00:00 Your Excellency Mr. Dennis Francis, President of the 78th Session of the United Nations
00:08 General Assembly.
00:10 Your Excellency Mr. Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations.
00:15 Your Excellencies, Heads of State and Government, and leaders of delegations, distinguished
00:22 delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
00:26 In less than 30 years, we will come to the halfway point of this century.
00:34 And in less than 80 years, the 21st century will end.
00:40 By that time, none of us will be President and none of us will be alive.
00:48 So when we stand at this podium and speak of the future, we speak of a future that does
00:54 not belong to us.
00:58 We speak of a future with sustainable development.
01:03 We speak of a better world, not for us, but for our grandchildren and their children.
01:12 And the decisions we make today, the actions we take each day, are what determine what
01:20 kind of future we are creating for them.
01:24 It is therefore not good enough to say that we must build trust in the world when we continue
01:32 making decisions that undermine trust.
01:36 It is not good enough to say that we want to reignite global solidarity when we continue
01:43 to pick and choose whom we show solidarity with.
01:50 It is not enough to say we want to move towards peace when our actions in other nations promote
02:00 war and create the conditions for conflict.
02:05 It is not good enough to say we want prosperity for all when our rules for trade and our financial
02:13 systems are a recipe for deepening the poverty of other nations.
02:21 Without changing our decisions, our positions, and our actions, the future we speak of today
02:29 and the sustainable development we dream of achieving by 2030 will remain a reality on
02:38 paper.
02:40 And when it comes to urgent action, we must focus our attention, our energies, and our
02:47 resources on the areas where we are falling behind.
02:53 We must prioritize those places in the world that are most at risk of not achieving sustainability
03:01 in any of the 17 SDGs.
03:06 In the case of Malawi, the most pressing priorities are plain to see.
03:11 As a nation, we took the SDGs and aligned our national aspirations to reflect them.
03:21 So even though we have our sights set on the Malawi 2063 vision, we also created an implementation
03:31 plan for the first 10 years that coincides with the decade of action on SDGs in the context
03:39 of Agenda 2030.
03:42 And our focus has already started yielding fruit because in the past few years we have
03:48 stayed on track with our quest to end hunger in line with SDG 2, to safeguard the good
03:56 health and well-being of our citizens in line with SDG 3, to improve quality of education
04:04 in line with SDG 4, to leverage Malawi's abundant water resources for better sanitation
04:11 in line with SDG 6, and to promote life below water in line with SDG 14.
04:20 Now, while we celebrate the progress we have made on these goals, with seven years to go
04:28 before the end of the decade of action on SDGs, we are not satisfied with seeing progress
04:35 on only five out of 17 goals.
04:41 In fact, not only do we need support with making gains in the areas where we are seeing
04:50 little, but we even need urgent support with safeguarding the gains we have made in the
05:00 areas where we are doing well.
05:03 In short, we need urgent support in building resilience to inoculate our economy against
05:10 the adverse effects of shocks.
05:13 In 12 months since the last time I stood here, Malawi has had the worst cholera outbreak
05:21 in its history, killing more people than COVID.
05:27 The consequence of the contamination of water bodies and systems suffered when cyclones
05:34 Ana and Gombe hit us six months before.
05:38 In that time, Malawi has also had a drought in its northern region, resulting in the loss
05:44 of half of our maize and 80 percent of our rice in one of the most productive districts
05:53 in our country.
05:55 In that time, Malawi has also come under assault by the worst cyclone on record, as Freddie
06:04 made landfall twice and left a trail of death and destruction like you can't believe, killing
06:12 over a thousand, displacing over half a million, and washing away homes, roads, and bridges,
06:19 businesses, and fields of crops that are a source of livelihood for over two million
06:26 people.
06:27 So when I say that our SDGs are under threat, the threat is real, and it is already here.
06:36 What Malawi needs, therefore, is decision and action.
06:42 We need decision and action on the climate financing that has thus far been nothing more
06:49 than a promissory note from the developed countries responsible for sourcing or resourcing
06:57 our efforts for mitigation, adaptation, and most urgently, loss and damage.
07:06 We need decision and action on debt, for like most least developed countries, Malawi is
07:13 in distress because its debt is unsustainable.
07:19 And so our call to action on behalf of all LDCs on this matter remains the same.
07:27 Cancel the dates.
07:29 Cancel the dates.
07:31 Cancel the dates.
07:35 As a family, as a family of nations, we have already lost two years of progress during
07:44 the decade of action due to economic shutdowns effected to contain COVID-19.
07:52 And if you want the global economy to regain that lost ground, you must cancel the dates.
08:01 We have lost another two years of progress during this decade of action due to economic
08:07 disruptions caused by the war in Eastern Europe.
08:12 And if you want to see LDCs catch up on SDGs, you must cancel the dates.
08:20 That's a decision you can make today, an action you can take that would breathe oxygen into
08:29 the suffocating economies of the global south.
08:34 That's a decision you can make today so that the money being drained by servicing debts
08:43 can go towards rebuilding roads, schools, hospitals, businesses, and livelihoods.
08:53 For Malawi's part, we are committed to continue implementing reforms and policies aimed at
09:00 building economic resilience against shocks.
09:04 We are committed to continue engaging the United Nations and our development partners,
09:10 both multilaterally as well as bilaterally, in mobilizing international support that goes
09:18 beyond disaster management and seeks to build sustainability.
09:24 We are committed to continue banging on the doors of financial institutions that remain
09:30 too slow and too unresponsive and too rigid to address the existing financing gaps in
09:37 the programs we have for achieving SDGs.
09:42 We are committed to the principle of the UN Charter and to a rules-based international
09:48 system so long as we have the power to change the rules that have worked against us and
09:56 held us back in terms of our development for decades.
10:03 This is why Malawi strongly advocates for radical reform in the United Nations Security
10:11 Council itself, whose very structure undermines the values of democracy, inclusivity, accountability,
10:21 and trust.
10:23 It is no accident that at this 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, focused
10:32 on rebuilding trust and solidarity, only one head of state from the permanent members of
10:40 the UN Security Council showed up.
10:45 That is not how you build trust.
10:49 That is not how you show solidarity.
10:53 That is not accountability.
10:56 That is not leadership.
10:59 As such, I believe President Biden said it so well here.
11:06 And Malawi joins the United States in insisting that Africa must have permanent seats on the
11:15 UN Security Council with veto power because without that level of inclusivity, rebuilding
11:23 trust and reigniting global solidarity will be a challenge.
11:30 One of the reasons we need a reformed United Nations is because we need a new development
11:37 paradigm going beyond 2030.
11:42 We need a development paradigm that takes on board the interests of the developing world
11:49 in the spirit of true partnership.
11:53 We need a development paradigm that places partnership at the heart of our quest for
12:00 SDG achievement.
12:03 We need a development paradigm that promotes competition in matters of human ingenuity,
12:10 science, technology, and innovation, and not in matters of militarization and economic
12:16 exploitation, which are just new forms of colonization.
12:22 We need a new paradigm that celebrates and rewards the developed nations that fulfill
12:28 their commitment to finance resilience projects in developing countries.
12:34 We need a new paradigm that establishes effective carbon markets to empower developing nations
12:41 like Malawi with resources necessary for achieving sustainability and implementing their national
12:48 adaptation plans.
12:50 We need a new paradigm that builds each continent's capacity to tackle future pandemics, including
12:59 vaccine manufacturing capabilities and proactive pandemic preparedness.
13:06 And most importantly, we need a new paradigm that unleashes the full potential of our youth
13:13 and puts them in the driving seat of the vehicles we are using to reach our SDG targets.
13:20 For the future, we are chasing after theirs and not ours.
13:27 I thank you.
13:28 (Applause.)
13:29 (End of transcript.)
13:30 (Applause.)
13:30 [APPLAUSE]
