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UN / RISE FOR ALL INITIATIVE
STORY: UN / RISE FOR ALL INITIATIVE
TRT: 2:44
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /NATS
DATELINE: 27 APRIL 2020, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, press room
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina Mohammed, Deputy UN Secretary-General:
“The Framework restates and commits to human rights, the environmental sustainability, climate action, gender equality, thus reflecting 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement. COVID-19 may have put a pause button on the world, but it certainly hasn’t stop climate change nor has it stopped vulnerabilities and inequalities around the world, and we must take profit from this crisis to look at the opportunities we can address.”
3. Split screen, Mohammed and spokesperson
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina Mohammed, Deputy UN Secretary-General:
“It is a first time we are looking at development with an emergency lens. We’ve looked at the humanitarian and the health, but now for development it is equally urgent that we attend to the crisis.”
5. Wide shot, press room
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina Mohammed, Deputy UN Secretary-General:
“We will be rising to this occasion with women at the forefront. We’ve heard over and over again how they are carrying the brunt, the burden of COVID-19 and the health, the humanitarian and certainly socio economic peace and for that we have an amazing number of women who are coming forward today to support us in that call for action.”
7. Wide shot, press room
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme:
“Clearly, the focus of the United Nations Development System with its 131 Resident Coordinator Offices that cover 162 countries with its over 40 agencies funds and programmes is now at the forefront working alongside countries and helping them to address this socio-economic dimension of the COVID-19 crisis. In the first instance the socio-economic framework and the response that we’ve laid out, seeks to [….] the immediate priority of addressing the suppression of the virus. But at the same time, countries are now faced with extraordinary dilemmas and choices. First of all to identify the most vulnerable, be it women, be it people living in slums, be it those who have lost their jobs, be it literally hundreds of millions of people in the informal sector, because in many developing countries the informal sector is the majority of jobs that underpin the livelihoods of people and families.
9. Wide shot, press room
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme:
“What we’re facing in this socio-economic context is not something that we measure only in monetary terms. It is the livelihoods, it is the vulnerabilities, it is confidence in governments, it is trust in abilities of government to lead economies and societies through this process. Much of our work in the full range of the United Nations Development System family is now focused on trying to bring both the expertise, the insight and the support of our specialized agencies in support of governments.”
11.Wide shot, press room
The urgent health crisis that is COVID-19 has created a historic recession with record levels of deprivation and unemployment, creating an unprecedented human crisis that is hitting the poorest hardest, especially women and children.
In a new framework released today by the Deputy UN Secretary-General Amina Mohammed as a roadmap to support countries’ path to social and economic recovery, the United Nations calls for an extraordinary scale-up of international support and political commitment to ensure that people everywhere have access to essential services and social protection.
The “United Nations Framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19: Shared responsibility, global solidarity and urgent action for people in need” calls for protecting jobs, businesses and livelihoods to set in motion a safe recovery of societies and economies as soon as possible for a more sustainable, gender-equal, and carbon-neutral path—better than the “old normal”.
SOUNDBITE (English) Amina Mohammed, Deputy UN Secretary-General:
“The Framework restates and commits to human rights, the environmental sustainability, climate action, gender equality, thus reflecting 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement. COVID-19 may have put a pause button on the world, but it certainly hasn’t stop climate change nor has it stopped vulnerabilities and inequalities around the world, and we must take profit from this crisis to look at the opportunities we can address.”
This new framework released today sets the way United Nations entities will deliver this vision on the ground. Decisions made in the next few months will be crucial for the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN’s framework for social and economic recovery stresses.
SOUNDBITE (English) Amina Mohammed, Deputy UN Secretary-General:
“It is a first time we are looking at development with an emergency lens. We’ve looked at the humanitarian and the health, but now for development it is equally urgent that we attend to the crisis.”
An initial group of prominent women today joined a global advocacy effort “Rise for All” to save lives and protect livelihoods, urging leaders in all countries, across all sectors, to address the human crisis of the pandemic.
SOUNDBITE (English) Amina Mohammed, Deputy UN Secretary-General:
“We will be rising to this occasion with women at the forefront. We’ve heard over and over again how they are carrying the brunt, the burden of COVID-19 and the health, the humanitarian and certainly socio economic peace and for that we have an amazing number of women who are coming forward today to support us in that call for action.”
The first to join this cohort today are the President of Ethiopia, Sahle-Work Zewde, the Prime Minister of Norway and Sustainable Development Goals Advocate of the Secretary-General, Erna Solberg, Sustainable Development Goals Advocate of the Secretary-General Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Melinda Gates, Sustainable Development Goals Advocate of the Secretary-General Dia Mirza, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador of Pakistan Muniba Mazari, along with the Executive Directors of UNICEF, Henrietta Fore, of UN Women, Phumzile MlamboNgcuka, and of UNFPA, Natalia Kanem.
Together, the women are supporting the United Nations’ call for an extraordinary scale-up of international support and political commitment to “build back better” and ensure that people everywhere have access to essential services and social protection. This includes support for the UN COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, an inter-agency mechanism designed to help those countries and people most exposed to the economic hardship and social disruption the pandemic has caused.
Drawing lessons from the 2008-2009 global economic and financial crisis, the framework notes that countries with strong social protection systems and basic services suffered the least and recovered the fastest. To prevent billions of people from sliding into poverty, governments around the world will need to rapidly adapt, extend and scale-up safety ‘cushions’, such as cash transfers, food assistance, social insurance schemes and child benefits to support families. For the impacts of COVID-19 to be reduced, the UN calls for an extraordinary scale-up of support to cope with the challenges ahead, including immediate social protection responses that consider differentiated impacts on vulnerable groups, children, women, men, and those in the informal sector. This is particularly urgent considering that 4 billion people, more than half of the world population—including two out of three children—have no or inadequate social protection.
The UN will focus on five key streams in its response, which places communities at the centre of recovery efforts: 1. protecting existing health services and strengthening health systems’ capacity to respond to COVID-19; 2. helping people cope with adversity, through social protection and basic services; 3. protecting jobs, supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, and informal sector workers through economic recovery programmes; 4. guiding the necessary surge in fiscal and financial stimulus to make macroeconomic policies work for the most vulnerable and strengthening multilateral and regional responses; and 5. promoting social cohesion and investing in community-led resilience and response systems. These five streams are connected by action to meet the need for environmental sustainability, if countries are to recover and “build back better”, and be better prepared to address future shocks, including pandemics.
UN teams covering 162 countries and territories will rollout this recovery plan in the next 12 to 18 months, under the leadership of UN Resident Coordinators (RC), supported by a network of global and regional expertise. As the technical lead in the socio-economic recovery effort, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) will support RCs, with UN teams working as one across all aspects of the response.
SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme:
“Clearly, the focus of the United Nations Development System with its 131 Resident Coordinator Offices that cover 162 countries with its over 40 agencies funds and programmes is now at the forefront working alongside countries and helping them to address this socio-economic dimension of the COVID-19 crisis.”
While a significant proportion of the existing USD 17.8 billion portfolio of sustainable development programmes across UN entities will be adjusted towards COVID-19 needs, given the scale and scope of the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, additional funds will be required. To support these efforts, the Secretary-General launched the United Nations COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, a UN inter-agency fund mechanism to help support low- and middle-income programme countries overcome the health and development crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and support people most vulnerable to economic hardship and social disruption.
The financial requirements of the Fund are projected at USD1billion in the first nine months and will be subsequently reviewed. The Secretary-General also called for a multilateral response that amounts to at least 10 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) to mount the most effective response to crisis the world has ever seen.
SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme:
“What we’re facing in this socio-economic context is not something that we measure only in monetary terms. It is the livelihoods, it is the vulnerabilities, it is confidence in governments, it is trust in abilities of government to lead economies and societies through this process. Much of our work in the full range of the United Nations Development System family is now focused on trying to bring both the expertise, the insight and the support of our specialized agencies in support of governments.”
There will be no return to the “old normal”, the framework document states. The pandemic is a blow to develop-ing and emerging economies that already face binding constraints of debt and limited fiscal space, with several developing countries needing urgent debt relief. Its impacts will be especially devastating for the most vulnerable countries – those in humanitarian or conflict settings. The UN also calls for a massive fiscal and financial repurposing in the next weeks and months, including the redirection of fossil fuel subsidies to aid the response. The UN stresses that the status quo and business-as-usual are policy choices, and they are not inevitable. For a sustainable development that benefits more people, the choice must be for a recovery from COVID-19 that is fast, fair, green and inclusive.
The United Nations development system is the world’s largest international actor on social protection and basic services. The UN System is present in 162 countries and territories and reaches tens of millions of people through basic services, social transfers and other forms of social protection. The UN Development System has extensive experience in supporting governments in developing social protection systems including social protection floors and delivery of quality social services and to support such services across humanitarian and development contexts.
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