Nicholas Hill
Acting ECOSOC Representative
New York, NY
August 30, 2021
AS DELIVERED
Thank you, Madame President and Administrator Steiner for your opening remarks.
The United States thanks UNDP for a constructive, inclusive, and productive consultative process during the drafting stage of the 2022-2025 Strategic Plan.
We support the Plan’s focus on UNDP’s core mandate and areas of comparative advantage: promoting good governance, poverty eradication, conflict prevention and recovery, and environmental sustainability. The Plan’s acknowledgement of the importance of the humanitarian-development-peacebuilding nexus to UNDP’s work is even more relevant to the organization’s efforts to respond to the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The United States will continue to look to UNDP to provide strong leadership and coordination among UN agencies to link their work across the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding spectrum. We encourage UNDP to continue to promote private sector development and partnerships, advance digital inclusion, and contribute to the international community’s effort to combat climate change. In this regard, we would like to emphasize the importance of integrating practices and ideas of Indigenous Peoples in land management and care. As stewards of biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples should be key actors and partners in generating ideas, implementing plans, and integrating their traditions to protect and promote environmental conservation.
We also encourage UNDP to continue to collaborate with other UN agencies to advance education and health; in support of women and girls and LGBTQI populations; and to promote inclusiveness in key programming areas, such as poverty-alleviation, good governance, digital connectivity and solutions, and resilience to multi-dimensional crises.
We expect UNDP to continue to consult all stakeholders in formulating country program documents, and to ensure country program documents uphold and reflect UN Charter values, including the promotion and protection of human rights.
Finally, we look forward to working with the UNDP to update and refine the Integrated Results and Resource Framework of the Strategic Plan, to develop robust indicators, baselines, and targets in the coming months to help the organization and Member States to better track progress and results achieved in key mandated work areas.
Thank, you Madame President.
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