His Excellency Taneti Maamau, the President of Kiribati

Hon. Dr. Teuea Toatu, Vice President of Kiribati

Honourable Madam Tangariki Reete, Speaker of the Parliament of Kiribati,

Honourable Members of Parliament,

His Excellency Mr Paul Wallis, the New Zealand High Commissioner to Kiribati,

Mr Eni Tekanen, Clerk, the Parliament of Kiribati,

Secretariat staff of the Parliament.

Colleagues of the Parliament Secretariat

Ladies and gentlemen,

Mauri, Good morning…

It is my honour and privilege to address you at the occasion of this very important workshop on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Role of Parliament.

It is my second time to join you online. Last year, I also spoke to you during your induction following the elections. I am delighted to see that the capacity building series is continuing and in-between we have facilitated a workshop for the members of the Public Accounts committee. It is encouraging to see your interest to carry on with your knowledge enhancement.

I am also delighted that this time you have chosen to focus on the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ or SDGs.

As you would know and hear later, SDGs, or the 2030 agenda, provide a comphrehensive and interlinked set of 17 targets that will make our present and future peaceful and prosperous for our planet. These targets aim to reduce poverty, inequality and other deprivations. They also focus on ensuring education, health and well-being through provision of essential life services. The goals also balance reducing economic inequalities and achieve climate change and preserving our oceans and other environmental assets.  

So the reason, I am saying that I am particularly happy that you have chosen SDGs for this workshop is this: SDGs Goal 16 targets to empower public institutions, including parliament. We consider that public institutions are the key enablers for implementing the SDGs. All targets under SDGs are at the heart of parliament’s legislative, oversight and representative functions. So the better you are equipped with SDGs knowledge, the better you will be able to grapple with their implementation.

But what does this mean in practice. It means that parliament can use its legislative powers to enact laws that are required to achieve climate action, gender equality, reduce poverty and protect our oceans and forests. Through your oversight powers, you can also inquire from the government about the actions they have taken to implement the 2030 agenda. Finally, using your representative functions, you can bring citizens and government together to find common ground for working collectively on their implementation.

At the heart of implementing SDGs is the need for ensuring it’s adequate financing. In the 2018 Voluntarily National Review, Kiribati identified financing for SDGs as a key challenge. Here, parliament’s power of budgetary approval will be highly relevant. As you look at budgets every year, you can see if government is planning to invest adequate resources for the SDGs. You can also investigate if the approved budgets are spent as planned and achieving desired goals. Finally, SDGs’ implementation can be accelerated through financing by and of the private sector. Here again, Parliament can use your convening power to bring government and private sector to the table to discuss the necessary enabling legislation and mechanism needed to achieve this goal.

I want to recognize that Kiribati is showing good progress on the Gender mainstreaming. Your parliament is the only second parliament in the region which is headed by a women speaker. You also have four women members in parliament, which is one more compared to three members elected in 2015. But Kiribati’s Voluntarily National Review in 2018 points to the fact that some other gender aspects require more attention.

To begin with, as per global standards and SDGs, it is good to continue working towards increasing women’s political participation and achieve 30 percent representation in all elected houses. On the contrary, 47 percent adult women remain unemployed. The percentage of unemployed young women stands even higher at 73 percent. While it is encouraging that 70 percent girls, between the age of 12-18 years are able to attend primary and secondary education, only four-percent attend post secondary education. So there are areas where Kiribati can play an effective role and I think parliament is best placed institution to push progress on them through its legislative and oversight mandates as well.

While you have taken a good start with this introductory workshop, you may want to continue focusing on digging deeper into the SDGs. We have invited three ministries to brief you on some topics and you may want to do this for all SDGs in future.

From UNDP’s side, we have comprehensive support offer for Small Island Development States (SIDS). The offer focuses on blue economcy, digitilisation and climate action. All of these areas are closely linked to SDGs. Therefore, our team will be at your service to provide further support in understanding and implementing SDGs under our SIDS offer.

Background of our Support

UNDP has provided support to your Parliament for a number of years through different programmes, most recently through the New Zealand Government funded Pacific Parliamentary Effectiveness Initiative (PPEI) Project.

Our support is focused on key areas such as MPs and staff professional development, the improvement of Committees' legislative and oversight work, and support to parliamentary outreach and citizen engagement roles.

Building on this support, we are also pleased to support the work on the revision of rules of procedure, which is currently on-going. During that process, and because of the crucial role of parliament and its committees in SDGs, you may want to consider mainstreaming SDGs into your work by broadening the role and mandate of parliament and its committees. Tomorrow, you will hear from the Parliaments of Fiji and Tonga on their experience to mainstream SDGs.

As you know, COVID-19 has unfolded unprecedented times in our history. It has impacted our lives, economies and the way we operate. It is the very reason that we could not join you in person for this and other events.

But, COVID-19 has also given our organization, the United Nations, and especially UNDP, a new opportunity to re-imagine and be creative about how we support our partners, engage and work with institutions like your Parliament.

We are helping parliaments in the region, and globally, to continue their essential constitutional mandate.  

Thanks to New Zealand’s generous support , UNDP is working with your Secretariat to significantly upgrade the ICT structures and processes in Parliament. Such support will enable virtual and remote meetings, especially for your Committees and staff who may still need to meet and take critical decisions, even if a lockdown is necessitated in Kiribati.

Like the rest of the Pacific region, Kiribati is also prone to climate effects, such as cyclones; therefore, we are considering these factors when deploying support to prepare the Kiribati parliament in continuing its operations under various crises.

I wish to retiretate that we stand ready to provide further support to enable Parliament to continue its operation during the pandemic. Please don’t hesitate to advise your Secretariat team to reach out to us with requests for further support that we can provide within our mandate.

The COVID-19 has also impacted the progress made on SDGs. It is feared that progress achieved on women’s empowerment, education, health, vaccination, will be reversed because of the  pandemic. Therefore, it is of paramount significance that parliament and all of us pay attention to how we can maintain focus on SDGs and bolstering resources for achieving them by 2030. Again, we stand ready to help Kiribati government, parliament and its people in achieving the target.

Ladies and gentlemen:

UNDP’s support for this workshop was made possible through our project donor's generous assistance: the Government of New Zealand. We thank them for their consistent commitment to supporting parliamentary development efforts in your Parliament and, more generally, in the Pacific region. In this workshop, our colleagues from UNDP’s Inclusive Growth, Resilient and Sutainable Development (RSD), UNESCAP, and the Forum Secretariat are joining us. I wish to thank them and their donors for the support. We are also grateful to all Kiribati Ministries, colleagues from Fiji and Tonga parliaments and the Government of Solomon Islands for joining us as well.

Honourable Members, I wish you well in your interactions in the coming days and I look forward to our upcoming collaboration.

Vinaka Vakalevu, Kam Rabwa.