Welcome to the United Nations
The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects in SIDS illustrate how vulnerability to shocks combined with low resilience can have a severe and long-lasting detrimental effect on economic growth and sustainable development. It also reminds us that shocks have economic, social and environmental impacts, are often interconnected, and that structural factors lead to a high sensitivity and exposure to exogenous shocks. While it is the responsibility of national policies to mitigate the consequences of exogenous shocks, and so make the country more resilient, history has shown how economic growth and human development are threatened by exogenous shocks of various origins. This is why the fight against vulnerability must be at the heart of international policy aiming at supporting SIDS (and other vulnerable developing countries).
COVID-19 may have opened the way for a paradigm shift in development cooperation in SIDS, to make resilience building a more central concern. In this regard a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) meeting certain specific criteria and supported by international consensus would be a powerful tool in directing international effort towards integrating vulnerability more centrally into global strategies of UN institutions, international financial institutions, and the work of international development partners. At the request of the General Assembly, a high-level panel of experts appointed by the President of the General Assembly is working to finalize an MVI by the end of 2022.
Proposed guiding questions:
- How is the elaboration of an MVI by the high-level panel of experts created by President of the General Assembly progressing?
- How do we build international consensus for the use of an MVI?
- How can official financing strategies and mechanisms used to support SIDS, better include vulnerabilities?
- How can resilience building and the development of proactive preventive strategies become more central in the international strategies pursued in development cooperation?
Chair:
- Vice President of ECOSOC (Bolivia)
Keynote addresses:
- H.E. Mr. Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, and Co-Chair of the MVI Panel
- Dr. Hyginus 'Gene' Leon, President of the Caribbean Development Bank
Moderator:
- Ms. Heidi Schroderus-Fox, Acting High Representative, United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS)
Resource Persons:
- Ms. Natalie Cohen, Assistant Secretary for Development Strategy, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia, MVI Panel Member
- H.E. Mr. José Luís Rocha, Ambassador, Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cabo Verde, MVI Panel Member
- Ms. Louise Fox, Non-resident Senior Fellow of the African Growth Initiative, Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institute, MVI Panel Member
Lead Discussant:
- Ms. Tamisha Lee, Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers (MGoS)
Respondent:
- H.E. Ms. Amanda Milling, Minister for Asia and the Middle East of the United Kingdom
Interventions of other Ministers and participants (3 minutes each)
