Tuesday, September 24, 2024
3:05 p.m. EDT
Moderator: Ms. Femi Oke
Venue: ECOSOC Chamber, UNHQ, New York
Moderator: Ms. Femi Oke:
Please welcome onto the stage Miss Amina J. Mohammed, Her Excellency the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Her Excellency Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, and Miss Christina Williams SDG4 Youth Representative. Please be seated.
This is the future. Women from around the world. It is so good to see all of you.
I’m actually going to start, and this was my instinct, but then it was solidified by Prime Minister Motley and by the DSG about who should start. And they said, oh, Christine has to start. So Christine, you have heard an entire afternoon of how do we accelerate the SDGs?
What do we need to do? Concrete actions from various heads of states and leaders around the world from a youth perspective. What are your expectations?
How do youth accelerate the SDGs?
Miss Christina Williams SDG4 Youth Representative:
Thank you, Femi. I think how we accelerate the SDGs from a youth perspective, it’s from a place of social awareness and social responsibility.
Starting with social awareness, I feel as if young people are armed with the knowledge, the skills, the tools, the lived experience, and we’re using that to provide our inputs in the different documents. We did a lot of work at the network. We’re getting our inputs with the parts of the future, the creation of future generations, et cetera.
And we’re leading our own initiatives. We’re leading our own policies. We’re working with governments.
We’re co-creating all those good things. But I want to stray a little bit from the expected answer to talk about social responsibility. And I want to speak directly to my young people who may be watching live on web TV or even in the room, is that we always call for a seat at the table, the proverbial seat at the table.
I don’t have one right now this afternoon, but I do have a seat. And if we truly want to accelerate SDG progress as young people, we have to create other spaces for other young people. When we get a seat or a table, whatever it is, we also need to diversify that space.
We need to also ensure that the local voices, the indigenous voices, the young people in conflict zones, et cetera, that their voices reach these rooms. So we have access. The young people that do have access, we do have privilege.
We must use it for the better of the other young people if we want to accelerate SDG progress.
Moderator: Ms. Femi Oke:
Prime Minister, Prime Minister Mottley, you are renowned for delivering concrete actions, asking for concrete actions. Let’s talk.
Let’s get down to it. Six years before 2030. How do we use that time to accelerate, to achieve the SDGs?
Hon. Mia Amor Mottley, SC, MP, Prime Minister of Barbados:
We have to both walk and chew. The reality is that, as Christina just said, you’re going to need mobilization, grassroots mobilization, civil society mobilization. But that mobilization is equally to put political pressure on those who must make decisions.
Because the major elephant in the room is the financing. It takes cash to care. And whether we like it or not, we’ve not stepped up to the table sufficiently.
And there are too many distractions. But I do believe that we have it within us to summon the will. There’s no technological barrier that will stop us.
The only barrier is a mental one. And as I said in this very same room on Saturday, it was that, and I think President Biden repeated it this morning in quoting President Mandela, it’s not impossible until it’s done. And the bottom line is that we have found ourselves in the midst of the entire fulcrum of what is happening.
It feels funny. It feels like most days we will not make it. But I keep reminding us that I’m sure that those who were fighting for the abolition of slavery felt that way too.
Those who were fighting against apartheid felt that way too. So the most important thing is to keep hope alive. And in keeping hope alive, we have the twin companion of the mobilization, but also the necessary executive decision-making for the financing.
Now the financing has to come not just from international sources, but it also has to come from domestic sources. And we’re good at pointing fingers at others, but when we point one, three are pointing back at us, and one to heaven. So we need to find a way to be able to ensure that we maximize those three.
Part of the reality is that in most countries, in the same way the same colonial structures obtain internationally, there are regrettably still some entrenched power structures in our countries. And unless we’re prepared to summon the political will to deal with those as well, we’re not going to have the level of progress that we would like.
Moderator: Ms. Femi Oke:
Deputy Secretary General, you have almost the last word in this conversation.
What would that last word or sentence be?
Her Excellency Miss Amina J. Mohammed
Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations:
Roll up our sleeves. We have a roadmap. We’ve gotten various vehicles.
We know what we are supposed to do, but we need to do this at the country level in each and every country, in each and every local entity constituency that we have. And we have to mobilize all stakeholders. This is not just about the president of a country or prime minister of a country.
It really is leadership all the way through. And I think today, when we’re quoting the statistics of how many young people we have, it’s not just a seat at the table. We’ve really got to co-create and collaborate.
They’ve got more energy and vision than we have, and what we’ve got is lived experiences, expertise, and we can help push you as you fall back, push you forward. But this is a division of labor, and everyone’s got a stake in it, and everyone’s got a role. And I think what we have to do is drive people around these roadmaps we have, the SDGs, Agenda 2063, the Paris Agreement.
But we also then need to talk to the people in institutions. We’ve never delivered anything as strongly as when an institution has roots and foundations and can take us across different leaderships. And I think here, this is where we’ve invested the least.
It is in the institutions of the bank, of the United Nations, of our ministries and our sectors, where actually the people do the work. They oil the systems or not. And so I think it’s also a question of us speaking to those who are responsible for when we get the fuel and put it in the engine, they’ve got to get that running.
And I think there’s a disconnect these days between we who have the policies and those who are to try to implement them being as inclusive as they can. So there’s a missing piece. It’s in Goal 16.
We always talk about the rule of law and justice, but strong institutions, institutions that will function over time, because what we have to lift today is not a quick fix. We’ve not put our foot on the brakes to stop the slide and lose the gains. It’s gotten worse.
And for that worse, it’s going to take some time. And for that time, we’re going to need to ask people to be in this for the long term, the finance to be there for the long term. Everything has to be there for the long term.
Yes, there’s a huge amount of urgency that’s needed because of people who can’t see tomorrow. But we need to know that this is a long haul now. We’ve left it too long.
And we’ve got to get down, stuck in it for the next six years to prove we can do it and to strengthen that foundation and start putting those building blocks up really quickly. So out the door with the pact, SDGs, technology, finance, and most of all, we hope all of that will crowd out conflict, will crowd out the misery that is always on the shoulders and the burden of women and children and young people that carry.
Moderator: Ms. Femi Oke:
Deputy Secretary General, Prime Minister Mottley, Miss Christina Williams, we are almost at the end, but it is definitely the end of this conversation. Thank you so much.
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