NEW YORK, JULY 6 – Addressing the ECOSOC, Italy confirmed its its commitment to tackling the food crisis and its root causes as key to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. As chair of the Group of Friends of Food Security and Nutrition, The Italian Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Maurizio Massari, advocated for their core role in the international community’s efforts to implement the Agenda 2030 despite
the world challenges threatening its progress.
Italy and Nauru co-facilitators of Ministerial Declaration
Massari spoke in the framework of the in-person High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development which opened yesterday at the UN Headquarters. The Forum is the central platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. Governments started negotiating the high-level outcome of the Forum last March. Italy and Nauru are co-facilitating the intergovernmental consultations on the Ministerial Declaration, to be adopted at the close the HLPF and ECOSOC High-level Segment on 15 July 2022.
Kelapile, “high hope and optimism”
Harnessing partnerships to create a world of “peace and prosperity” that protects people and planet is the main goal of a key annual development forum that started on Tuesday, the President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Collen Kelapile, said on July 5.
Kelapile opened the in-person High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) “on a note characterized by high hope and optimism” arguing that “we can and shall overcome our challenges”. The senior UN official outlined five reasons for his optimism “against all odds”, beginning with successes in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, in many countries.
Covid pandemic “a wake-up call”
While acknowledging its detrimental effects on societies, people and the global development agenda, he said the pandemic has also “served as a wakeup call in exposing many aspects of our societies which were not right”. In this way, it has provided an opportunity to “rectify our ways of living…[and] fix the resilience of our socioeconomic and health systems”.
Kelapile drew attention to the Forum participants gathering with the common purpose “to renew our commitment to the 2030 Agenda… [and] agree on ways to deliver on the pledge we made in the 2019 SDG Summit, to accelerate action to implement the SDGs in the Decade of Action and Delivery”. (@OnuItalia)