Multilateralism 'struggling' to solve world challenges: Deputy UN Chief

While multilateralism remains "committed to solving global challenges", deputy UN chief Amina Mohammed said on Sunday, it is "struggling to find the path to effective implementation".

Dubai: While multilateralism remains "committed to solving global challenges", deputy UN chief Amina Mohammed said on Sunday, it is "struggling to find the path to effective implementation".

"In the space of six months of the COVID-19 crisis, cooperation among the world's top scientists had developed vaccines and multilateralism had delivered a vehicle to ensure their distribution across the world - the COVAX facility", Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said at Expo 2020 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

"And yet today, we are still struggling to get the resources and cooperation required to ensure vaccine equity and to muster up a recovery that would put us on a better path," she said.

In 2015, the landmark Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were established to deal decisively with the climate crisis and end poverty by 2030.

Yet, there have since been struggles to "translate global commitments and the goodwill of a host of stakeholders into national actions and international finance commensurate with the challenge", explained the deputy UN chief.

And although the world has the tools, knowledge and forums to prevent conflict, it continues as the planet experiences "the largest humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the second world war", she added.

"This points to an international order that is not yet capable of following through on its own best intentions", said Ms. Mohammed. "International cooperation and the United Nations have come a long way, but we have so much more to give".

With 192 nations represented, the deputy UN chief described the Expo is "an auspicious occasion" to mark 76 years of multilateralism, guided by the founding UN Charter. "The focus of Expo 2020 on sustainability and connecting minds to change the future is at the heart of...Our Common Agenda...vision for ensuring that multilateralism ensures that we - as one human family - breakthrough together", said the UN official.

ANI