End of Year Message by the UN Resident Coordinator in Eswatini

As 2022 comes to an end, it is a good moment to reflect on our collective journey and on our aspirations for 2023.

I should like to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude to you all for your dedicated service to Eswatini and support since my arrival as Resident Coordinator and Designated Official for UN Security eight months ago. Thank you for the warm welcome and for all that we have achieved together - both in that period and throughout the year. As I settled in, I had fruitful meetings with Regional Directors of our various Agencies, Funds and Programmes whose support I greatly appreciate.  I wish to acknowledge the tremendous support and guidance received from the Development Coordination Office (DCO) Regional Office for Africa led by Yacoub El Hilo, and by DCO Headquarters, led first by Robert Piper and, currently, by Oscar Fernandez-Taranco.

Throughout this year, we have sought to accompany EmaSwati on their journey to recover better from a host of serious threats and shocks. Despite the many challenges, we stood shoulder to shoulder to push back against the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cyclone Eloise, the civil unrest and the far-reaching consequences of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. 

Despite the challenges before us, this is not the time for despair. As our Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, urged us all recently, this is a time for resolve, determination and hope. It is a time to look back on our successes and map our way around the challenges. Our work is that of hope-building through working to achieve our Agenda 2030 and the SDGs.

Despite the substantial losses incurred as a result of the closure of about 900 schools and 10 tertiary institutions at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government and the UN have invested in the recovery efforts for the education sector. The national preparatory process for the Transforming Education Summit held last year on the side lines of the 2022 UN General Assembly helped Eswatini to identify priorities to transform and reimagine our education system for a more robust tomorrow. Specifically, the national consultations ahead of the Summit were in many ways an eye-opening multi-stakeholder dialogue on the status and future of education in the country. 

In 2023, the UN will continue working closely with Government and stakeholders to support the implementation of Eswatini’s commitments at the Summit. We have no choice but to keep the promise to our children. In addition to the Summit, the Education Plus Initiative, launched by the Government and the UN earlier this year, is focusing attention on reducing HIV infections among young people by keeping them in school as the country moves towards ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Food security is crucial at a time of escalating food and energy prices and climate change impacts. The Food Systems Summit (FSS) in 2021 was the first of the Secretary-General’s Summit series. As such, the concretization of the outcomes of the FSS through robust follow-up is critical in setting the tone and expectations of the future summits and, as RC, I will continue to seek all avenues of ensuring the success of all agreed actions. In 2022, the UN, in collaboration with the government, has focused on the planning and structuring of agricultural value chains and the establishment of the national Agriculture Development Fund to support smallholder farmers, including young, aspiring ones, with skills and capital for Green Technologies and farming starter packs.

I applaud the Government for the continued efforts to create an enabling environment for good governance, gender equality and human rights, including through the Matrimonial and Marriages Bill, Labour Relations Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act, Labour Inspection Act, HIV/ AIDS in the workplace policy as well as Parliament Strategic Plan and HIV Policy for Parliamentarians. I am proud that we in the UN, together, have played a key role in these efforts.

In our commitment to leave no one behind, we shall continue to put youth, persons with disabilities, children, women and other marginalized groups at the centre of our work. In response to the growing youth unemployment, slow economic growth and the rising cost of living, we have supported Eswatini to launch the Youth Empowerment Programme which has generated great national interest and support from the private sector. I applaud our ad hoc Interagency Task Force on Youth and all the agencies for the efforts towards developing the now near-ready broader UN Eswatini Youth Offer to address economic empowerment, skills development as well as the health and wellbeing of young people.

As part of our mandate to enhance coordination of development efforts, the establishment of the International Development Partners Platform, chaired by the RC, is a landmark development and will contribute to improved coherence of support by international partners and enhance efficiency and cost effectiveness. The platform will also facilitate a more coordinated engagement with the Eswatini Development Coordination Forum chaired by the Minister of Economic Planning and Development and co-chaired by the RC.

I commend Eswatini for its continued leadership on meeting the SDGs despite the current odds. In July, Eswatini presented its second Voluntary National Review at the High-Level Forum on SDGs in New York.  Again, I would like to commend all our agencies for accompanying the Government and the people of Eswatini as we accelerate progress towards these goals. 

I am grateful to all UNCT members for the very successful in person UNCT retreat under the theme: Keeping Our Promise in a time of Uncertainty: Taking Stock and Aligning Energies in the Race to 2030. In particular, spending one full day of the retreat and into the evening in ‘listening mode’, hearing our partners (government, private sector, CSOs, church leaders, youth, key populations) was a great way to start the retreat. That one day set the tone for the next two days in Piggs Peak and an extra day back in Mbabane. It was gratifying that the conversations with partners at the retreat helped us identify areas of analysis that enabled a richer review of our Common Country Analysis document.

Under the UN reform agenda and the whole of society approach, we have since my arrival made efforts to support the renewal of the social contract through strengthening our partnerships with key stakeholders and partners. In 2022, we facilitated multiple platforms, bringing government, religious leaders, women, youth, civil society organisations, persons with disability, members of parliament and private sector leaders into dialogue on development and human rights, while also supporting national capacities for understanding and dealing with political and conflict issues that are relatively new in Eswatini. We recognize that respect for human rights and freedoms is core to all development efforts.

Despite all the achievements of this year, some challenges continue to linger and require our collective attention as we launch into 2023. We acknowledge that there is need for redoubling efforts to rescue the SDGs, and with no time for complacency. As we have constantly messaged in the past year, it really is a race to 2030 and rescuing the SDGs takes centre stage.

After 2 years of implementing the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF 2021-2025) through Joint Work Plans developed by our 4 Results Groups, there is a need to take stock of the functioning of our Results Groups to ensure we are on a good footing going forward. This is going to be our priority in 2023. In the true spirit of the UN reform, we shall continue to strengthen coordination of our resource mobilization efforts and to minimize cases of several agencies approaching same donors on the same issues.

We acknowledge that at the national level, the political situation, including the increased disruption through protests and increasing violence and loss of lives, will continue to be a challenge in the absence of a national consensus on the proposed national dialogue. As an impartial actor, the UN will continue its efforts to encourage national stakeholders to come together to ensure a united effort to restore stability and put Eswatini firmly back on its self-defined trajectory of joining the ranks of developed countries.

Finally, the scourge of domestic violence against women and girls remains a steep challenge in our work. Just as we are working to bring more coherence to our work in support of the youth of Eswatini, more effort is needed against gender-based violence. GBV is not just as an Eswatini problem and, indeed, my colleague Resident Coordinators in the region and I have initiated a conversation about crafting a common strategy to address the problem while learning from each other. In 2023, let us push harder for the transformation of gender relations for the benefit of our society and achievement of development aspirations. 

As the UN Country Team, we will continue to be mindful of the need to reflect on our collective work and keep learning so that we can keep the promise – contained in the UNSDCF – to support Eswatini to deliver on the 2030 Agenda. The growing uncertainties and challenges, not only in the Kingdom but also across the globe, must spur us to work harder. Every crisis presents opportunities, and it is our task to discover these opportunities and, working with Government, translate them into results for the people. We shall use the Common Country Analysis and the Vulnerability Assessment completed this year to help us align our energies in the race to 2030 as we develop the next cycle of joint work plans for 2023-2025.

Thank you all, and a very happy and successful 2023. Siyabonga kakhulu!

George Wachira, UN Resident Coordinator

Kingdom of Eswatini

 31 December 2022