Statement by Hon. Shehan Semasinghe, State Minister of Finance at the Panel discussion 4: Fostering debt sustainability by addressing gaps in the sovereign debt architecture
Madam Chair,
We meet at a time when the development agenda that we embarked on in 2015 seems to have regressed and is in danger of remaining unachieved in 2030. Even before the pandemic, the development agenda was somewhat constrained due to a multitude of factors. These factors have exacerbated due to a combination of events stemming from the pandemic to the conflict in Ukraine and climate change. Multilateralism and multilateral organizations as well as the process of globalization have today come under threat due to the perception that institutions committed to delivering the Development Agenda have not achieved their milestones. The lack of adequate and sustainable financing remains the primary and key challenge today that many states face in meeting the targets of the 2030 Agenda.
On the sidelines of the 67th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67), the Sri Lanka Mission in New York, in association with the Association of War Affected Women, the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and Gender, Justice and Security Hub of the London School of Economics (LSE) hosted the event “Craft as a medium for peace building, building back better the societies in South Asia that women live, work, and belong to”.