72nd Executive Session of Trade and Development Board October 2022, High Level Segment
.
بسم الله الرحمن الرحیم
Statement
By
Ambassador Ali Bahreini
Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nation Office
and other international organizations in Geneva
Before
72nd Executive Session of Trade and Development Board (18-22 October 2022)
High Level Segment: Getting the economy back on track and addressing the most pressing challenges
Mr. President,
At the outset, I would like to thank Madam Secretary General for her insightful opening remarks to this session.
My delegation associates itself with the statement delivered by His-Excellency Ambassador of Zimbabwe on behalf of the G77 and China and the statement delivered by Philippians on behalf of the Asia Pacific Group.
Mr. President,
Our today’s high-level Segment is very timely because the global economy has never so been out of the track. The report of Mme. Secretary General and its indicators show clearly that we are not on the way of “moving from inequality and vulnerability to prosperity for all” that we shaped in the Bridgetown Covenant and hoped to realize it.
The inequalities between and within countries as well as the individual and national vulnerabilities have been widened by persistent and arising poverty, hunger, digital gap and the flow of displaced persons on a glob already menaced by climate change, water crisis and sand and dust storms. The supply chains are fragile in food and energy as two key sectors which impact directly the poorest households and threaten their food security and the world, not yet recovered from the negative impacts of the pandemic remains in danger of a new outbreak specially in vulnerable countries.
Mr. President
For decades, the world has suffered from the consequences of a dangerous tendency of unilateralism. This approach has formed a macro economy, a supply chain and a pattern of trade relation which do not recognize the real and just share of Global South in the global economy and their right to be benefited from the free trade as the source of development. The result of this approach includes but is not limited to lack of means and sources for financing development, debt instability, a stronger dollar and more and more weakened national currencies due to the interest rate hike as an answer to inflation in developed countries.
This unilateralism has forgotten that the world, regions and countries and consequently their challenges and opportunities are interconnected. By its nature, the sustainable development cannot be realized if its inclusiveness is not recognized, respected and implemented. The illegal and inhuman unilateral coercive measures, is one of the flagrant manifestations of this dangerous unilateralism which has attacked the sustainable development through its illegal efforts aiming at breaking the inclusiveness. The UCMs have undermined capacities of some countries among the most important owners of natural resources of energy including my own country, in tackling the current challenge of energy prices, in circumstances that, for instance, the price of natural gas has increased unprecedentedly since 2020. It was a very telling evident of the negative impacts of unilateral coercive measures not only on the people of countries who are directly targeted by UCMs but also on the peoples of countries who are indirectly damaged by paying out its cost through compliance or over-compliance of their states to these illegal measures. Furthermore, the artificial increase of investment risks in some countries by political motivation has decreased the foreign investment in the infrastructure of energy and the means of its transfer and consequently impacted the normal relation between some important owners, producers and consumers in the energy market. This process that I would like to call it a “manipulated supply chain” is only an example of the outputs of unilateralism which barricaded the way to multilateralism.
The sustainable prosperity is dependent on free flow of trade and unhindered connectivity between countries. In this vein and given the dependency of fertilizers and agriculture products to the natural gas, I seize this opportunity to remind the initiative proposed by the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran entitled “the natural gas at the service of global economy recovery in the post-COVID time”. This initiative can be taken into account by the Global Response Crisis Group as a part of global solution with tow economic and environmental aims.
Mr. President
For concluding, the current situation would not be managed if the multilateralism will not be respected in all of its aspects including in trade and development. We need urgently a fairer, facilitated and unhindered trade relationship to save us from another lost decade. Let’s be united and committed for defending the connectivity and inclusiveness for realizing the multilateralism as the only solution for “getting the economy back on track and address the most pressing challenge.”
I Thank you