Remarks by His Excellency Moosa Zameer, Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77 (G77) and China
Distinguished Ministers,
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uganda, and the Government of Uganda for your leadership of this Group, and for convening this meeting, today.
Excellencies,
As we near the end of Agenda 2030, we are nowhere near close to achieving it. We must ask ourselves, why this is?
The world faces the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, while it struggles to overcome many other afflictions. As President Dr Mohamed Muizzu reiterated in his General Debate statement, the world is in red.
To address these challenges, and to ensure no country and no one is left behind, we must deliver on three things:
First, we must acknowledge the potential within our countries - our peoples. Their abilities. Their capacity.
We must harness this productive capacity of our countries, to close the development gap, and to address the many issues that we face.
We must enhance cooperation to supplement and stimulate this development of productive capacity in our countries.
We believe that developing productive capacity is the missing piece of the puzzle for many developing countries, especially for countries like the Maldives.
Second, we must integrate the various programmes of action for our countries into our national development plans.
We must insist, that our multilateral development partners, such as the UN and its agencies also integrate those programmes of action, such as the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS).
We look forward to the Third UN Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries, to be held in Botswana later this year, and wish them a very successful conference.
Third, we must insist on reform of the international financial architecture. The existing system has failed most of us.
Finance must be accessible. Finance must be affordable.
The new climate finance goal must be sufficient to address the challenges we face. It must go beyond the existing pledges. But most importantly, it must be deliverable.
We look forward to COP29 in Azerbaijan, and reiterate our commitment to working with all our partners and friends to finalise an outcome that is truly beneficial to our people, and planet.
Excellencies,
I must express the Maldives’ disappointment that the Ministerial Declaration we will adopt today, fails to capture the views of all Members. Despite our repeated appeals, the Ministerial Declaration includes language that we do not consider to be agreed language of the Group.
The Government of Maldives is undertaking a comprehensive review of the actions taken and the positions adopted by the previous Government of Maldives in Case No. 28 of ITLOS. As the review is ongoing, the Maldives is unable to agree to the entirety of the paragraphs 389 and 390 in the Ministerial Declaration that we will adopt today.
We therefore disassociate ourselves from Paragraphs 389 and 390 and request the Chair to reflect this in the records of this meeting.
The Maldives remains committed to promoting the interests of the Group in the multilateral fora, and welcome the incoming chair of the Group, Iraq on their appointment. We wish them all the best, and a successful chairmanship.
I thank you.
