New York 27 January 2018—UN-Habitat Executive Director Ms. Maimunah Mohamed Sharif believes that there was a great value in the United Nation’s Joint Fund in empowering cities.
“UN-Habitat sees great value in the Joint Fund’s ability to further the role of cities in reducing poverty, and in driving sustainable, inclusive growth,” Ms. Sharif said in a video message broadcast during the launch of the Joint Fund for the 2030 agenda which took place in New York on Monday.
She added that UN-Habitat was extremely delighted to link its ongoing effort with the World Bank and several other UN agencies to the Joint Fund through Multi-Partner Implementation Facility for Sustainable Urban Development.
The Executive Director said that the partnership which was developed in response to the adoption of the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda had the goal of catalyzing effective, integrated and coordinated support to governments, and accelerate investments in sustainable urbanization at scale, by drawing together committed partners from public and private sectors. In 2017, Member States endorsed this initiative through two separate resolutions, she added.
“I would like to congratulate the Secretary-General, the Deputy Secretary-General, Member States, the UN Development Coordination Office, and all our UN colleagues for their efforts to ensure more effective, coherent support to the delivery of the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.
The Joint Fund for the 2030 Agenda (Joint Fund) is an inter-agency pooled fund. It is designed to provide catalytic support to UN Country Teams by allocating resources to participating UN organizations (PUNOs) undertaking national initiatives to unblock policy obstacles which in turn unlock SDG partnerships and financing, and help countries to achieve the SDGs. The Joint Fund aspires to demonstrate that integrated / coherent UN support can lead to:
- unblocking bottlenecks for national SDG achievement through integrated and coherent policies across the SDGs;
- governments establishing national budget provisions for scaling up integrated and coherent policy and sustainable national SDG partnerships and platforms;
- the development of financing vehicles which unlock sustainable SDG investments co-created with and financed by national and international partners.
In her message, Ms. Maimunah said that as a former mayor, she firmly believed that multi-stake holder partnerships were vital to transforming people’s lives and ensuring that no one was left behind.
“UN-Habitat looks forward to connecting this effort with the Joint Fund to ensure that all future interventions and investments in urban areas support governments at all levels to build the human, technical, and financial capacities needed to harness cities’ contribution to sustainable development, peace, and prosperity,” she said.