MINSK, 19 June (BelTA) - Belarus has always been sincerely committed to the sustainable development agenda, Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Aleinik said at the opening of the second National Forum on Sustainable Development in Minsk on 19 June, BelTA has learned.
"It gives me great pleasure to attend such a representative forum today and welcome all its participants, both from Belarus and from other countries, and also representatives of international organizations," Sergei Aleinik said. “We are all united in the understanding that the 2030 Agenda is one of the fundamental documents of our time, and the Sustainable Development Goals enshrined in it are the most important guideline for all countries of the world."
The Belarusian minister of foreign affairs noted that the progress towards the goals is vital both for all of us and for future generations.
The minister outlined three key historical milestones in the active involvement of Belarus in this process.
"Firstly, the Republic of Belarus began to work seriously on the topic of sustainable development at the international level long before 2015," Sergei Aleinik said. “Both at the Rio+20 conference in 2012 and in the years leading up to the 2015 summit, when Belarus was a member of the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, we actively promoted the idea of developing the Sustainable Development Goals and achieving them through thematic partnerships. Many of our ideas were reflected in the final documents of that summit."
"Secondly, the participation of Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in the 2015 summit was an unequivocal confirmation of our country's commitment to the new agenda at the national level and to cooperation with all countries to implement it on a global scale," the minister continued. "At the same time, we remember the truly far-sighted words, a kind of warnings from the president's speech at the summit when he said that ‘sustainable development is impossible without peace and security’. The relevance of these words today is beyond doubt.”
"Thirdly, following the 2015 summit, we have built in our country a unique format of collective work on the SDGs led by the National Coordinator for the Sustainable Development Goals in the Republic of Belarus. Under the auspices of this structure, we have begun daily serious work to implement comprehensive commitments in the field of sustainable development, which we have undertaken," Sergei Aleinik said.
