Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

General statement of the Russian Federation on the adoption of the draft intergovernmentally agreed conclusions and recommendations of the Economic and Social Council forum on FFD follow-up (E/FFDF/2020/L.1)

The Russian Federation welcomes the conclusion of the ECOSOC FFD Forum negotiation process and the adoption of its outcome document. We acknowledge the efforts by the co-facilitators as well as willingness of other delegations to engage in challenging negotiations.

The main idea of the document is that collective efforts, solidarity and multilateralism are of utmost importance today given the unprecedented health, social and economic impact of the pandemic. A strong voice of the United Nations, based on the initiatives by the Secretary-General in tackling social and economic effects of the crisis, leading role of the WHO, in coordination with other international organizations, combined present an effective model of global response. However, as the Russian President Vladimir Putin stated during the G20 virtual meeting, global international organizations, obviously, lack mechanisms for automatic stabilisation in the event of a crisis.

As far as trade (important source of FFD) is concerned, we welcome the call to ensure a free, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, predictable and stable trade and investment environment, and to keep our markets open, not creating unnecessary barriers to trade or disruptions to the global supply chains and making the emergency measures consistent with the WTO rules.

We also appreciate the reiteration of the commitment to the Agenda-2030. Therefore, we decided to join the consensus on the outcome document.

Meanwhile, the Russian Federation notes with disappointment that a number of issues which are critical for effective response and further development of many countries were not included in the document, thus seriously weakening the efforts to address the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and guarantee the sustainable development of all nations. Namely:

1. The issue of unilateral economic coercive measures introduced without the mandate of the Security Council. It is obvious that such measures have  negative impact on the capacity of Member States to tackle the crisis and get much needed medical equipment and medicines. The United Nations officials, including the Secretary-General, the WHO Director-General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Group of 77 and China, as well as Russia have clearly shared this concern. We think that stubborn rejection of this issue undermines our joint commitment to global response to COVID-19 and Agenda-2030 with its commitment “to leave no one behind”.

2. The work of High-Level Group Panel of Experts on Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity. We think that this initiative by the Presidents of the GA and ECOSOC to establish a High-Level Group is well justified in view of assisting economies to recover from the dramatic consequences of the pandemic. Unfortunately, the Group is not mentioned in the text. It is important to welcome its recent launch while encouraging the Member States to effectively engage in its work.

Further, we are convinced in the need to strive for the balance in all the UN documents with regard to the human rights language, especially in PP. 5 and 16 of the current FFD outcome conclusions. We are concerned with statistically unwarranted preference to girls before boys among most vulnerable, while children in general irrespective of their sex are vulnerable and require special attention and care. It is disappointing that the notion of so called “marginalized groups” is used instead of clear and agreed concepts. We regret that these and other our proposals to this end have not been taken on board. We also regret the rejection of our proposal to pay special attention to the real heroes of the moment – doctors, medical personnel and health care workers. Taking into account these arguments we would like to disassociate from P.5 of the draft.