By TIOL News Service

NEW YORK, NOV 08, 2020: EARMARKING USD five billion for countries, UN leaders pledged to boost efforts to save lives and livelihoods and recover better from COVID-19.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG) met virtually on Fridayday to assess preliminary results and challenges of joint work supporting 162 countries and territories to overcome and recover better from the COVID-19 pandemic. The group members – the chiefs of all UN entities working on sustainable development – focused on the socioeconomic response to COVID-19. So far, UN teams repurposed around USD3 billion of existing funding, while additionally mobilizing nearly USD two billion to support national and local efforts in the immediate response to the pandemic.

In the last quarter alone, UN teams supported authorities to deliver nutrition programmes to almost five million people, with seven million women receiving maternal health services, while ensuring the continuation of close to six million ongoing vaccinations. Results are tracked by an online public COVID-19 data portal. UN chiefs vowed to do more, including to boost data collection with national and local authorities as critical means to address those most at need. The efforts were guided and strengthened by a series of COVID-19 policy briefings issued by the UN Secretary-General, as well as the key global initiatives he has launched in response to the effects of the crisis – including on the financing of the COVID-19 response, and his calls for Peace at Home and towards a ceasefire across the globe.

“For the first time, we all recognize this is a development emergency of global proportions. Governments, communities, and citizens have mobilized accordingly – and our UN teams too have stepped up, together, from the onset of the pandemic to address the health, humanitarian and socioeconomic needs. In many ways this is an expression of global solidarity and response to the most vulnerable. But much more needs to be done, even faster,” said Deputy Secretary-General and UNSDG Chair Amina J. Mohammed.

From the onset of the pandemic, UN teams have been rolling out the United Nations Framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19 , which calls for protecting jobs, businesses and livelihoods to set in motion a better recovery of societies and economies as soon as possible for a more sustainable, gender-equal, and carbon-neutral path— better than the “old normal”.