Resident Coordinator's Remarks at Humanitarian Scholarship Leadership Symposium

Distinguished experts, students, and friends.

It is great to join you today as you embark on an inspiring week, engaging with experts across sustainable development, including from the UN System, ‘paying it forward’ during a service day, and networking with each other.  

I am encouraged that the objective of these activities is to inspire you about your role in giving back to your communities and to accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Young people like you are custodians of your countries and play a dominant role in green transformation by lowering emissions, protecting the environment, and boosting social and economic inclusion to leave no one behind.

I am very impressed by the diversity of the 400 participants in this symposium.

I will take the next 15 minutes to speak to 5 broad themes: 

Set the global context.

Speak to the principles that underpin the SDGs and showcase Thailand’s progress.

Introduce the UNCT and its priorities.

Share 3 examples of good practice for accelerating SDGs.

Conclude with the role that young people like you can play.

At the end we will have a menti poll with 3 questions for you to answer.

As you know, the world is experiencing multiple global crises, which include climate change to economic slowdowns combined with rising geopolitical tensions.

All countries are affected, with the less developed countries being impacted even more severely as they are financially even more stressed.

In many ways COVID served as the tipping point.  

This is resulting in higher prices of food, fuel, and consumer goods, for instance.

This makes it even more important to speed up progress on the SDGs because accomplishing them will mean positive outcomes for people, the planet, and the economy. 

SDGs are a global blueprint for dignity, peace and prosperity for people and the planet, to achieve a better and more sustainable future for us all with a commitment by all countries to be achieved by 2030.

It is this sense of solidarity and unity of purpose, that defines the SDGs.

These 17 goals are integrated, inter-related and inter-dependent, which means that achieving one of the goals will positively impact many of the others underpinned by rights, equity and justice.

However, there is no one size fits all approach to achieving the SDGs.

Achieving them will require Governments, businesses, civil society, and young people coming together cohesively what we call as a whole of government and a whole of society approach.

While this year reflects the midpoint for the global goals, we already measure that they will not be achieved by 2030.

A recent report by the SG shows that only 12% are on track to be achieved by 2030.  

In contrast, the progress in Thailand has been much more robust.

42% of the indicators are on course. A third need acceleration and a quarter are regressing.

The UNCT in Thailand consists of 21 UN agencies working in partnership with the government, the private sector and civil society to speed up progress on all the goals. 

Among our agencies are many that you may already be familiar with, including the six agencies from which you will be hearing on Friday – IOM, UNEP, UNHCR, UNODC, UNDRR and UN Women.

All the 21 agencies are bringing science-based solutions, digitization, and policy advice to a wide range of projects across the country.

There are three key areas that the UN in Thailand prioritizes aligned to the National Strategy.

First, supporting a transition to a green, inclusive, and low carbon economy.

Second, speeding up a digital transformation to empower communities and people of all ages.

And three, addressing inequalities to make sure no one is left behind.

Allow me to share with you 3 examples of good practice:

The UN’s partnership with the Ministry of Interior is enabling 12 million rural households to segregate their waste and reduce their carbon emissions.

This is already yielding over 550,000 tons in carbon reductions each year. This equal taking 100,000 passenger cars off the roads.

The first tranche of the carbon credits has been bought by a Thai bank and the money will be used by local administrative organizations to invest in local infrastructure supporting the process of deepening decentralization.

Second, the WHO is partnering with the Ministry of Public Health to introduce community-led diagnosis, treatment, and management of hypertension – which is the key cause for heart attacks - using telemedicine.

15 million people suffer from hypertension in Thailand.

This pilot, which involves village health volunteers and primary health care officials shows that 59% have benefitted from these protocols.

If successful, this will be scaled up nationwide and in the region.  

Third, UNDP, UN Women and IOM are working with businesses to introduce human rights due diligence in line with Government’s Human Rights National Action Plan.

This means that businesses commit themselves to protect their workers’ rights and address their grievances.

At the same time, they also commit themselves to reduce their environmental footprints by reducing their GHG emissions and eliminating pollution.

In these and other initiatives young people are playing a key role as they are powerful agents of change.

At the UN we have set up a Youth Panel with 12 young people from across the country, each of them with their own unique interests.

I engage with them regularly and they guide us in our work.

They also help boost UN’s soft power and broaden our outreach to young people via social media platforms.

As young people you may be wondering how you could contribute to the SDGs.

There are three things that you do more of:

Think about the SDGs and think big.

Act on them. Decide on initiatives where you can directly contribute with your friends, in your communities, or on digital platforms. Volunteerism provides you an entry point.  You can also do this through the UN Volunteers programmes that are available in each of your countries. You can be a national UNV, choose to volunteer with the UN online, or go abroad on an international UNV assignment.

Bring digital solutions to speed up SDG progress. This is a win-win as you understand this space much better than many of us and can directly contribute to creating green jobs.

Every contribution small or big makes a difference and can lead the world to a more prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable in the future.

With that, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to engage and wish you an amazing rest of the week ahead. May you learn a lot and take it forward to apply it in your lives and your careers, making the world a prosperous, peaceful, and sustainable home.