The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation participated in the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development held in New York with a Spanish delegation, headed by the State Secretary for International Cooperation, Eva Granados Galiano, who was responsible for advocating for a more effective, coordinated and inclusive United Nations.
Granados, who spoke in the segment under the slogan "UN80: Catalysing Change for Sustainable Development", stressed that "Spain knows that there is no better way to support sustainable development at a global level than through multilateralism, and that there is no better defence of multilateralism than to support its reform and in-depth strengthening".
This led her to declare that "we want to actively contribute to the UN80 initiative to build a more effective, coordinated, efficient, representative, transparent and inclusive United Nations that responds to today's challenges and has a greater impact on the lives of people, especially those most in need".
The UN80 initiative, launched in March this year by Secretary-General António Guterres, seeks to streamline the UN system's operations, improve its effectiveness and reaffirm its relevance in a rapidly changing global context.
The State Secretary recalled that "Spain has been a staunch defender of reforming the UN sustainable development system from the beginning, strongly supporting the Resident Coordinator system through increasing voluntary contributions, as well as the Joint SDG Fund and the Local2030 Coalition".
Feminist policies
In the framework of this High-Level Political Forum, which paid special attention to the review of SDGs 3 (health), 5 (gender equality) and 8 (decent work), the State Secretary held meetings with representatives from feminist organisations such as Walking the Talk and the UN Women's Major Group.
Spain also organised the "Feminist Perspectives on International Cooperation and Financing for Development after the FfD4 Conference: the way forward” side event, with the aim of strengthening the commitments made in Seville and promoting a strong gender perspective in the financing for development agenda.
To move towards feminist international cooperation and financing for development with a gender perspective, priority issues such as transformative fiscal policies, the financing of the care economy and an international financial architecture that promotes parity in decision-making spaces, as demanded by various countries, were addressed.
The State Secretary also met with UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and Guy Ryder, Under-Secretary-General for Policy, to discuss the future of multilateral sustainable development policies and to follow up on the commitments of the International Conference on Financing for Development in the run-up to the Doha Summit for Social Development and the Belém COP on climate change in November.
For images of the event, click
here.
—NON OFFICIAL TRANSLATION—