His Majesty's King Mswati III's 74th General Assembly Address

Mr. President, 

Your Excellencies, Heads of State and Government,

UN Secretary- General,

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Introduction

It is an immense honour for me to address this 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly. When the UN was established by our predecessors back in 1945, the main purpose was to reduce tensions and avert another conflict after World War II.

Today our organization is faced with a multiple of challenges that are confronting mankind. The UN should give hope to the people of the world and be alive to multifaceted issues, by promoting safety, peace and security.

The past seven decades have shown us that multilateralism is an essential ingredient for a peaceful world. In pursuing this mandate over the years, the UN has developed into an important organ to foster a collective action to today's global challenges.

It is this collective endeavour that has brought about cooperation and supported a global economy towards lifting more than a billion people from poverty. However, as we are all aware, there still exists threats to peace and violent conflicts plus mass atrocities in different regions of the world.

We note with sadness that some of these conflicts and other inhumane sufferings are sponsored by those who believe they have the right to dictate and impose their ideologies on other nations of the world. We call upon the UN Secretary General to act swiftly and discourage such behaviours because they are against the objectives of our Organization. We are all equal, irrespective of country size and economic power.

UN Member States must speak in one voice to diffuse any tensions, while encouraging dialogue and protecting civilians and innocent conflict victims. My plea is particularly directed to all the regions of the world where there are still pockets of conflict. We should all work towards an integrated, prosperous, peaceful and multilateral world.

Theme for the 74th UN General Assembly 

The urgency in "Galvanizing multilateral efforts for poverty eradication, quality education, climate action and inclusion", as per theme of this session, cannot be overemphasized. In effect, the theme underscores and reiterates the inevitability to make the United Nations even more relevant to all people in times like this.

We encourage the UN Secretariat to note all these debates by the leaders of the world and put them into action. Humanity is looking upon us to change their living landscape for a better future. It is imperative that we take up the multilateral agenda with a renewed commitment to ensure peaceful, equitable and sustainable societies for our future generations.

Most contemporary challenges such as terrorism, climate change, migration, transnational organized crimes and many others, cannot be effectively addressed without multilateral cooperation. This calls for inclusion and participation of all Member Sates through cooperation, dialogue and reforming existing organs where needed. We therefore implore the General assembly to play its role in bridging the gaps and promoting collective action.

This we will achieve through close coordination and collaboration with the Organisation and all its Agencies, to address all international issues that deserve our attention.

Poverty Eradication

Globally, eradicating poverty remains our priority and a daunting challenge especially in the face of climate change and food insecurity to mention but a few. We acknowledge and appreciate the actions taken by the international community to mitigate the situation.

We wish to stress that more investment is required to build strong societies and social protection systems that will ensure the inclusion of special interest groups affected by poverty. Whilst we have a responsibility to channel a significant proportion of national expenditures into social protection programmes, developing countries actually need financing of the SDGs to transform their economies and social fabrics.

As an example, financing development for a country such as Eswatini may become challenging over time with the global economic austerity. This reality places constraints on the extent to which our nation may mobilize resources for development at a time when massive investments are needed to achieve the SDGs by 2030. 

Eswatini is enhancing its resource mobilization strategies by exploring cooperation with the global community and we seek your support in this endeavour. It is evident that the integration of African economies, through innovative approaches, presents several opportunities to achieve the SDGs. Such efforts are important in generating new ideas, projects, and means to enable voices to be heard and to drive innovation and promote development.

The recent launch of the African Free Trade Area in Africa will assist greatly in the fight against poverty eradication in the continent. Likewise, with the anticipated launch of the AE-Trade platform in the next few weeks, we are confident that these will usher a new era in the lives of our people. They will bring the required impetus to change the landscape and economies of Africa.

As a continent we are focusing on building and growing our economies and with these new initiatives being well established, we will be able to increase trade with the entire world and be self-sufficient. We therefore urge the UN to give the initiatives launched by Africa its full support to ensure that the Continent improves the lives of its people and becomes the Africa we want.

Challenges of Epidemic Diseases in Africa

Mr. President,

The African Continent continues to face challenges beyond the conflict, and these are health issues including diseases such as Ebola, HIV, malaria, TB, and many others that require large significant funding to overcome.

It is sometimes unfortunate that when we realize some progress in our fight against these pandemics, we are then confronted with new outbreaks, which reverse the gains we had made.

Yet as African States, our vision is that all these epidemics should be eliminated so that we can focus on our development goals. Unfortunately, developing countries continue to face significant gaps in funding to detect and respond adequately, while providing basic health and building the capacity of the health sector.

Africa carries a disproportionately high burden of malaria cases. Although improvement has been observed, additional funding is needed for Africa to move closer to eradicating malaria in the Continent.

The Kingdom of Eswatini is among 21 countries globally with the potential to reverse indigenous malaria transmission by 2020, thereby achieving the goal of malaria elimination. In my capacity as the Chairperson of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), I am delighted to announce that we launched the End Malaria Fund early this year, a public private partnership to close the funding gap and end the disease by 2022.

We pleasantly note that following the setting up of the Malaria Fund in Eswatini, many more African countries have followed suit, and are actively launching similar Funds. We are also proud to inform the world that the Kingdom continues with progress in ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2022. However, we still need support in our prevention efforts and prolonging the lives of those who are already living with the disease.

We are grateful to the friends of the Kingdom who continue to support us in addressing these challenges particularly the Global Fund. They support our initiatives to eliminate AIDS, TB and malaria while building stronger systems for health that will enable the achievement of universal health coverage.

Climate Change Impact

Mr. President,

Climate change has serious implications for development prospects everywhere and more so on the African continent where the intensity of climate extremes has become frequent. As we have witnessed in the SADC Region, natural disasters know no boundaries, and the most affected countries do not have sufficient resources and capacity to ensure preparedness and respond to the devastation and impact suffered, including infrastructure and loss of lives.

It is Eswatini’s view that countries need to work together to devise sound contingency plans to firstly, establish a permanent regional disaster fund to help cushion against the effects of natural disasters; and secondly, set-up sub-regional humanitarian hubs that will be equipped to respond swiftly to disasters. This will mitigate the impact, save lives and ensure early recovery of the affected countries. The price of not taking prompt action to address climate change is too high.

Knowledge Based Economy is Essential

The Kingdom of Eswatini is fully involved in working towards a knowledge-based economy through the science, technology and innovation infrastructure in a bid to facilitate research and enhance development.

The Royal Science and Technology Park in the country notably advances scientific research, promotes start-up enterprises and innovation labs. We appreciate the friends of the Kingdom of Eswatini who support us in these initiatives. The country still seeks more support to strengthen our knowledge based programmes as they enable us in attaining our National Vision 2022 and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We are committed to becoming one of the leading pioneers and role models to achieve the SDGs in Africa. We remain confident that the SDGs and Agenda 2063 of the African Union will continue to give us the proper guidance and impetus necessary to eradicate poverty and create inclusive sustainable development for all.

We commend the close partnership between the UN and the people of Eswatini which guarantees that the SDGs are fully integrated into out planning process.

In this regard, we have launched a five-year strategic roadmap for the period 2019-2023 that will ensure sustainable economic development, financial stability and growth to improve the quality of life of Emaswati.

The roadmap has five key sectors based on their ability to grow our GDP, create employment and mobilize revenue, being manufacturing and agro-processing; agriculture; mining and energy; tourism; and education and ICT.

Education in National Development

No nation can develop past its educational capacity, particularly that of its teachers. As we all strive to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all, we also need to render the necessary assistance to countries that need help in developing the attribute of their educators.

In this regard, we need to guarantee access to free and quality primary and secondary education, as well as affordable and inclusive vocational and technical education while paying attention to opportunities available to disabled children, the boy and girl child. I am pleased to share with the global community that the Kingdom of Eswatini has embarked on these initiatives and we can see positive results.

The Youth and our Development Agenda

Mr. President,

As we all know, young people face a variety of challenges, which require a comprehensive, coordinated and multi-sectoral response. We are a youthful world, with more than half the global population under the age of 30.

We therefore need strategies to encourage the labour market to absorb the growing young working class and ensure that they are appropriately trained for the needs of our markets. We also need to develop programmes aimed at increasing opportunities for our young people to start their own businesses. 

Taiwan Participation in UN Affairs is Key

Mr. President,

The United Nations bid of leaving no one behind will remain elusive if we continue to deprive other nations of the world the opportunity to play a pivotal role in the affairs of this August universal Assembly. We firmly believe that Taiwan is essential to the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

The inclusion of Taiwan is a crucial step in realizing our pledge, as stipulated in the preamble of UN General Assembly Resolution 70/1 adopted on September 25, 2015. We call on the UN once again to uphold the principle of universality and its multilateral efforts towards total inclusion and allow Taiwan to participate in relevant exertions on a dignified and equal footing.

Conclusion

Let me reiterate the Kingdom’s keenness to prioritizing the overall implementation of the 2030 Agenda and Africa’s Agenda 2063. Like other middle-income countries, among the challenges we face is the decline of official development assistance due to our categorization; this has worked against our development and poverty reduction efforts. To this end, we strongly advocate for reassessment of the reality on the ground when official development assistance is allocated to countries most in need.

Finally, Mr. President, we pledge our support to effective multilateralism that aims at enforcing inclusion, promoting quality education, peace and security for all, and uplifting countries from all forms of poverty. Addressing all challenges engulfing the United Nations family is our firm commitment.

We wish to acknowledge the UN Secretary general and his entire staff for continuing to steer the affairs of the Secretariat with focused commitment to the UN pursuit of global peace and security, equity and justice, and inclusiveness in all matters of the Organization.

We are strongly convinced that together, we shall overcome all that matters that appear as impossibilities, as we continue to strive for unity, solidarity, and mutual benefit; and above all, galvanize all efforts towards achieving a better world for all and everywhere.

I thank you – may the almighty god bless us all.