Statement by Mr. Md. Monwar Hossain, PhD, Deputy Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN in New York at the high-level meeting on “Our Common Agenda”, Thematic Cluster 5: “Enhancing International Cooperation”, UN Headquarters New York, Thursday, 10 March 2022

I thank you Mr. President for giving me the floor.

My delegation aligns itself with the statements of G-77 and China and the LDC group.

In our national capacity, allow me to highlight three specific points:

First, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the inherent weaknesses of the UN; and the need for further reforming its institutions, structures, and processes.

Against this backdrop, the Secretary General’s proposals to upgrade the UN is timely. The UN system should be able to constantly adapt to new and evolving challenges while leading the multilateral efforts to tackle those.

To bring about real changes, however, it is imperative to break the cycle of long-standing status-quo bias. More equity is required in terms of including the voices of the developing countries. To this end, geographical balance should be considered in all UN recruitments. Over and above this, alignment  with national priorities, robust transparency and accountability mechanism, inclusive decision-making should be the sine-qua-none of the UN’s work.

Second, the ability to work and act together on common global challenges is what international cooperation is all about.

The proposed ” Summit of the Future” should therefore, aim to rally enhanced partnership and resources not only to accelerate the implementation of 2030 agenda but also to chart out a roadmap for sustainable development beyond 2030. We need urgent focus on sustainable and more resilient Covid-19 recovery, climate actions, transforming education and health infrastructure and harnessing STI to ensure a safer and more prosperous world for our future generation.

This will indeed require new kind of partnerships with different stakeholders, including businesses, IFIs, MDBs, civil society, NGOs, and academia.  And also through numerous cooperative platforms like south-south cooperation, PPP, B2B etc.

The enhanced means of implementation in terms of ODA, concessional financing, trade and investment, infrastructure building, and technology transfer is also going to be highly critical.

Finally, the most vulnerable countries such as the LDCs has suffered most disproportionately due to the pandemic. They need   reinvigorated international cooperation to help them build back more resilient from the pandemic.

The Doha programme of Action for LDCs, which is expected to be adopted later this month, has identified some ambitious targets and deliverables in this regard.

We invite the UN system to integrate the deliberations and strategic priorities of the OCA with the DPOA to ensure their most effective and synergistic implementations in the context of LDCs.

I thank you Mr. President.