Minsk hosts Meeting of the Council for Sustainable Development

On May 19, 2022, a meeting of the Council for Sustainable Development was held under the chair of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, Yuri Ambrazevich.

The Council for Sustainable Development was established on the basis of the Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus dated May 25, 2017 No. 181.

It consists of 38 deputy heads of state bodies and organizations, including the Minsk city and regional executive committees.

Representatives of the parliamentary corps, business circles, public associations, international organizations take part in the meetings of the Council.

During the event, special attention was paid to the consideration of the second voluntary National Review on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which Belarus will present at the UN Headquarters in July this year at the Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

In his opening remarks, Yuri Ambrazevich noted that at the beginning of 2022, Belarus looks highly merited in international rankings in the field of sustainable development; the level of progress of our country in achieving the SDGs is estimated as high as 80 percent.

The Deputy Minister emphasized that since the end of 2020 the Republic of Belarus has been implementing the 2030 Agenda under the unprecedented sanctions pressure from Western countries. The illicit unilateral coercive measures complicate Belarus' ability to exercise its right to development.

Yuri Ambrazevich drew attention to the fact that the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals is an ambitious task for each state. States alone are not able to reach them by mobilizing only internal resources. In this regard, SDG 17 – Partnership remains a cross-cutting topic for Belarus. In this context, the Deputy Minister thanked the UN Country Team for the systematic support of the Belarusian Government in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

During the meeting of the Council, the results of the practical partnership between Belarus and the international organizations in response to COVID-19, implemented within the framework of the Socio-Economic Response Plan to COVID-19 in Belarus, were also presented and discussed.

In his closing remarks, Yuri. Ambrazevich welcomed the assistance provided to Belarus by UN agencies to minimize the social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and expressed hope for further effective cooperation both in the field of healthcare as well as in the socio-economic sphere  and in other priority areas of development.

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