Sualos Chilima arrives in New York for UN Ecosoc Summit
By Sam Majamanda:
Vice President Saulos Chilima arrived in New York on Saturday in readiness for the 2022 United Nations Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) Summit.
Ecosoc is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and was established in 1945 to provide direction and coordination of economic, social, humanitarian and cultural activities carried out by the global body.
Malawi Ambassador to New York Agness Chimbiri and Principal Secretary in the Office of the Vice President Lucky Sikwese led Malawians based in New York in welcoming the Vice President.
Sikwese said the summit was key to Malawi’s development considering its potential to address some of the issues affecting the attainment of national goals.
“Firstly, Malawi’s participation at the summit is important for all the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), a group which it chairs, but also Malawi is (in this month of April) chairing the Africa Group at UN; as such, it is representing LDCs and Africa’s goals.
“On the other hand, the Vice President is out here to represent Malawi and sound a concrete voice on issues affecting Malawi as a nation with regards to Malawi 2063 agenda, which is one of Malawi’s main tools for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” Chilima said.
Dubbed ‘Financing for Sustainable Development Goals’, the summit is bringing together delegations from all 193 UN member states and institutions engaged in global development.
Delegates to this year’s summit will, among other things, discuss the future of SDGs with a biased focus on “financing” in view of the world’s current economic trends.
In a preface to a report on the summit, the United Nations General Secretary Antonio Guterres emphasised the need for the UN to build a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient global economy that works for all by reforming the international financial architecture with rules that are inclusive, effective and fair.
According to Guterres, Covid shocks and the war in Ukraine have deeply revealed inequalities in economic resilience between developed and developing nations, a development that threatens the achievement of SDGs.
“Developed countries have been able to finance rapid economic recovery from the pandemic, through massive fiscal support and aggressive monetary policy responses, but most developing countries can afford neither, despite international support.
“Instead, they continue to face increasingly high costs of lending and have had to cut their education and health budgets and other SDG investments, undermining not only their recovery, but also their medium and long-term development prospects,” the preface reads.— Mana
