Making the United Nations Relevant to all People– As delivered –
Statement by H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly
21 May 2019
Your Excellency, Mr. Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, Prime Minister of the Republic of Mauritius,
Mr. Secretary-General, António Guterres,
Your Excellency, Ms. Inga Rhonda King, President of the ECOSOC;
Madam Deputy Secretary General, Amina Mohammed,
Your Excellency, Fatima Kyari Mohammed, Permanent Observer of the African Union to the UN,
Ms. Cessouma Minata Samate, African Union Commissioner for Political Affairs,
Dear friend, Ms. Bience Gawanas, UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa,
Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to have this opportunity to take part in the 2019 Africa Dialogue Series. I’m very grateful to Her Excellency, Bience Gawanas, and to the African Union and UN system for organizing this timely and much-needed event.
At the outset of my presidency, I resolved to make Africa the focus of my activities. Why? For three reasons.
First, Africa’s tremendous contribution to the UN continues to be under-appreciated, and the region’s voice under-represented in the international system.
We have what could be called a “solidarity deficit”: multilateral decision-making processes, policies and programmes that should be skewed towards the needs, views and priorities of Africa, are not yet there.
This is evident in our prevailing approach to those who have been forcibly displaced by violence, emergencies and disasters. The vast majority – over 80% – are hosted by developing countries: one third in Africa. Many rich countries, meanwhile, have been reluctant to accept significant numbers.
We are already contending with the worst displacement crisis since records began. We know that numbers are going to rise dramatically due to climate change. And we know that many displaced persons spend years – even decades – in camps, in exile, in limbo.
Clearly, our traditional approach to displacement as a purely humanitarian issue needs to be overhauled. We need longer-term approaches – education, life-long learning, opportunities to make a living and contribute to society, including for women and girls.
We need durable solutions – voluntary return or repatriation as appropriate, but also resettlement and integration. And we need greater political and financial support for transitions at the humanitarian-development nexus. The Global Compacts on refugees and migration adopted last year provide a solid basis for us to move forward, and I call leaders – in Africa and across the world – to implement them both.
My second reason for focusing on Africa is that it is a bellwether for our efforts to realize the 2030 Agenda and the far-reaching Agenda 2063. One key ‘test’ of our promise to “leave no one behind” is ensuring that we meet the Sustainable Development Goals for those who have been displaced – where there are great challenges when it comes to data collection, national planning and service provision. This is particularly the case for least-developed countries like Uganda, which is the third-largest host of refugees worldwide. Multilateral institutions must do much more to take this into account.
My recent visits to Chad, Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin have reinforced for me the burden sharing gap between Africa and her partners. The countries that border Lake Chad, indeed the entire Sahel region, is grappling with the impacts of climate, destabilization, insecurity, displacement, refugee and migrant flows that are largely related to external decisions and actions. And yet, the burden of responding to those impacts has largely fallen on the Sahel countries as they seek to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
One of the key objectives of my visit to the region was to draw global attention to the importance of implementing commitments on the Lake Chad Basin, which are critical to the efforts of those countries to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
We need durable solutions – voluntary return or repatriation as appropriate, but also resettlement and integration. And we need greater political and financial support for transitions at the humanitarian-development nexus. The Global Compacts on refugees and migration adopted last year provide a solid basis for us to move forward, and I call leaders – in Africa and across the world – to implement them both.
And third, I have focused on Africa because – at a time when the value of multilateralism is being questioned by some – we need African leadership. Time and again, Africa has led the way. Through the 1969 OAU convention, for instance, which expanded the definition of ‘refugee’ and through the Kampala Convention, the first legally-binding framework to address internal displacement.
So this Dialogue provides a much-needed opportunity to share and replicate best practices from the continent. I hope it will also serve to encourage progress on improving the UN’s capacity to deliver for Africans, with Africans. And I hope it will explore ways to address the “solidary deficit” in our international system. The UN’s 75th anniversary next year is a golden opportunity to address these issues. I trust that with African leadership, we will seize it.
Thank you.
