UNCTAD Convention assertion, October 2025

Secretary-General of the United Nations, Secretary General of UNCTAD, your excellencies, distinguished colleagues, esteemed delegates,

I’ve the honour of delivering this on behalf of JUSCANZ.

Secretary-General, let me start by expressing my group’s deep appreciation on your private management, your imaginative and prescient, and for the unwavering dedication to the rules of the United Nations.

Despite the formidable challenges we face—whether or not its battle, persisting ranges of poverty, the roll again of rights, or the continuing impacts of local weather change—multilateralism stays not solely alive, however completely important. No worldwide organisation in human historical past has executed extra to elevate individuals out of poverty, eradicate deadly illness, reply to pure disasters, uphold human rights, and stop and cease battle than the UN. In these turbulent instances, it’s our shared accountability to uphold and strengthen the multilateral system, making certain it stays a driver of optimistic change for all.

We are all conscious about the turbulence at the moment affecting world commerce. Yet, it’s exactly in such moments of uncertainty that we should reaffirm our perception within the energy of commerce as a pressure for good. Trade, when managed inclusively and pretty, is a robust engine for improvement, poverty discount, shared prosperity & our ambitions to ship the SDGs. This is seen within the information:  A $1 improve in commerce is related to a $1.44 improve in GDP and trade-enabled progress has lifted over 1 billion individuals out of utmost poverty since 1995.

As such JUSCANZ underscores the significance of a revitalised multilateral buying and selling system, with a reformed WTO that works for all, and supported by a dynamic, fashionable UNCTAD. For over half a century, UNCTAD has been on the forefront of supporting creating international locations to harness the advantages of commerce and funding.

As we replicate on this legacy, we should additionally look ahead, recognising that UNCTAD should evolve to deal with the more and more sophisticated & interconnected challenges that we activity it with resolving. This means embracing innovation, discovering new and higher methods of working, modernising buildings, and making certain that the voices of all member states—particularly these from the creating world—are heard and acted upon.

As we strategy the eightieth anniversary of the United Nations, we should acknowledge that reform is required not solely throughout UNCTAD, but in addition throughout the broader multilateral system. Today’s challenges– usually are not the identical as those who the UN confronted at its delivery.  That is why we help the UN Secretary-General’s UN80 reform initiative and need to see a daring imaginative and prescient of a UN re-focused on its core priorities and tangible outcomes. 

Let us seize this second to recommit ourselves to the values of cooperation to make sure that multilateralism delivers tangible advantages for all, and that commerce stays a cornerstone of sustainable improvement.

Thank you.