By Avite Mbabazi
The United Nations Eswatini Resident Coordinator George Wachira has declared that the organization is committed to assisting Eswatini in achieving Agenda 2030.
Agenda 2030 envisions a secure world free of poverty and hunger, with full and productive employment, access to quality education and universal health coverage, the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and an end to environmental degradation.
Wachira was speaking during the Joint National Steering Committee (J-NSC) meeting on 25 January 2023 at the Royal Villas Hotel.
The J-NSC was established to provide strategic guidance and oversight in developing and implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDF) 2021-2025.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF), formerly named United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) is the most essential instrument for planning and implementation of the UN development activities at the country level.
Wachira noted that the J-NSC is critical in providing strategic guidance and oversight to all stakeholders.
“I urge that we use this space to assess our collective performance and delivery against Agenda 2030, recognizing that the global challenges and disasters have undermined decades of development efforts, reversing progress in many SDG areas.”
On the other hand, he highlighted that there are still some challenges that the country continues to face and others whose effects are still reverberating throughout the country. “The devastation brought by Covid-19; the natural disaster of Cyclone Eloise; the 2021 unrest and continued uncertainty; and the ongoing global upheaval with consequences for global peace, commodity prices, and energy supplies.”
He, however, assured that in the face of challenges, the compass remains on Agenda 2030 and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set in 2015, adding that coordination was needed now more than ever and that Eswatini being a Lower Middle Income Country (LMIC), the role of the UN in-country shifts away from being a provider of resources, to that of providing policy, technical and catalectic support.