Washington: United Nations: United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres said, “Resilient reconstruction” of flood-hit areas in Pakistan was his “Top priority” as he reaffirmed “Full support” of UN for ongoing humanitarian work in country.

UNSG made these remarks during his meeting with Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on sidelines of UN’s ministerial conference of G-77 and China being held in New York, US. Bilawal met Guterres and thanked him for his support to Pakistan after this year’s devastating floods. He also appreciated UNSG as he will be co-hosting International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan in Geneva on January 9, 2023.

During meeting, FM sought UN’s continued cooperation to secure participation of key donors, development institutions and private sector in conference to encourage them to support Pakistan’s comprehensive plan and specific project proposals. Secretary General also appreciated country’s timely initiative to convene special ministerial conference of G-77 and China to work towards overcoming challenges facing developing countries.

Earlier, in his speech at  ministerial conference of G-77 and China, FM Bilawal called for urgent operationalisation of “Loss and damage” fund.

Addressing Present Challenges and Building Resilience Against Future Crises’ at UN headquarters in New York and delivered speech covering wide-ranging issues facing Pakistan and region. In series of tweets, Bilawal said that at meeting, he highlighted that developing countries are suffering disproportionately from multiple crises.

He said that Covid-19, supply chain disruptions, spiraling prices, depreciating currencies, climate-induced disasters as well as geopolitical tensions, such as, Ukraine war and its accompanying restrictions have disproportionately impacted developing countries.

He proposed “Several emergency measures and systemic reforms to revive economies of developing countries such as reform of international financial architecture (as proposed by UNSG), including multilateral mechanism for sustainable debt management”.

Further, he called for implementation of climate change agenda and commitments in accordance with principle of equity-common but differentiated responsibilities based on respective capabilities.

Bilawal stressed need for rapid deployment of sustainable infrastructure, including energy, transportation, housing, manufacturing and agriculture in order to transition to sustainable global economy.

He welcomed initiatives, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative and G-7’s Global Infrastructure Initiative. According to Bilawal, conference is expected to endorse many of chair’s proposals in its “Outcome document”. Adaptation of this strategy document will assist G-77 in securing tangible results in forthcoming conferences, such as, SDG Summit in September 2023, CoP28 next November in Dubai and Summit of Future in 2024, said foreign minister.

Published in The Daily National Courier, December, 16 2022

Like Business on Facebook, follow @DailyNCourier on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.