Palau Statement of SDGs and Preamble:
By
H.E. Dr. Caleb Otto – Amb. and PR of Palau to the UN
July 29 2015
Thank you , Mr. Co-Chair for giving us the floor.
Palau believes your revised proposals are acceptable and we’ll support integration of these proposed targets into the main Outcome document. Allow me to make some observations and request amendments:
1. 3.2 , the reference to ‘neonatal’ mortality should be changed to ‘newborn’ mortality - to be consistent with the wording in the beginning of the sentence, i.e., ‘preventable deaths of newborns’………
2. We want to appreciate especially the reference to Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, holistic disaster risk management at all levels. Disaster risk reduction is very important and ‘holistic’ in this sentence indicates that we’ll manage risk in structural and non-structural dimensions, especially the psychosocial aspect and we request insertion of these works in reference to resilience - structural and non-structural such as psychosocial aspects.
3. Re: 14.c, as you know, Palau was one of the Pacific Troika which advocated and worked hard for Goal 14 on Oceans and Seas. Ocean is very important to us. Therefore, in this section our preference would have been the original co-facilitators’ revision which aligns the language with the internationally accepted language. We are, however, flexible and want to support consensus-building and so we’re amenable to accepting the new proposed text developed through the able leadership of New Zealand and we thank them.
4. With regards to the Additional Proposals to Targets on LLDCs for considerations, we’d like to request that ‘SIDS’ be included in 2.a, and 9.c.
Note: The following was not in the statement made orally, but re: Preamble,
We are flexible with whether it is taken or deleted. However, if it is deleted, like the US delegate suggested we could take those items in the preamble and missing in the new outline we’d like the reference to ‘human rights to water’ (para 7 in the old Preamble) to be integrated into para 8 under Vision in the new draft.
Many thanks.
