By Former Nigerian Environment Minister spells out her goals
By Ada Anioji
Amina Mohammed: ‘I am delighted to be here. My first interaction is coming, of course, off the back of the ECOSOC segment and that is so important to us given the thrust of the reform and the development agenda. I look forward to my time here, working and interacting closely with you. Great privilege to return to New York, again, I have to say today, incredibly humbled by the weight and expectations of the Secretary-General and myself in support of him to actualize his vision.
Today’s world challenges are much more complex and intertwined; we have seen anxiety that is increasingly mounting across the world. I’m grateful to the Secretary-General [António Guterres] for his trust and his leadership, ambitious vision for the Organization, a vision that focuses on prevention, really looking at the root causes. It requires that we really do take integration much more seriously and work across all the pillars.
I will be focusing primarily on helping the SG to reposition sustainable development at the United Nations and as he has stated, sustainable development is an end in itself but it is also the best way that we feel that we can achieve universal peace.
I’m attaching great importance to the promise of leaving no one behind, so starting with those that are furthest behind, really looking to see how we can address that in a robust manner that brings everyone into the sustainable development agenda, addressing gender barriers that we’ve seen constantly; that we have achieved some success in that, not enough. We need to go to scale at this point. We also need to empower youth, agents of peace and development. I can say that in the recent 15 months that I have been home, after helping to shape the 2030 Agenda, youth have been the greatest challenge that we have faced but also the greatest potential to finding solutions for peace and development.
I will be supporting the SG in the comprehensive review of the UN development system; this will be in close consultation with Member States.
We have the advantage that the three major agendas that we agreed in 2015, were really from an inclusive process where Member States owned it and lead on it. And so supporting them to get an ambitious response at the country level is one that I believe will have a much easier task than we would have had previously, so therefore, those consultations will be given utmost priority.
We shall become as the United Nations much more fit for purpose. I think this is across all constituencies, not just the UN but we have to lead in that. We provided an ambitious agenda, where most people are struggling with integration, struggling with universality, a different concept to sustainable development and so for that we need to ensure that our partners too, in the civil society and the private sector, are on board and we are all helping countries and not burdening them with a new agenda.
I think over the recent times, the 2030 agenda as I have spent the last 15 months trying to see that at country-level, not just in Nigeria but across the region in Africa, with other agendas like [African Union Agenda] 2063, there is an acute need for us to make sure that we are aligning these agendas and not layering them and burdening at the country level some of the issues that need to be addressed as much, as urgently as possible.
You can count on our utmost commitment to ensure the UN responds in a way that honours our level of ambition, it is an ambitious agenda and once again, just say I’m really happy to be back here in service of humanity.’
Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary General, UN
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