PERMANENT REP MAKES STATEMENT AT UNGA SESSION

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the United Nations Headquarters Mr O.Och made a statement at a plenary meeting of the 67th session of the UN General Assembly on November 28 in New York, USA. Mr Och delivered a speech about measures being implemented by Mongolia in accordance with the Millennium Summit and an implementation course of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He extended his delegation's high appreciation to the Secretary-General for his annual report A/67/257 on “Accelerating progress towards the MDGs: options for sustained and inclusive growth and issues for advancing the UN development agenda beyond 2015. “I believe that our discussions based on a thorough and comprehensive review and assessment of what has been achieved and which goals remain out of reach, would provoke new ideas on how we could scale up our efforts towards implementing the MDGs and other outcomes of the major UN conferences and summits,” he said. “As we can see from the report a number of important targets have been met including the global target of reducing extreme poverty, halving the proportion of people without reliable access to improved sources of drinking water, improving the conditions for people living in slams, the universal access to primary education. Further progress has been made in improving child and maternal health care along with substantial drop in prevalence of malaria, new HIV infections and the burden of other communicable diseases. "However, the report also reveals that we are still facing a series of challenges in our efforts to achieve MDGs. Hunger and under-nutrition are the most critical ones with 925 million people living in hunger. Women remain in a disadvantaged position in terms of access to productive employment opportunities, sexual and reproductive health care and political decision-making with unacceptably high rates of maternal deaths in some regions. Over 2.5 billion people still lacking access to adequate sanitation. Peace and conflict remain major issues of today since one fifth of world population lives in countries experiencing significant violence, political conflict, insecurity and societal fragility. "Therefore, the international community should undertake a targeted and scaled-up action to alleviate the burden of those in need, a prompt implementation of all commitments under the global partnership for development in order to support national efforts, in particular the commitments in the areas of aid, trade, debt relief, and access to new technologies. Thus, according to the Secretary-General's report, “ODA flows will have to more than double in order to meet the UN target of 0.7 percent,” he said. “We need to be innovative and find ways to do more with limited resources. In our efforts to accelerate the progress towards MDGs we need to take into account the results of surveys and studies undertaken by different UN agencies and research centers. Thus, according to a new State of World Population 2012 report launched by the United Nations Population Fund, ensuring the availability of voluntary family planning to everyone in developing countries would reduce costs for maternal and newborn health care by $11.3 billion annually. The report emphasizes that family planning goes beyond just an economic issue and is connected to human rights and access to education. It also estimates that 3 million fewer babies would die in their first year of life if 120 million more women had access to family planning. "My delegation also wishes to express its gratitude to the Director-General of WHO for the report contained in the document A/67/373 which prepared and submitted for consideration under the agenda item 'Follow-up to the outcome of the Millennium Summit'. The report states that non-communicable diseases threaten the populations and fiscal health of all nations, therefore greater action in all countries and by all stakeholders remains imperative. The outcome document of Rio+20 Conference, entitled “The future we want” also acknowledges that the global burden of non-communicable diseases constitutes one of the major challenges for development today. "It is obvious that the primary role and responsibility to respond to the challenge of non-communicable diseases lie with national Governments. But the complexity of the challenges posed by such diseases calls for actions of multi-sectoral nature and multi-stakeholder partnerships beyond Governments. Therefore, my delegation is of the view that five models for global partnerships against non-communicable diseases, proposed in the report, should be given due consideration,” Mr Och stressed. “The report provides with interesting examples of cross-sectoral government engagement to reduce risk factors for non-communicable diseases, namely tobacco use, physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diet. As the report states that, according to survey conducted by WHO in 2010, 86 percent of countries have some form of partnerships or collaborations for implementing key activities. They most often address tobacco use (83 percent of countries), diabetes (81 percent), unhealthy diet (77 percent), cancer (77 percent), and physical inactivity (75 percent). "In case of Mongolia, in addition to these, particular efforts are also being made to reduce the risks of harmful use of alcohol as it has serious implications for our country and the health of future generations. It has become one of the major factors contributing to accidents, road traffic injuries, crime, violence and unemployment. Studies have shown that alcohol abuse is also associated with poverty in Mongolia. Our efforts in this regard include nationwide promotion of public education against the alcohol use, increase of taxes on alcohol and etc. In 2011 the President of Mongolia made an appeal on non-use of alcohol in Mongolia which received a wide support on the part of government, private health sector and civil society organizations,” he stressed. Taking this opportunity, Mr Och informed that last year during the High-level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases Mongolia put forward an idea of developing an international convention on alcohol use control, similar to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He said it is our earnest hope that this idea will get due consideration within the framework of WHO in the coming years. He underlined his government stands fully committed to cooperating on this matter. “While accelerating our efforts towards achieving all MDGs world-wide we have to work on the UN development agenda beyond 2015. My delegation highly appreciates the steps undertaken by the Secretary-General in this regard. We believe that the work of the UN system task team greatly contributes to the ongoing processes of consultations at various levels. Four interconnected core dimensions proposed by the task team can serve as the basis for the definition of goals and targets of future agenda. To support the implementation of the agenda, as the Secretary General highlighted in his report, the global partnership for development would need to be strengthened as a responsibility shared by all countries and involving all stakeholders through a well-defined accountability framework. We are also looking forward to the report of the High-Level Panel in 2013. "Furthermore, we believe that greener and sustainable economic development should be adequately reflected in the post-2015 development agenda in order to address the widely shared need to work towards one unified global development agenda with sustainable development at its centre. We also support the observations that we should have an inclusive, open and transparent process with multi-stakeholder participation through national, regional and global forums, other intergovernmental processes and GA special meetings on development. In this respect we are looking forward with great expectations to the outcome of a special event to be convened during the 68th session of the UN General Assembly in September 2013. "As to our national MDGs implementation, it has been evidenced by the fourth national report that 77.9 percent of the targets are already met, providing a positive effect on the nation's development. Unfortunately, some of the targets have shown regress and some are expected not to be met, if continued at the current pace. These are MDG1 on halving poverty, and MDG7 on ensuring environmental sustainability and pollution, have become an issue of concern of every Mongolian. It calls for a stepped up national action and more focused multilateral partnership. Furthermore, implementation of our MDGs-based Comprehensive National Development Strategy up to 2021 is expected to lay the foundation for more inclusive, equitable and sustainable development in Mongolia beyond 2015. "In concluding, may I reiterate my delegation's strong resolve to work together with the fellow Member States towards strengthening the United Nations system so that it remains an effective center for advancing the development agenda around the world in the years to come,” the statement says. B.Khuder