KHURELSUKH UKHNAA, President of Mongolia, expressed full support for international efforts toward disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, noting that Mongolia declared its territory free of nuclear weapons more than three decades ago.  For the eighth time, Mongolia hosted this year the International Conference of the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue on Northeast Asian Security, a significant platform to strengthen confidence-building measures and to establish regional peace and security.  Highlighting Mongolia’s deployment of more than 20,000 peacekeepers over the past 20 years, he reaffirmed United Nations peacekeeping as an essential instrument to maintain international peace and security by halting and preventing armed conflicts, alleviating humanitarian crises, and fostering environments conducive to social development.  Furthermore, in line with Mongolia’s organization in 2022 of an international conference on women in peacekeeping, he emphasized the meaningful participation of women in peacekeeping operations and the need to strengthen the role of women at all levels for peaceful conflict resolution.

Regarding digital technology, he said the rapid advancement of new tools is unlocking new prospects for global development, but also reshaping the landscape of threats that jeopardize world peace and security, including terrorist attacks and their financing, money laundering, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.  It is vital for countries to refine an international legal framework, and his Government fully supports establishing a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.  Additionally, commending the General Assembly for convening three high-level meetings on health issues, he called on Member States to comprehensively strengthen the World Health Organization (WHO)’s role and broaden its activities.   Mongolia fully supports developing the WHO convention, agreement, or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. Such an international legal document will be “of great importance” for timely and equitable access to — and the distribution of — pandemic-related vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics.

On climate, Mongolia is implementing national movements for “One Billion Trees” and “Food Supply and Security,” as well as a World Export Development Forum to further develop green and inclusive trade and economic relations.  He called on other Governments to take urgent measures to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, heed the guidance of scientists, raise public awareness, and regulate the use of resources.  Mongolia was one of the first to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Finance Taxonomy to support climate financing.  More broadly, there is an urgent need to develop a global plan to finance the SDGs.  While Mongolia has made notable progress on 15 of the goals, the country needs to spend an additional 18 per cent of annual gross domestic product to achieve the targets by 2030.

In particular, Mongolia endeavours to protect the interests of landlocked developing countries, including by setting up a group of such countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).  He also underscored the importance of strengthening research capacities of the International Think Tank of the Landlocked Developing Countries to adopt a renewed development framework for them for the next decade.  Also, noting the seventy-fifth anniversary this year of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he underscored the shared goal of building a world free of gender inequality.  Women and female leaders play a critical role in the security and development of humankind.  Following Mongolia’s organization of the Female Foreign Ministers’ Meeting last year, he proposed also convening the World Women’s Forum in Mongolia in 2024.