EU-UN Partnership Dialogue 2021: New Frontiers for Sustainable Development in Cambodia

Friends, hello. Franck, Carmen and I have talked about convening this EU-UN dialogue before we used “new normal”, “unprecedented” or “vaccine diplomacy” in our everyday vocabulary. It’s only been one year since WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern. Yet so much has changed in the last 12 months that what we know, do or expect, all need to be adapted to yes, a “new normal.”

You’ve read the assessments. You’ve commissioned many of them. COVID-19 exposed a host of systemic challenges. But none as glaring as inequality.  The recent Oxfam report – The Inequality Virus – illustrates the magnitude of how the virus has hit an already profoundly unequal world.

Many interesting data points from that report, but one that stood out:

Jeff Bezos could have paid all 876,000 Amazon employees a bonus of $105,000 each last year and still be as wealthy as he was before the pandemic.

Inequality, injustice, trust deficit, extreme poverty.

It is difficult to be hopeful, but there is hope. It’s not just the vaccine. We have seen how transformative policies that seemed unthinkable before the crisis have suddenly become a possibility.

We don’t need to go far. In Cambodia many of you scaled up social assistance and put in place what could be the foundations for universal social protection system.

The time is now. There is no returning to the old normal, to inequality as usual. Instead, we all need to act with greater purpose and urgency to create a more equal and sustainable world.

We can now re-imagine our social and economic systems that can protect the most vulnerable.

This means embedding human rights in policies and systems that can ensure -- people and planet are protected. 

The SDGs remain our roadmap.

To build forward better, we need future-oriented ideas and solutions. We need to foster transformation. But we cannot do this alone. This is why we are here today.

Multilateralism is needed more than ever before. What if the EU and the UN join forces in a more intentional way to address inequalities? How can we build a more inclusive and sustainable recovery that places people and planet at the center?

Can we re-imagine development cooperation in Cambodia?

Can we better integrate, coordinate and amplify our joint work? Can we innovate together?

On integration – how do we design intentional synergies? Be it thematic or geographical? On social protection, human rights, environmental protection, health, education, youth, and SDG financing.

On coordination – how do we rethink the donor-recipient relationship? We can’t  avoid UN agencies relying on EU for funding, but how do we change the power dynamics?

On amplification – how can we speak with one voice? Can we consider thematic policy dialogues or joint advocacy campaigns as an organic way of working together?

With governments turning inwards and with less money to go around, how do we finance SDGs? How can we work with the private sector? How can we incentivize investments for development impact?

A lot of questions that we will attempt to answer in the next 3 hours. I don’t expect we will find all the solutions today. We will come up with some. This is okay. But what I do hope for is we forge the commitment, the resolve, to answer “yes” to all the questions and to shape a “new, a better normal” together.

Think about it. An EU-UN solidarity that can make a difference in the lives of vulnerable Cambodians.

Thank you.