Remarks at Stakeholder Consultation Meeting on Third Voluntary National Review

Opening Remarks

Moukdavanh Sisoulith, Deputy Director-General of the Department of International Organizations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Excellencies Ambassadors, development partners, Government representatives, UN colleagues

Ladies and gentlemen

Firstly, I would like to commend Lao PDR for its staunch commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and for steering the third Voluntary National Review process in order to take stock of progress and challenges, and inform decisions on the path ahead.

Our exercise takes place in a world that is seriously off-track from the trajectory that we need to be on if we are to achieve the SDGs by 2030. Too few targets are seeing progress globally, with increasing numbers of goals that are not only seeing insufficient progress, but even stagnation or deterioration.[1]

The latest estimates from colleagues at ESCAP released in February indicate that, at the current pace, SDG targets in Asia and the Pacific will not be achieved until 2062, taking more than three times as long as the deadlines we have collectively set ourselves.[2]

Reflecting on these challenges, in September 2023 the UN Secretary-General convened the SDG Summit to take stock of challenges, identify responses, and collectively re-commit to the 2030 Agenda.

Speaking at the Leaders’ Dialogue at the Summit, Deputy Prime Minister H.E. Saleumxay Kommasith specifically emphasized that “… we must now clearly understand the upcoming tasks and the importance of urgent and ambitious actions that need to be delivered for the remainder of the SDGs”.[3]

Stemming from the Summit, six key transitions were identified to serve as investment pathways to unlock faster progress across the SDGs.

Lao PDR has been one of the early adopters in considering how these transitions can be applied to our context, with the third VNR beginning to think about how complex challenges could be overcome through the lenses of: 

• Food systems;
• Energy access and affordability;
• Digital transformations;
• Education;
• Jobs and social protection; and
• Addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Ladies and gentlemen:

Voluntary National Reviews aim to facilitate the sharing of experiences across countries, promote accountability, reinforce national ownership of the SDGs, and to help strengthen policies, institutions, and partnerships to achieve our development goals. Importantly, in line with Article 74 of the 2030 Agenda, VNRs must be people-centred and gender-sensitive, should have a strong human rights lens, and place a particular focus on the poorest, most vulnerable and those left behind the furthest.

They can bring together diverse perspectives and evidence on where countries are in their SDG journey, and prompt a broad and substantive discussion on ways to overcome the remaining obstacles.

For Lao PDR, this third VNR comes at an opportune moment:

• It benefits from recent analysis done as part of the Mid-Term Review of the 9th NSEDP and a fresh set of data from the third round of the Lao Social Indicator Survey; and
• It will also contribute to the ongoing process of determining priorities for the forthcoming 10th NSEDP, sector plans, and sub-national plans, which will set the national development framework from 2026 through to the SDG deadline in 2030.

The third VNR also builds on the first two reports in 2018 and 2021. With each generation of VNRs, we can see how the analysis of progress is becoming more granular, yielding clearer findings. The series also allows us to see how progress has evolved over the years since the SDGs were adopted in 2015.

Of course, the major global shock of recent years has been the COVID-19 pandemic, and we can clearly see the impact of this in the draft of the third VNR. However, as was already articulated in previous VNRs, many structural vulnerabilities pre-dated the pandemic and so, even with the consequences of COVID-19 now starting to fade, active policy interventions are required to meet our targets.

For example, these include ensuring sufficient resources are invested in key social sectors necessary to build human capital and secure the nation’s future progress, and supporting a transition towards economic development that is less reliant on natural resources, and generates more employment opportunities.

So, Lao PDR’s third VNR can play a hugely valuable role in supporting the national policy formulation and help us all reach strategic decisions to accelerate progress towards the goals. That is the level of ambition this third VNR should aspire to.

The UN is proud to support this process under the National SDG Secretariat composed of MoFA, MPI, and LSB, and so ably led by the Department of International Organizations at MoFA. I would like to congratulate the Government on the work accomplished thus far. A lot was done in the last few months, and we can now see a finish line in front of us.

I look forward to a constructive and engaging discussion this afternoon, and to continued engagement with you all as this report moves forward to finalization and begins to inform national policies.

Thank you.

Closing Remarks

Moukdavanh Sisoulith, Deputy Director-General of the Department of International Organizations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Excellencies Ambassadors, development partners, Government representatives, UN colleagues

Ladies and gentlemen

Thank you all for joining the consultation this afternoon, and for sharing your views and insight on the draft of Lao PDR’s third VNR.

As I emphasized in my opening remarks, the VNR process can play a key role in helping to set the agenda for the remaining years through 2030, during which substantial efforts are required from all of us to avoid slipping further away from the SDG targets.

With that in mind, I have taken note of a number of key observations and recommendations on the zero draft:

• Clearly much effort has gone into the preparation of the draft, and it brings together a lot of valuable and important information. However, noting how pressed many are for time, in order to get the most out of this effort, a distilled, accessible way of presenting the key findings and recommendations could be very useful – perhaps in the form of a concise executive summary as a separate document. 
• In the same vein, key messages that appears throughout the draft that can be extracted and consolidated in one place – both on what Laos wishes to communicate to the world as its call to action, but also in reference to recommendations for domestic policy agenda through to 2030 as a way of localizing the global goals for impact at country level. Let us ask what the implementation challenges and setbacks are that need our attention.
• Synergies between and across the goals have been referenced in many comments today. The 6 Transitions offer a useful lens but should not be a mere collection of goals to be reported on. There’s much connectivity within those transitions, but also beyond. Therein lie high-impact accelerations. The right intervention can unlock progress across multiple goals. Investing in e.g. digilatlization, climate-smart agriculture and local governance can achieve those impacts. Similarly, reforming tax regime to enhance public revenue, including through pro-health taxation, can help protect and increase social spending.
• The greatest value from the SDG Transitions can come from thinking about them as forward-looking investment pathways. Again, this framing could also be applied to the chapter on ways forward, helping to identify specific recommendations for how these transitions could be advanced. Similarly, ongoing and planned programmes that are cited in the document can provide a sense of scale so we can work together to augment their coverage and reach, while focusing on the remaining gaps.
• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on development has been profound around the world and in Lao PDR. It exacerbated underlying vulnerabilities and set back hard-won progress. Moving beyond the pandemic, it is up to each country to consider how best it can address these underlying vulnerabilities before future shocks aggravate them again. The VNR can play a valuable role in helping to do precisely that, by articulating concrete policy actions that would need to be prioritized.
• Significant investments and progress have been made in systems and processes to improve the availability of data for decision-making. This clearly shows the benefits of the National SDG Secretariat structure bringing together MoFA, MPI and LSB. However, even with these efforts, in many cases data is still insufficient for in-depth analysis. Continuing to prioritize strategic efforts to close these data gaps is key to allowing us to make more informed investment decisions, especially in a resource-constrained environment.
• With my UN hat on, let me say that detailed comments on the draft report will be forthcoming shortly, over and above the interventions made by UN colleagues from the floor today. 

Ladies and gentlemen,

Time is now of the essence for the finalization of the report ahead of the High-Level Political Forum in New York in July. We hope there will be another opportunity for a virtual circulation of the next draft to development partners.

Today’s consultation has given many valuable reflections and contributions to strengthen the draft, and make the most of the opportunity that the VNR process presents, and our task now is to effectively take these recommendations forward.

From the UN, we commit to continuing to work closely with the SDG Secretariat and, with you all, to support this over the coming months, so please do count on the support of the whole UN Country Team.

With this, I will hand the word back to my co-chair for the final concluding remarks, with my due appreciation for the convening and leadership of this important consultation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Thank you.
 

[1] 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report, “Times of Crisis, Times of Change: Science for Accelerating Transformation to Sustainable Development”, 2023

[2] ESCAP, “Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report: Showcasing Transformative Actions”, 2024

[3] H.E. Saleumxay Kommasith, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, “Intervention during SDG Summit Leaders’ Dialogue 6”, 19 September 2023, New York