that is, of course, if Jesus Christ does not come back soon.
Papua New Guinea recognizes the need to save Earth, and we, too, are contributing and will contribute to preserving our Earth. God has blessed Papua New Guinea with about 13 per cent of the world’s tropical rainforests and 6 per cent of its biodiversity. Those are global assets we want to preserve.
One lesson that I have learned from the COVID-19 experience is that oxygen is the number-one human need; with less oxygen, and COVID-19 has shown us that, an individual suffocates and dies. Well, who produces the oxygen for Mother Earth? The trees, of course. If the world’s rainforest reservoir were the global lung, we in Papua New Guinea have a significant proportion of that organ, which keeps the world breathing. We also function as a great carbon sink. We have this significant asset for our planet.
As Chair of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, Papua New Guinea stands at an important crossroads. We are a net remover of carbon from the atmosphere. Indeed, the removal capacity of our forests is more than 100 million tonnes per year. Our energy emissions at present are approximately 10 million annually. Therefore, if the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation mechanism delivers as it should, Papua New Guinea can remain where every country needs to be by 2050 under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change — a net remover of carbon from the atmosphere.
Preservation and conservation plus the sustainable harvest and use of forest resources can be our commitment to all for the upkeep of Earth, heeding the “code red for humanity” call by our good Secretary- General, Mr. Guterres. The recent Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report is crystal clear in indicating that human actions are the cause of the worsening climate crisis. We must take action to change that trajectory.
We have long said that climate change poses a very serious existential threat to our national security and well-being. Therefore, the climate-security nexus reality must and cannot continue to be denied by the Security Council, as that would be dereliction of duty towards all peoples worldwide on the part of the Council. We welcome the increasing support in the Council on that important agenda.
Let me also welcome and commend the excellent leadership and efforts of the United Kingdom, as the President-designate of the twenty-sixth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26), Italy as the co-host of COP26 and the Secretary-General in rallying the international community to take the bold decisions and practical measures necessary to deliver on the Paris Agreement commitments.
I cannot overstate the urgency and the ambitious actions needed under the Paris Agreement to undo the serious damage that humankind has caused to Planet Earth. I will also continue to advocate strongly that responsibilities must be assigned correctly, appropriately and proportionately to the scale of the damage done.
During COP26,1 will be seeking to ensure progress on a number of issues on behalf of Papua New Guinea and the wider Pacific blue economy.
We all must commit to the energy targets, deal with land use and advocate for the preservation of biodiversity, and also be bolder in climate-financing commitments. Those issues are important to Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands Forum countries, and we will be seeking support and advocacy from developed and industrialized countries to back our domestic and regional efforts towards adaptation and mitigation through global funding assistance.
I will be seeking an understanding to build a special set of criteria that is simplified to enable us to qualify for financial support for our adaptation and mitigation strategies.
I join previous speakers in calling on the international community to collectively meet our Paris Agreement obligations and to submit individual nationally determined contributions without delay. Papua New Guinea was among the first countries to submit its NDC in 2020, outlining its goal to be carbon-neutral by 2050. The plan includes the drafting of our NDC implementation plan, regulations and the alignment of the NDC adaptation and the national adaptation plan thanks to the support we have received from the United Nations Development Programme.
We want to see major carbon emitters in the industrialized nations be genuine and committed in their actions to fund climate-change mitigation and adaptation. Failure in that regard would be a denial of that responsibility. We wish to advocate also that the $100 billion annual commitment by developed countries to developing nations on climate financing be considered different from official development assistance. That will allow its guidelines to be sensitive to the climate-change mitigation and adaptation agenda and their specific requirements.
As a natural gas and oil exporter, we are working towards ensuring that our carbon footprint is minimized
by implementing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 Roadmap 2020-2030 on Climate Change, launched last year.
However, despite multiple project submissions for climate financing, Papua New Guinea has had limited success in accessing those funds, except for technical assistance in developing the fiduciary framework. That is quite disappointing. We need to see a more practical demonstration of genuine commitments.
Other forms of assistance towards climate-change adaptation and mitigation must also be streamlined in order to lessen the increasing debt burden in small island States to free up the required fiscal space to support efforts to bring about an economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and achieve sustainable development.
I further call on Member States to finalize robust and fair carbon markets under the Paris rulebook to unlock new financing streams that better account for the sustainable development interests of countries such as my own. That will allow us to assign our development agenda under different but appropriate financing opportunities so long as the guidelines are appropriate but friendly to us.
Papua New Guinea wants to achieve both conservation and development. In forestry, we have ceased issuance of new timber permits and the renewal of existing ones and will achieve a complete round-log export ban by 2025. We want to move into value-adding and downstream processing.
We have adopted and designated a large conservation area in one of our provinces, Northern Province to be exact, as a pilot programme in partnership with a regional environmental programme, which will give us the learning experience we need for the further designation of conservation areas. We are also in the process of establishing a NDC road map for agriculture, forestry and other land use and the energy sector.
COVID-19 will remain our biggest challenge. Our numbers are low in terms of both confirmed cases and fatalities at the moment, but one of the most concerning things for us in Papua New Guinea is the rate of vaccination, which is quite low. Our Government took the necessary upfront ownership through the enactment of appropriate legislation in our national Parliament — the National Pandemic Act 2020. This, together with a very close working partnership with our valued development partners, including our Pacific family of nations through the Pacific Humanitarian Pathway on COVID-19 programme, has brought us much success. We cannot speak highly enough of such partnerships, including those through the Coronavirus Disease Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility, and with the United Nations system, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, China, the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, which has enabled us to have immediate access to essential medical equipment and supplies, including the AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines.
We continue to welcome and encourage the further strengthening of cooperative global efforts to allow access to COVID-19 vaccines in those countries where they are most needed. We advocate for global efforts in curbing misinformation, which has resulted in low rates of vaccination in our country, especially the Facebook misinformation that continues to exist in the public space. It will truly support our efforts in building national advocacy and awareness as to the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, a programme ably supported by our development partners, including, most notably, the churches and the United Nations country office.
We must do all that while keeping a very close eye on the general health sector of country, because we cannot afford to lose sight of the other aspects of health in our country. A national health plan is ready to be launched, except for the settlement of the financing plan that matches our health plan. It will encompass facilities development, capacity-building, pharmaceutical procurement, the development of primary, secondary and tertiary health care, and building up provincial capacities and the requisite capacity-building and education insofar as the health sector is concerned.
Economic management for us involves taking stock of where we are, building the right structures for re-engagement with our international partners, and ensuring that the right enablers are put in place to build and sustain a robust economy. That involves taking stock of our debt portfolios, reprioritizing our expenditures and focusing on important reforms in the utilities sector, infrastructure, education, health care and, of course, our natural resources. That also involves taking a closer look at specific projects in the extractive industry and working with their proponents to see them come onstream.
For the past two years, the bulk of our efforts has been aimed at ensuring that we achieve a fine balance between adherence to all COVID-19 protocols and requirements while at the same time ensuring that the economy is open and functioning.
Our work in the transparent stock take of our debt portfolio has attracted strong support from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and has provided an important platform of support from bilateral partners such as Australia and Japan. For that we are truly very, very grateful. We acknowledge their support for us at this time when COVID has hit us and our economy is struggling.
We continue to advocate for the use of our natural resources. But the foundational tenet is that the development of those resources is to be done on the premise that all stakeholders have a shared interest in such development, and that interest is to be fully satisfied within the principles of equity and equality, with no one left behind, especially in a country such as mine, in which people of many different ethnicities own parcels of land.
A key area of focus is the substantive investment and development of quality economic infrastructure to link the provinces throughout the country and deliver important services to our citizens countrywide and enhance their socioeconomic opportunities.
We have embarked on a very important connectivity programme that is aimed at connecting rural Papua New Guinea, which is building and expanding key infrastructure assets such as national roads, wharves, jetties, airports and airstrips; punching new road corridors; and providing information and telecommunication networks and electricity access to the majority of our population.
That is the stimulus for economic transformation for our people. It is being done as required by our national Constitution; for those who might not know, Papua New Guinea became independent only in 1975. That is totally in alignment with our national eight-point plan, PNG Vision 2050, our development strategic plan 2010-2030, our medium-term plan III 2018-2022 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to better deliver socioeconomic prosperity for the country. We hope that in this way we will become a middle-income country by 2050.
Growth for Papua New Guinea continues to be off the back of the petroleum, energy and mining sectors, which contribute around 60 per cent of our gross domestic product. We continue to advocate for such development to take place and do as much as we can, working as hard as we can, to advocate for important policies in those sectors.
Our policies on development in the extractive sector have begun to take account of the diminishing financing envelope from external sources such as loans and grants. At the same time, we have had to move towards better management of our national public debt. We strongly recognize the importance of generating sufficient revenue from our own domestic sources to complement external budget support for our national development priorities. As you well know, Mr. President, the General Assembly’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa financing for development framework call for that.
It is in that spirit that my Government has embarked on the process of reviewing and reforming our legislation and policies in the resources sector to ensure appropriate levels of national content in projects and to facilitate fair and equitable returns for all stakeholders with shared interests. At the same time, we continue to value, respect and uphold our partnership obligations with the private sector in our natural resources sector. We remain open for business and therefore welcome bona fide international investors to join us in exploring the opportunities that are still available in my country.
My country continues to enjoy a partnership with important multilateral financial institutions. Let me take a moment to thank the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and, of course, our valued bilateral partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, India, the European Union and the United States, for supporting my Government’s development priorities.
It would be remiss of me not to also acknowledge the excellent work undertaken under the leadership of the Prime Ministers of Canada and Jamaica and the Secretary-General of the United Nations for financing for development, needed particularly in developing countries to recover and build back from the COVID-19 pandemic — a call that Papua New Guinea strongly supports.
My Government has prioritized investment in the agriculture sector as an engine of economic growth and
prosperity for our country. The strategic interventions are a combination of the credit scheme that we engaged upon, freight and price subsidies for our rural farmers, which has helped broaden the scope and reach of agricultural production sites in our country. That will not only help broaden the tax base and generate additional revenue the country needs for development but also, more importantly, improve our rural communities’ lives and livelihoods and enable them to be proactive insofar as nation-building is concerned.
Our largely rural-based economy is dependent on subsistence agriculture. It is my Government’s desire to transform the agriculture sector into a reliable, commercial, sustainable food system that will address food security and climate resilience as well as the conservation and management of our vast biodiversity.
To support that, we have set targets to increase cash crop production by 30 per cent and increase livestock production by 30 per cent by 2025, as well as develop taxation incentives for our local farmers.
Additionally, these include the formulation of an agriculture and livestock diversification plan by 2025 and our efforts to increase downstream processing by 30 per cent in 2025 and ensure that local landowners and provincial governments participate in equity-sharing and downstream business and the associated spinoffs.
Our efforts in the agricultural sector tie in well with the important global efforts under the United Nations Food Systems Summit, convened virtually yesterday by the Secretary-General. Papua New Guinea has identified five key priority actions that form our national pathway to transform our food systems in ways that will build a sustainable, equitable, resilient and healthier food system in our country. Those details were shared in our national statement at the Food Systems Summit yesterday evening.
I would underline, however, that my country, with its abundant arable land, has the potential to serve as a food basket for the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, particularly at a time when food security around the world is now being threatened by the ravages of climate change, sea-level rise and other crises. We therefore welcome multi-stakeholder partnerships and investment to transform our organic food systems to support addressing the global challenges relating to hunger, poverty and malnutrition, as well as food security, which fosters better health outcomes for our peoples and communities, and to deliver on the SDGs.
In the energy sector, we recognize the importance of an energy transition to renewable sources so as to move significantly away from fossil fuels and to options including hydro, solar, wind and geothermal energy. We also have options with clean gas energy.
Our government has since 2018, under the auspices of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, been working with our development partners — Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United States — on the Papua New Guinea electrification programme, which is intended to provide reliable and affordable renewable energy to more than 70 per cent of the unreached households in the country by 2030. Tremendous development outcomes for our people ride on that programme.
We have struck a partnership with the International Solar Alliance and the International Renewable Energy Agency; in addition, the private sector has come on board in the form of the Fortescue Metals Group and its subsidiary Fortescue Future Industries, with a view to strengthening our renewable energy transformation and options in geothermal and hydropower energy.
Our energy transformation will come about once the National Energy Authority has been fully established. It is a particularly strategic act, which we adopted earlier this year to separate the regulatory responsibilities from the generation of power. We hope that in the not too distant future that authority will regulate the energy space to facilitate more investment into, and development of, the different energy options, especially the clean energy sources that we advocate. We want to recapitalize on the energy space and to ensure that clean energy becomes Papua New Guinea’s main driving force.
The virtual first-ever High-level Dialogue on Energy, convened today by you, Mr. president, and the Secretary-General to accelerate efforts in implementing Goal 7, on energy-related goals and targets for sustainable development, is the most timely and needed, insofar as Papua New Guinea is concerned. It resonates very well with my Government’s development priorities, and we look forward to harnessing the 10-year action plan under the global road map to attain Goal 7 by 2030 and to further exploring joining an energy compact to support the achievement of Goal 7 by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
As a maritime nation with a maritime zone spanning over 2.4 million square kilometres, the oceans agenda is of immense importance to my country, not only for
the living and non-living resources, but also for the added value that they bring to our national assets and, more importantly, for our own identity and way of life as a people and nation of the seas.
My Government is also prioritizing and strengthening the management, governance and security of our maritime zones under our National Oceans Policy 2020-2030, which was adopted in July 2020.
To further complement that, last year my Government also officially launched our 10-year National Fisheries Strategic Plan 2021-2030, which provides the road map and vision for a broad-based fisheries sector and industry that is inclusive, environmentally sustainable and globally competitive and promotes food security.
Furthermore, it addresses issues that include the prevention of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in our country and neighbouring Pacific waters. It also talks about domestic downstream processing, which enables our people, as resource owners, to be meaningfully involved in the economic opportunities that our sea resources bring. We call on countries within our region to be responsible in that regard.
I am pleased to say that my Government adopted and launched the country’s Marine Protected Areas Policy and the National Plan of Action on Sharks and Rays in June 2021. That policy will strengthen our efforts to better protect our marine resources, as we are an epicentre of global marine resources and biodiversity. We are grateful for the support of the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Development Programme as valued development partners.
In doing that, it will assist us to reach the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11, that is, to have 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas protected, to which we remain committed. It is in that context as well as with the devastating wildfires and catastrophic climate change events around the world impacting adversely on biodiversity that we look forward to a successful outcome of the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which will take place in China next month.
We therefore join the growing global call for an ambitious and transformational post-2020 global biodiversity framework that can help us to fully implement our national commitments to protect biodiversity and sustainably use them for our sustainable development, as well as to meet the SDGs.
Regionally, I am pleased to join my fellow leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum in heralding our milestone regional Declaration on Preserving Maritime Zones in the Face of Climate Change-related Sea-Level Rise, which was adopted last month.
As large States within the Blue Pacific continent and with the advent of the devastating consequences of runaway climate change and rising sea-levels that continue to threaten our countries and people’s security, lives, livelihoods and sovereignty, the Declaration preserves our maritime zones in the face of climate change-related sea-level rise.
It also upholds the integrity of and our longstanding commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as the global legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and seas must be carried out. We therefore welcome the support of all States Members of the United Nations and the international community for our landmark Declaration. My earlier remark on climate change gives us the basis to call for such support and actions.
In terms of peacebuilding, my Government recognizes the fundamental role that the United Nations plays in supporting sustainable development and peacebuilding. It is therefore incumbent on the United Nations to ensure that we continue to adapt the existing multilateral arrangements, including the United Nations peacebuilding architecture, the Security Council, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Secretary-General’s Action for Peace initiative and the Peacebuilding Fund, to make them relevant under the evolving global circumstances to better foster and sustain global, regional and national peace and security.
For us, our continuing engagement with the Peacebuilding Commission and the Secretary- General’s Peacebuilding Fund in recent years, from which we have been a beneficiary, further strengthens the hand of national peace and security through peace by peaceful means.
That is especially true of our Bougainville Peace Agreement process for our Bougainville region and within the new initiative on peacebuilding and sustaining peace in two other provinces in my country.
I am pleased to announce that the Bougainville peace process continues to remain a top priority of my Government. In that context, I would like to inform this Hall that, following the referendum in 2019, my Government and the Autonomous Bougainville Government held the second post-referendum consultation and the Joint Supervisory Board just three months ago, where several very important decisions to move the peace process forward were agreed upon. Those included the reaffirmation of both parties’ commitment to the Bougainville Peace Agreement and the importance of a peaceful dialogue on the way forward, guided by the country’s constitutional and parliamentary processes, including with respect to the outcome of the 2019 referendum, which includes the agreement to transfer all agreed powers and a joint road map to guide the post-referendum processes.
There is clear recognition by both parties that much more work remains to be done in this critical phase and that constructive dialogue, mutual understanding and partnership are crucial to a lasting political settlement of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Let me place on record my appreciation for the United Nations in its help and leadership assistance on the Bougainville issues that faces Papua New Guinea.
My Government is also realistic about the capacity challenges and successful peacebuilding in our efforts in sustaining peace. The continued supportive partnership of the Peacebuilding Commission, the Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund, the wider United Nations system and other development partners will be vital to ensure that the dividends of peace are shared and become long-lasting.
I acknowledge the strong support of the United Nations in chairing the consultation process and supporting the initial engagement of a moderator for those talks to take place. I would also like to put on record our sincere appreciation for our valued bilateral and multilateral development partners, again including Australia, the European Union, Japan, China, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom and the entire United Nations system, for their continuing commitment and support to the Bougainville peace process and the recent initiative in two provinces in the Highlands part of our country and look forward to further work with all development partners on that important priority that my Government is undertaking.
While commending the United Nations for the peace efforts in Papua New Guinea, I would also like to recall the 2019 decision of the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders and the outstanding visit by the United Nations human rights mechanism to address the alleged human rights concerns in our regional neighbourhood. That visit is very important to ensure that the greater peoples of the region have peace within their respective sovereignties and that their rights and cultural dignities are fully preserved and maintained.
We have also long recognized that our sustainable development efforts will be in vain if we do not safeguard the human rights of our women and girls and the preservation of their dignity and provide them opportunities to be equal development partners for nation-building. That is why my Government has prioritized gender equality and empowerment opportunities, with policies, laws and strategies. Among other things, we have set in place the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence 2016-2025 and the Family Protection Act and provided that demographic segment of our economy specific economic opportunities to be engaged in entrepreneurial activities to empower our women and girls.
Those initiatives take into account our international commitments and obligations under the relevant international frameworks, notably the Beijing Platform for Action. We recognize that much work remains to be done but we are determined and committed to do what is right for our women and girls, as our country’s future prosperity and security also depend on how we treat them today and into the future.
That has recently been clearly demonstrated by the groundswell of support to combat and end the scourge of gender-based violence in the country. I am pleased to note that this year my Government, with the support of the Coalition of Parliamentarians to End Gender- based Violence, established the bipartisan Special Parliamentary Committee on Gender-based Violence to inquire into gender-based violence in the country and propose recommendations and measures to combat and end the scourge of that violence. A report of that important work has been put forward in Parliament, and we are working towards implementing it. That will complement the work done under the European Union-led and United Nations-supported Spotlight Initiative for ending violence against women and children, which was jointly launched when the Deputy
Secretary-General, Ms. Amina Mohammed, visited Port Moresby in March 2020. I really want to thank Her Excellency for that visit. It was a visit not only to the capital city; she also stepped out into rural Papua New Guinea.
We are also embarking on the administrative measures for quotas for women’s representation in our national Parliament. The inadequate representation of women parliamentarians is a continuing concern for us in Papua New Guinea. We are optimistic about setting that initiative in motion at our next general election, scheduled for July 2022.
These are but some of the key issues on which my Government is now working in our third-cycle Universal Periodic Review report, to be presented to the Human Rights Council in November 2021.
Before I conclude, I would like to reiterate our call on the General Assembly to do better in delivering on the reforms of the Security Council. That important organ, entrusted with the international community’s peace and security, with its archaic representation and working methods, is in dire need of an overhaul to ensure that it meets with today’s reality. We are concerned that it has been nearly 12 long years now since the first round of the intergovernmental negotiations for the reforms of the Security Council, and the costs keep escalating for countries such as ours. Despite all the extensive efforts on the five agreed elements of the intergovernmental negotiations package, it still does not have any formal status to date. For my delegation, a single consolidated document now, and not in the indeterminate future, is needed for real negotiations to pave the way for the reforms of the Security Council. The importance of that cannot be overstated, and we reiterate our call on this fundamental point.
I also recognize, as I end my statement, the important reality check by Secretary-General Guterres in his call for action on Our Common Agenda. The Secretary-General’s proposals and recommendations call for a robust United Nations system, and they have our full support. However, we cannot make progress on that agenda without dealing with the system that will carry it.
I thank you, Mr. President, for giving me the opportunity to speak. Under your presidency, we hope that our planet can be a better place for all. We have the hope that no one will be left behind. God bless all Member States. God bless our planet Earth.