Belarus at UN: No sustainable development without sustainable peace

Sustainable peace is essential for sustainable development, and without it, no action will lead towards the SDGs, Belarusian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yuri Ambrazevich said as he spoke at the Ministerial Segment, High-Level Political Forum 2023 under the auspices of ECOSOC at the UN headquarters in New York, BelTA learned from the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Sustainable development is possible only with sustainable peace. Peace is stable when every participant has their concerns taken into account and when there is a balance of interests satisfying everyone in a dignified and acceptable way," Yuri Ambrazevich emphasized.

The current forum on sustainable development is taking place at a time of the acute crisis of global security and trust. "The crisis has revealed the desire of individual players to promote their own interests to the detriment of the interests of others. The response of those who disagree with this approach gave rise to the ensuing confrontation, the degradation of the international security architecture and the system of international law. All this threatens not only the Sustainable Development Goals but also the existence of humanity itself," said Yuri Ambrazevich. “For the international community to return to development and creation, we need to agree, as soon as possible, on the conditions for sustainable peace. Without this, any initiatives to accelerate the progress towards the SDGs are doomed to failure."

The deputy minister said that the world should also become free from unilateral coercive measures, and called to condemn the ban by Lithuania, the United States, and the European Union on the transit of potash fertilizers from Belarus to developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Yuri Ambrazevich stated the need to ensure in practice the right of every country to access food, fertilizers, energy, and other resources, including technologies at an acceptable reasonable price, which will significantly reduce the technological and economic gap in development between the "golden billion" and the rest of the world and prevent many future conflicts.

Yuri Ambrazevich spoke about Belarus’ progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, which, in the face of unprecedented external pressure, became possible due to the regional economic integration and partner bilateral relations with like-minded states in the East and South.