Tag: Press Release

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 8 March 2023.

Emma Logan (UK delegation to the OSCE) says Russia’s deliberate strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure are designed to spread terror amongst civilians.

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 8 March 2023.

The High Commissioner discusses Britain’s colonial legacy, and her personal and professional journey in the UK as a woman born in Malaysia.

May I begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Ngunnawal people. I pay my respects to elders past, present and future.

I also acknowledge all of Australia’s First Nations and recognise their place in Australia’s history, indeed in global history, as the oldest living culture in the world. And can I acknowledge all the other beautiful cultures represented here by my ASEAN counterparts, by my Pacific counterparts, by my Five Eyes, European and other counterparts in the room. I’m blessed to have you all with us today, particularly to the women, happy International Women’s Day.

For me, that includes understanding Britain’s own history and colonial past.

Whilst I will talk about Modern Britain, on this International Women’s Day I would also like to touch on my own journey as a British Woman of Asian ancestry – a representative of Modern Multicultural Britain.

Over twenty years ago, Robin Cook our then Foreign Secretary spoke of the reality of Britain in the 21st century.

He reminded us London was established as the capital of a Celtic Britain by Romans from Italy. They were then driven out by Saxons and Angles from Germany.

Richard the Lionheart spoke French and depended on the Jewish community of England to put up the ransom that freed him from prison.

The idea that Britain was a ‘pure’ Anglo-Saxon society before the arrival of communities from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa is fantasy.

But if this view of British identity is false to our past, it is certainly false to our future too.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong recently made headlines for a speech at Kings College in London.

As is often the case with headlines and even today – and I appreciate I’m on dangerous ground by making this point at the National Press Club – some of the nuance was lost.

I agree with Penny Wong. We must frame ourselves for who we are today.  We must not let others constrain us in a past reality.

Just as brevity is the enemy of complexity, the story of modern Britain is distilled by distance.
A postcard of a painting that never was.

To understand modern Britain is to understand that we must project with pride our modern multicultural reality.

Our diversity and the inclusive society we strive for is who we are today.
This is our modern nationhood.

A nationhood that demands equality and fairness – at home and abroad: values we share with Australia.

Last year, the British Council and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade explored this complexity in the landmark “UK / Australia Season.”

Over one thousand British and Australian artists and educators collaborated across the globe to connect us with nuance, beauty and truth.

All seeking to answer the question, Who are we now?

Britain may have influenced the world, but in turn, Modern Britain has been shaped by the world.

We do not forget history but we must learn from it to inform our present and our future, to be a force for good we wish to be.

Next week I celebrate 4 years in my role as the British High Commissioner to Australia and also as the Head of our eight country Oceania Network.

You’ll be pleased to know I have another year to go.

A significant part of my job has been to strengthen our presence across this region, broaden our engagement and elevate our relationship with Australia to one of genuine strategic partnership.

I am reminded in this endeavour of the dilemma faced by the mathematician Abraham Wald during World War Two.

Allied planes returned with significant bullet damage.

The proposed solution was to add armour reinforcement.

But where to add reinforcement that would do the most benefit?

Wald analysed data showing areas where returning planes had sustained bullet damage.

Wald dismissed the intuitive answer, to strengthen parts of the plane that sustained the most damage.

His advice was to reinforce the parts of the returning planes that showed the least damage,

Why reinforce the part of the plane that came back unharmed?

Because the planes that sustained damage to those areas never returned.

Wald identified that sometimes, reinforcement is needed in the least obvious place.

Last year we announced the return of a diplomatic Consul-General for Western Australia, after a gap of nearly twenty years.

In my first year here, we re-established a diplomatic Consul General in Brisbane. With our Consul-Generals based in Sydney and Melbourne, our diplomatic network is restored and re-established covering all Australian states and territories.

The history and ties between Australia and the United Kingdom might suggest less focus is needed in this part of the world.

That is misguided.

There’s a phrase we like to use a lot about the Australia/UK relationship, ‘the best of mates’.
The thing about mates is that you should never take them for granted.

You have to work at it.

That is why our foreign ministers spent two days together with their defence counterparts at AUKMIN last month – to talk, to share, to understand, to challenge and to agree common purpose.

James Cleverly and Penny Wong concluded at the end of AUKMIN we are and remain the best of mates.

True partnership requires renewal and growth and that is what we are doing.

Partnership like our modern dynamic Free Trade Agreement which will transform bilateral trade between our countries.

Or UK accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

We invest in each other – in 2021, we were Australia’s second largest source of foreign investment. In return, the UK is the second-largest destination for Australian investment overseas.

Relationships do not survive, even in your private lives, unless they recognise change and adapt to new dynamics.

If not, we wake up one morning and realise we no longer know each other.  So we are activist about this relationship which matters deeply to us.

Today our Foreign Secretary James Cleverly concludes our new Women and Girl’s Strategy, which he’s launched now, built on the pillars of Rights, Freedom, and Potential. A priorty agenda we share with Australia.

I recently met with a year eleven student, a high achieving young woman of Asian ancestry.

I asked, as I often do of young people, where she hoped to be in thirty years.

‘Prime Minister of Australia,’ she said.

On this International Women’s Day, it’s heartening to recall her say this with a surety that belied not a dream, but a goal to be attained.

It’s an attitude we’ve sought to foster in the UK.

We’ve made great strides in ensuring our Parliament represents the diversity of Britain.

Thirteen percent of our people in the UK are from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Today, ten percent of our House of Commons are from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Whilst we have made progress, there is still more to do, not least as Penny Wong reminded us, in how we project to the world.

So, let me be clear:

Yes, I represent the Britain of Bronte and Beckham.

But I also represent the Britain of Mary Seacole and James Cleverley, of Riz Ahmed and Rishi Sunak, of Courtney Pine and Kemi Badenoch, and for the literary among you, of Zadie Smith and Hanif Kureishi.

A Britain that addressed its legacy of the slave trade by leading the world in the abolition of slavery, passing the Slave Trade Act in 1807.

A Britain that initiated in more recent time the global campaign against Modern Slavery. The Britain that led the world to COP 26, and through the Glasgow Climate Pact, kept 1.5 alive, particularly important to our Pacific friends.

And just in the last week the Britain at the forefront of efforts to secure the landmark agreement on marine biodiversity at the UN protecting 30% of our oceans by 2030.

We are a Britain that has committed the equivalent of seven billion Australian dollars in support of Ukraine.

A Britain that has offered over two hundred and eighteen thousand Ukrainians a safe haven in our country since the beginning of Russia’s invasion.

A Britain that has offered Hong Kong-Chinese people the opportunity to become citizens in Britain.

And in true British style, we have done so with a minimum of fuss.

We do this because Britain will always stand against aggressors and stand up for freedom and democracy.

And we do it with the will of the British people.

I am proudly British, and I say this as someone born in Malaysia without a drop of English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish blood coursing through my veins.

In ethnic terms I am Eurasian, the daughter of Chinese and Dutch Burgher parents who migrated to Britain with me in tow aged eight because they trusted British values and believed in the opportunity Britain offered my sister and I.

Ten million Britons, like me, are foreign born.

At nineteen, I took an entry level role as a clerk in the Foreign Office in London.

On my first day I had the common experience of many migrants at that time, the inevitable ‘Yes, but where are you really from?’ conversation.

My first boss on greeting me was bemused, he said:
‘I don’t understand how you hope to be a member of Her Majesty’s diplomatic service.’
I told him, I am a legacy of Empire, and you reap what you sow.

This was nineteen seventy-nine. A year later and perhaps I could have referenced a popular film release: The Empire strikes back.

Over my career I have seen not just the ongoing change in my own organisation whether in terms of ethnic diversity or gender or other difference.

When I looked up the ladder then on that first day, there was no one like me never mind senior women.

Today women head our missions in Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Washington, Wellington, Ottawa and at the UN.

I was proud to make history and become the first female career diplomat of colour to become a High Commissioner when I went to New Zealand.

I have seen my country transform too. A yet more inclusive society where whoever you are and wherever your family came from you can rise and achieve the highest office.

I’m not sure we have an equivalent idiom of our American friends and their ‘American dream’.
If we did, I’d say I’m proud of the ‘British reality’.

A reality where we have a Hindu prime minister of Indian heritage, a foreign secretary of Sierra Leone heritage, and, yes, where the daughter of immigrants can start at the lowest level of the civil service and become the British High Commissioner to Australia.

Next Monday is Commonwealth Day. This is the first since the nations of Gabon and Togo were admitted.

Neither country has a colonial history with Britain, but their desire to join the family of nations that is The Commonwealth highlights the appeal of the Commonwealth ethos outlined by Queen Elizabeth:
“The Commonwealth is built on the highest qualities: friendship, loyalty, and the desire for freedom and peace.”

It is why Prime Minister Fiame of Samoa travelled to Kigali last year for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, to bring the Commonwealth to the Pacific in 2024 when Samoa will host CHOGM.

INDO-PACIFIC

As someone from this region, and through my postings across the Indo-Pacific, including a return to the country of my birth as British High Commissioner to Malaysia, I have a cultural awareness and understanding of this region.

I believe this contributes to our understanding and the shape of our work in the advice I provide to my government.

My time in this role has overlapped with a period of significant change for Britain and the world.

Our departure from the European Union meant Britain had to reassess its place in the world against the shifting currents of our geo-strategic reality.

Our Integrated Review published in 2021 set out our plan.

It made clear we are – by geography – a Euro-Atlantic nation and the defence of Europe – our near neighbourhood – would always be a priority.

Our commitment to NATO endures, and I acknowledge my friend and colleague Betty Pavelich, the Croatian Ambassador who is the NATO representative here in Canberra.

As does our commitment to Ukraine to regain their sovereignty.

But the Integrated Review also pointed to the importance of the Indo-Pacific and the need for us to engage in this region further.

In recognition of ASEAN centrality we have become an ASEAN Dialogue Partner. We want to work with ASEAN for their goals and aims as they are indeed ours.

In recognition of our Pacific friends at the frontline of Climate impacts, we will use our covening power as we did in Glasgow to give them a global voice.

Over the past four years the UK has doubled our presence across the Pacific Island Countries.

We now have High Commissioners in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu.

Just as it is my privilege to represent my country in Australia, our missions across the Pacific are privileged to learn from and support our Pacific friends.

The creation of our new Pacific Development Unit headed by our former High Commissioner to Vanuatu, here with us today, further underlines our commitment.

We have established a strong network coupled with strategic oversight from those who understand the importance of the Pacific and have lived and worked in the region.

This is a point of partnership, and of pragmatism. Not words on paper, but people on the ground.

As our Foreign Secretary has said, Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific economies and security are indivisible.

Sixty percent of global shipping passes through this region.

Security and stability here affects us all.

And the UK has always been a seafaring nation.

Our ships HMS Tamar and HMS Spey represent our intention to maintain a permanent presence in the Indo Pacific.

Last year, HMS Spey assisted the humanitarian response to the Tonga volcanic eruption.

In the last week, thanks to our partnership with Australia, the UK delivered shelter kits to the Government of Vanuatu, to support their recovery effort after cyclones Judy and Kevin wreaked havoc.

These climate impacts is why at COP 26 in Glasgow we announced £274 million for a new programme to improve climate resilience across the Indo-Pacific.

Whether battling slave traders in history, providing natural disaster relief today, or being alert to those who threaten a free and open Indo-Pacific, Britain will always support democracy and freedom worldwide.

AUKUS

This is why we have committed to AUKUS, the tri-lateral security and defence partnership between the UK, Australia, and the United States.

The drumbeat of reporting and rumours about Pillar 1 will soon reach a crescendo.

The optimal pathway is coming, and journalists in the room wouldn’t be journalists if they don’t use the post speech Q&A to inveigle me for new information. It is a futile attempt.

In an effort to pre-empt this, let me say all will be known soon, and I cannot, today, speak to specifics.

What I can say it this:

Our historic AUKUS agreement reflects the unique trust between the UK, US and Australia.

It reflects our shared values, and our joint commitment to the peace and security of the Indo-Pacific.

In the face of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, it perhaps would have been understandable for the UK to pull focus.

Instead, we have doubled down on our commitment to the Indo-Pacific.

Our unwavering support for Ukraine has happened in parallel with the strengthening of our presence and engagement in the Pacific.

These are not separate issues, these are sides of the same coin.

We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests. We also recognise these views may not be shared by others.

Of course, we also recognise China’s significance in world affairs.

So diplomacy and engagement has never been more important.

Let me also use a sporting analogy because we know you Aussies love your sports.

A fair competition can only exist within a fair framework respected by all players.

Competition between nations is healthy, coercion is not. We will uphold the international rules based system, including modernising and reinforcing it in the light of experience and new global challenges like Climate Change.

We will support Australia and our allies across the Indo-Pacific, and anywhere the rules based international order is threatened.

This is the Modern Britain that has been shaped by the world.

This is the Global Britain that understands the legacy and responsibility of empire.

This is My Britain.

If you’ll indulge me further, I’ll end with an Emily Bronte poem:

I’m happiest now when most away
I can tear my soul from its mould of clay,
On a windy night when the moon is bright,
And my eye can wander through worlds of light.

When I am not, and none beside,
Nor earth, nor sea, nor cloudless sky,
But only spirit wandering wide
Through infinite immensity.

This poem has special resonance for me, as it may for many diplomatic colleagues with us today.

For me, whilst written in a different place and time, it speaks to this beautiful land and the spirit of its first nation’s people, wandering wide through the infinite immensity of time and space on this land called Australia today.

Like Bronte, I am happiest when most away, representing my nation in yours, and I thank you for the privilege.

Thank-you.

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 8 March 2023.

Women and girls will be at heart of UK’s international work as Foreign Secretary launches new strategy to tackle gender inequality around the world.

• Foreign Secretary James Cleverly launches new Women and Girls Strategy during a visit to his mother’s hometown in Sierra Leone
• strategy aims to tackle increasing threats to gender equality from climate change, humanitarian crises, conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, and recent attempts to roll back women’s rights, including in countries like Iran and Afghanistan
• the Foreign Secretary also announces a new emphasis on supporting grassroots women’s rights organisations, and funding for a Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights programme that will support an estimated 10 million women

Women and girls will be put at the heart of the UK’s international work, with a new strategy that will tackle gender inequality across the globe.

Launching on International Women’s Day, the new strategy will set out how the UK will work to tackle global gender inequality at every opportunity, including combatting attempts to roll back women’s rights, and work with partners around the world to do the same. For the first time, this strategy commits the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to more than 80% of its bilateral aid programmes including a focus on gender equality by 2030.

Progress towards gender equality is increasingly under threat. Climate change and humanitarian crises continue to disproportionately affect women and girls, there are attempts to row back on women’s rights including in countries like Iran and Afghanistan, sexual violence is happening in conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere and violence against women is growing online.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said:

Advancing gender equality and challenging discrimination is obviously the right thing to do, but it also brings freedom, boosts prosperity and trade, and strengthens security – it is the fundamental building block of all healthy democracies.

Our investment to date has improved lives around the world, with more girls in school, fewer forced into early marriage and more women in top political and leadership roles.

But these hard-won gains are now under increasing threat. We’re ramping up our work to tackle the inequalities which remain, at every opportunity.

The Foreign Secretary will launch the new strategy in Sierra Leone, where he is visiting a school and a hospital in his mother’s hometown of Bo, to see how UK-funded projects are having a positive impact on women and girls.

In the hospital, he will see how UK support is improving blood banks and equipment, increasing electricity access and saving the lives of pregnant women. In the school he will hear about girls’ aspirations for the future. The UK is supporting students there to talk about preventing violence.

The strategy puts a continued focus on educating girls, empowering women and girls, championing their health and rights and ending gender-based violence – the challenges the UK believes are most acute.

It commits the FCDO to involving its entire network of high commissions and embassies around the world to deliver the strategy. This will include UK heads of mission developing plans and commitments specific to their host country and raising the most pressing issues with their host governments. The UK will also develop an ambitious new research offer to help the UK and its partners make investment decisions.

Alongside the strategy, the Foreign Secretary will announce a new women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights programme, focused on sub-Saharan Africa, which has some of the highest rates of child marriage and maternal mortality in the world.

Reaching up to 10.4 million women, the programme will receive up to £200 million and is expected to prevent up to 30,600 maternal deaths, 3.4 million unsafe abortions and 9.5 million unintended pregnancies.

Separately, the UK is also increasing support for women’s rights organisations and movements, recognising their critical role in advancing gender equality and protecting rights, and amplifying grassroots women’s and girls’ voices. Most of this £38 million programme will be delivered through a new partnership with the Equality Fund.

Jess Tomlin, co-CEO of the Equality Fund said:

We’re really excited about this partnership because it shows that every sector can come together – with boldness and urgency – to deliver resources to women’s rights organisations everywhere. A just, sustainable, thriving future depends on the solutions of feminist movements, and it’s time for all of us to trust and robustly resource their leadership at scale all across the world.

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 7 March 2023.

The Minister for the Americas reinforced the shared commitment of the UK and Paraguay to strengthen ties after marking 170 years of bilateral relations.

The British Embassy in Asunción received the visit of MP David Rutley, the Parliament Under Secretary of State for the Americas and the Caribbean on 2 to 3 March 2023. The visit occurred on the 170-anniversary of relations between the 2 countries, almost to the day. Among his visit priorities were climate change, business, energy and education.

The visit began with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Finance. This MoU will allow for continued support to the Chevening scholarship programme, a key pillar of collaboration in education between Paraguay and the UK.

Minister Rutley also held meetings with the business sector, civil society and with presidential and vice presidential candidates for the general elections in April 2023. A highlight of his visit was a tour of the Itaipú hydroelectric dam and technological park, during which he learned more about Itaipú’s provision for the future use of its clean energy production, including its great potential in green hydrogen and ammonia.

As part of the visit, Minister Rutley also participated in the signing of an MoU with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for increased bilateral exchange. During the signing, participants could appreciate the original 1853 Treaty on Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between UK and Paraguay.

The visit concluded with a commemoration event at the Asunción Train Station, a joint event with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The train station is a symbol of historical bilateral relations between Paraguay and the UK. During the event, Paraguay’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Julio Arriola and Minister Rutley unveiled a commemorative plaque. The minister was also able to enjoy some traditional Paraguayan music, dance and food.

Minister for the Americas David Rutley said:

Paraguay is a natural ally to the UK in values, education and climate change. A clean-energy powerhouse, it shows potential to become a major player in green hydrogen.

I look forward to continued UK investment in Paraguay, and to increase trade both ways.

The press release issued by Foreign Office on 7 March 2023.

Statement by Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon at the UN Security Council open debate on women, peace and security.

May I begin by first thanking you Madam President, and thanking Mozambique for taking the lead in our important and vital discussions today and setting our sights on the 25th anniversary of Resolution 1325. And in doing so, I join others in recognising the insightful, valuable and expert contributions of Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women; Mirjana Egger of the ICRC; my dear friend who I see on screen, Madame Diop, it’s always great to see you and hear from you as well; and of course, the inspirational Leymah Gbowee for their contributions.

Madam President, colleagues, your Excellencies. Peace and security mechanisms must be built upon the needs of everyone, of all people, everywhere. And they must be shaped by the voices of all people. Indeed, those were the founding principles of the very organisation in which we sit today, the United Nations.

This Council, this Security Council, knows that mediation, conflict prevention and resolution have proven more successful time and time again when they are inclusive. They work better. They last longer when women are central to peace and building progressive societies. The evidence is there staring us in the face. Yet it is an undeniable fact. Here we sit in 2023 and we are seeing tragically, a stagnation of the women, peace and security agenda and a regression in women’s rights around the world. As we were most notably reminded, it’s not just through the barrel of a gun, but as Ms. Lema Govey reminded us, it is a shared denial of women’s rights, be they economic, social or educational.

We are seeing concerted efforts to weaponise gender and attempts to weaken the international system and destabilise the principles and fundamentals of democracies around the world. For our part, the United Kingdom resolves to not just protect, but to strengthen gender equality. And this should remain an absolute commitment for us all. I therefore call upon colleagues and nations here to stand together against the rollback of fundamental human rights, when the rights of women and girls are pivotal and central to a society’s and country’s progress and prosper.

The United Kingdom is therefore committed and we are passionate to see and ensure progress on women, peace and security in all its aspects. I was delighted that only last month we launched our fifth National Action Plan, which sets out how we will ensure that we put women at the centre of conflict resolution peacebuilding programmes over the next five years. It is a new plan, a reinvigorated plan for a new global context. Colleagues have listed the tragedies of conflicts around the world – from the suppression of the rights of women in Iran and the tragedy of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, where we’ve seen the Taliban’s suppression of the rights of women and girls using the false narrative and the erroneous narrative of trying to justify their abhorrent actions through religion and culture.

Let us be absolutely clear in what we say.

There is no religion, no culture which calls for the suppression of women’s rights.

The Taliban should realise this – face up to the reality – that it is only their country’s progress will be guaranteed when the rights of women and girls are secured in all their elements.

We also see the suppression through conflict of the rights, through the tragedy of war. The rights of women. The weaponising of rape as a weapon of war in conflict such as Ukraine. The war on Ukraine continues.

The rights of women continue to be suppressed in other areas, such as Tigray and Yemen, where conflicts continue. We also see the regression of women’s rights, but therefore it is important. We also recognise, as we are doing at this CSW, that these threats are not just limited in country.

There are transnational threats such as climate and cyber as well. But it is not only our commitment overseas, we are embedding the same principles of ensuring women are central and pivotal to all the solution, every facet of society in our democratic domestic systems, military cooperation and international diplomacy.

Frankly, every country that talks this narrative together, we need to walk the walk if we want to make genuine progress by 2025. One of the key objectives of our new plan is to prevent gender based violence, including conflict related sexual violence, and importantly, to support incredible, courageous survivors to recover and seek justice to rebuild their lives.

As the UK Prime Minister’s Special Representative Representative for Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, I was honoured and humbled to host our recent conference back in November, which demonstrated a sustained international resolve to end these heinous crimes.

We saw 53 countries come together and the Special Representative of the Secretary General, Pramila Patten, signed the political declaration. 40 countries made tangible national commitments on steps they intended to take. The truth is, it’s a fundamental fact, a tragic fact, that in 2023, sexual violence in conflict is real. It is happening. Therefore, I was delighted my dear friend and colleague, the UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announced a new three year PSVI (Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict) Strategy backed by over £12 million of new funding to build accountability and justice around the world. And looking ahead, it is important that we hold ourselves to account through the new International Alliance, which I’m delighted to announce on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, which will bring together leading Member States.

And I’m delighted that we are also joined at the Security Council by my dear friend, the Deputy Minister from Colombia, who again, as we were reminded by the Minister from Ecuador, had made great strides on this important agenda.

And therefore, I call upon all nations here, present and colleagues join us, join us together in strengthening this alliance to ensure that those incredible courageous survivors of sexual violence are not just given a voice, but are pivotal and central in building our international strategy to ensure that we prevent sexual violence in conflict.

We ensure that accountability is inherent and that we fully engage with survivor voices.

I ask governments to embed survivor voices in their own peacebuilding systems. We’ll be glad to share our experiences. And for me personally, through working with these incredible survivors, it has demonstrated that through their direct input, their direct action, our policies and programmes are directly impacted in a most positive way, enriched by their experience and their valuable advice and courage in speaking out.

Colleagues, Madam President.

23 years on from Resolution 1325, we must not resolve just to stabilise and strengthen rights. We should work to ensure that we put women at the heart of every conflict resolution. We put women at the heart of building stability and security around the world.

Let us not look back in another 23 years to say that we squandered the opportunity. Indeed, I know we will not. We owe it to those who have suffered in the past, to those women and girls who are suffering today.

We must not let this incredible opportunity pass us by.

And to all the incredible women and girls around the world who suffer at the hands of repressive, regressive regimes, we must act. We must act now.

Simply put, it is our duty. It is our obligation. Thank you, Madam President.

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 7 March 2023.

Statement delivered by the UK’s Ambassador to the WTO and UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, for Item 2 General Debate.