Your Excellency, President of the Economic and Social Council, Under-Secretary-General of DESA, Excellencies, Distinguished delegates,

I have the honor to deliver this explanation of position on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

Excellencies,

Allow me to commend Ambassador Paula Narváez, President of ECOSOC and the Economic and Social Council Secretariat for their invaluable contributions in preparation of the 2024 High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development under the auspices of the ECOSOC.

The G77 and China extends its deepest appreciation to Ambassador José Blanco, Permanent Representative of the Dominican Republic and Ambassador Merete Fjed Brattested, Permanent Representative of Norway as Co-facilitators of the intergovernmental consultations and their respective team for their exceptional steering of the informal consultations. We particularly commend the Co-facilitators for upholding the intergovernmental nature of the informal consultations in a transparent, open and inclusive manner.

The excellent co-facilitation of the informal consultations concluded with achieving a concise and action oriented Ministerial Declaration, which is before us for adoption. This intergovernmental process should set as an example of all future intergovernmental processes. Furthermore, we commend our coordinators, the experts from Argentina, Brazil, Egypt and Kenya who excellently negotiated on behalf of G77 and China.

Excellencies,

The G77 and China engaged constructively throughout the informal consultations with the sole objective of ensuring that the Ministerial Declaration to be adopted at this year's HLPF contains concrete actions to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2023 SDG Summit Political Declaration. In this regard, the G77 and China despite having concerns on some issues fully supports the final draft of the Ministerial Declaration circulated by Co-facilitators and the President of ECOSOC considering that the text is balanced.

Excellencies,

The G77 and China appreciates the efforts by the Co-facilitators for their resolve to respect the commitment of leave no country or person behind made by all our leaders in 2015 and the integrity of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, we note with deep concern that silence was broken on the formulation by the Co-facilitators on paragraph 17 whose text is verbatim language from paragraph 35 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The G77 and China reaffirms that sustainable development cannot be realized without peace and security, and that peace and security will be at risk without sustainable development. In this regard, the G77 and China further recognizes that the countries in conflict and post-conflict situations, among least developed countries, and countries and peoples living under foreign occupation have specific structural challenges and require context-specific approaches, including targeted national policies and international support measures to address these challenges and to support peacebuilding, State-building activities and sustainable development.

The G77 and China also reaffirms in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the need to respect the territorial integrity and political independence of States.

The G77 and China further reaffirms our firm rejection of unilateral economic, financial or trade measures and reiterates the urgent need to eliminate them immediately. The G77 and China notes with concern that there is no reference to Unilateral Coercive Measures and the need to refrain from applying them against developing countries, despite it being agreed language of the 2030 Agenda.

The G77 and China expresses its disappointment that a vote has been called on paragraph 17, which undermines the commitment made by all our leaders in 2015 and increasingly threatens our collective commitment to achieve the 2030 Agenda. In this regard, the G77 and China urges all delegations to vote in favor of retention of paragraph 17 and the whole Ministerial Declaration incase votes are requested. Despite this vote, the G77 and China wish to state that this verbatim language from the 2030 Agenda remains agreed and any attempts to change this shall not be accepted.

Finally, the G77 and China fully supports the adoption of the Ministerial Declaration. The political commitment and will by all of us to advance the implementation of the 2030 Agenda remain critical in accelerating actions at all levels to achieve the SDGs.

I thank you.