Vietnamese Ambassador to Thailand Phan Chi Thanh (Photo: VNA)

The Deputy PM’s participation at the session will deliver an important message from the Vietnamese Government that it highly values the effective cooperation with the UN in general and ESCAP in particular over the past 45 years, while demonstrating the country’s strong commitments to promoting its partnership with the UN and ESCAP in the coming time, according to Vietnamese Ambassador to Thailand Phan Chi Thanh, who is also the Permanent Representative of Vietnam to ESCAP .

Vietnam wants to further accelerate the dialogue and cooperation process with member countries, effectively optimise ESCAP's support to implement Vietnam's development strategies and goals, especially during the post-pandemic recovery and sustainable development process, and realise its commitments at the 26th UN Climate Conference (COP26), he stressed.

Ambassador Thanh affirmed that the Deputy PM will be the highest leader of Vietnam to attend a session of the commission in person in many years, which shows the significance of the event for both sides as this year, the ESCAP is celebrating its 75th founding anniversary, and Vietnam will mark its 45 years of joining the UN.

The session will bring together leaders, senior government officials, representatives from international organisations and other stakeholders from 62 countries and territories, who will work to shape the future of regional cooperation to speed up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and realise the promise of "leaving no one behind".

The ambassador said that the event is taking place when regional countries are in the period of post-pandemic economic recovery, while the region and the world are experiencing instability, conflicts and obstacles hindering sustainable development process, along with non-traditional security challenges such as climate change and the pandemic that have put great burdens onto many regional countries, especially developing and under-developing countries.

Guided by the theme “A common agenda to advance sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific”, the annual session will be an opportunity to review achievements of the Asia-Pacific region in socio-economic development and discuss future cooperation and linkage to deal with challenges and speed up the 2030 agenda, ensuring that no one is left behind.

Regarding ESCAP’s support to Vietnam over the years, Ambassador Thanh said that the commission has provide practical help in two major aspects of designing socio-economic development policies and strategies, and building capacity of officials through training courses and seminars organised by ESCAP in many areas such as business policy, macroeconomy, social issues, agricultural development, transportation, information - communication, statistics, disaster prevention, and environmental protection.

Many cooperation programmes launched by the ESCAP have made significant contributions to the socio-economic development and SDG implementation process of Vietnam, including the building of a database and statistical system on the implementation of the SDGs at the national level, he said.

The diplomat underlined that over the years, Vietnam has made active and responsible engagement in all activities and mechanisms run by the commission, while giving many proposals on overall and long-term solutions to deal with urgent issues in sustainable development in the region, thus contributing to promoting sustainable growth in the region.

Vietnam and the ESCAP have maintained regular high-level dialogue, he said, noting that Vietnam has joined annual meetings of the commission. In 2021, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh sent a video message to the commission’s 77th session.

He added that leaders and representatives of relevant ministries have also regularly attended Ministerial Conferences/High-Level Forums organised by the ESCAP. Vietnamese ministries and sectors have actively participated in activities of regional centers/mechanisms run by the ESCAP such as the Asian and Pacific Centre for the Development of Disaster Information Management (APDIM), Centre for Sustainable Agricultural Mechanisation (CSAM), Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development (UN-APCICT), Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology (APCTT), and United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP). In particular, in the 2018-2022 period, Vietnam has successfully completed its role as the Chair of the CSAM Executive Council, receiving approval from member countries.

According to Ambassador Thanh, Vietnam's active and high-level participation in the ESCAP session is in line with the country’s foreign policy of promoting and elevating multilateral foreign relations, affirming Vietnam's activeness, positivity and responsibility in multilateral systems, especially the UN, thus enhancing the country’s role and position and contributing to the promotion of a peaceful, stable environment, cooperation and development in the region and the world.