By advancing investment, resilience and reform, we can expand opportunity, strengthen economies, and improve lives around the world: UK statement at the UN Second Committee
Statement by Ambassador Kate Foster, UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, at the UN Second Committee.
Let me begin by congratulating you on your appointment.
The United Kingdom looks forward to working closely with you and the Bureau throughout this session.
Over recent years, we have agreed an ambitious set of outcomes.
We now have a narrowing window to translate commitments into meaningful results.
This Committee has an important opportunity to drive that delivery.
Sustainable development depends on expanding opportunity, creating jobs, supporting growth, and enabling countries to build resilient and prosperous economies.
The Compromiso de Sevilla established a renewed framework for financing sustainable development.
Yet many developing countries continue to face high borrowing costs, mounting debt burdens, and insufficient investment, limiting ability to invest in people and their future.
As Professor Parfait Eloundou reminded us, the challenge is not only mobilising resources, but in ensuring they are used effectively.
Success depends on matching finance to priorities and improving coordination across institutions.
The United Kingdom is championing a whole-system approach, using ODA strategically alongside expertise and innovation to unlock sustainable investment.
We stand ready to work with partners to implement the Sevilla commitments and build a fairer, more inclusive global financial system.
Trade is equally important.
An open, rules-based, transparent and predictable trading system remains one of the most powerful drivers of growth and development.
The United Kingdom will work constructively to ensure the Committee’s discussions respect established mandates, reflect agreed multilateral rules, and focus on practical measures capable of commanding consensus.
Innovation can help accelerate development, strengthen resilience, and create new economic opportunities.
We want developing countries not only to benefit from new technologies, on voluntary and mutually agreed terms, but also to help shape their development and governance.
Climate change and nature loss are increasingly driving instability, displacement, and economic vulnerability around the world.
At the same time, the clean energy transition presents a major opportunity for growth, job creation, energy security, and economic transformation.
As we look ahead to COP 31 and COP 17, our focus must be on implementation.
We must accelerate action under the Paris Agreement and the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework including efforts to keep 1.5 degrees within reach, mobilise climate and nature finance, halt and reverse biodiversity loss, and to accelerate adaptation and resilience for the most vulnerable.
The United Kingdom continues to deliver its ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution and National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.
We call on all countries to submit their plans and translate commitments into action.
In this Committee, we will champion ambitious implementation of agreed climate and nature commitments.
Sustainable development also depends on ensuring that women and girls can participate fully in, and benefit from, growth.
The United Kingdom remains committed to advancing the rights and empowerment of all women and girls, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Investing in women and girls supports inclusive growth, it helps societies reach their full potential.
We will continue to protect hard-won progress, and resist attempts to roll back agreed commitments.
To deliver more, the United Nations must also work more effectively.
This is the first Second Committee session since agreement of the revitalisation decision, which we warmly welcomed.
Revitalisation matters because every hour spent renegotiating previously agreed language is an hour not spent advancing implementation of the commitments we have already made.
The United Kingdom therefore encourages continued focus on agenda discipline, consistent with revitalisation decisions, including avoiding resolutions on matters recently negotiated elsewhere or outside the Committee’s core remit.
As 2030 approaches, our focus should be on delivery, not on duplication; on implementation, not on reinvention.
By advancing investment, resilience and reform, we can expand opportunity, strengthen economies, and improve lives.
The United Kingdom stands ready to work with all partners to make that happen.