PM joins call for securing financing for development in COVID-19 era and beyond
Today (Friday, 29 May) is the International Day of UN Peacekeeping –– an occasion which honours the service of the uniformed and civilian personnel whose bravery and sacrifice has upheld the cause of global peace for over seven decades.
Among those warriors, thousands of Fijian peacekeepers have given peace a fighting chance in some of the world’s deadliest and most devastating conflicts. On the frontlines of battlefields a world away from their homes, they’ve shielded those
United Nations Mission in South Sudan Police Commissioner Unaisi Vuniwaqa
most vulnerable to war’s brutality, and revealed the true tenacity and compassion of the Fijian spirit. This year, we honour our Women In Peacekeeping as a Key to Peace. For too long, around the world, this has been a male-dominated field. Fiji, meanwhile, has been working to break that norm since 1988, when the first Fijian woman was deployed. And that trailblazing continues to this day.
Just in February, we again showed that women are just as capable as taking the lead as anyone else in these missions, with Inspector Rusila Cakacaka’s appointment as the first Fijian officer to serve in the Abyei Area between North and South Sudan.
Whether in our Peacekeeping missions or anywhere else, Inspector
Cakacaka made it clear that women have a place in Fijian leadership. It’s my hope that little girls know that there is no arena in which they cannot rise to lead, in any field they choose –– including the battlefield.
So this Peacekeepers Day, let us all take a moment to pay tribute to the thousands of Fijians who, over the decades, have shown the best of Fiji to the world.
On behalf of all Fijians, I thank them and their families for their sacrifice, especially those who have laid down their lives for the greater, global cause of peace, justice and security for all.
God bless our Peacekeepers, and God bless Fiji.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama joined the UN Secretary General António Guterres in calling for global leadership to secure financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and beyond.
The UNSG together with the Prime Ministers of Canada and Jamaica co-convened urgent virtual discussions to draw attention to the financing needed to respond to the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 on developing countries.
The Secretary General told 50 world leaders and the president of the World Bank, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund that the “world needed to act decisively and with great urgency to meet this human crisis”.
The virtual discussions between world leaders and heads of multilateral institutions were focused on six pressing issues:
■ The need to maintain financial stability to safeguard SDG development gains;
■ The need to address debt vulnerabilities for developing countries;
■ The need to create a space in which private sector creditors can proactively engage;
■ Prerequisites for external finance for enhancing inclusive growth;
■ Measures to foster domestic resource mobilisation;
■ Ensuring a sustainable and inclusive recovery.
The president of the World Bank, president of the EU, the head of the International Monetary Fund and the heads of State and Governments from 50 countries participated in these urgent discussions.
President of the EU, President of France, Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Boris Johnson were among the many leaders who presented bold proposals and new recommendations for supporting developing countries to respond to the difficult social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The UN Secretary General cautioned world leaders that innovative, creative and bold measures were needed. He reminded the UN audience that current efforts did not go far enough.
He said that unless there was a greater level of solidarity; 8.5 trillion dollars will be wiped out of the global economy and with it – jobs, livelihoods for tens of millions of people across the world. A UN report released last week suggested that the world will experience a reversal in human development for the first time in many decades.