Opening Remarks from the United Nations Resident Coordinator at the UNCT Retreat

The Honourable Flavien Joubert, Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Climate Change

Members of the Diplomatic Corps

Colleagues 

Retreat Participants

Ladies and gentlemen

It is my pleasure to welcome you all to the 2025 Annual Retreat for the United Nations Country Team serving Mauritius and Seychelles. UN retreats are an annual event whereby UN heads of agencies gather as a team to review achievements and results of the past, reflect on lessons learned, identify opportunities and raise our collective ambition for transformative results.  The UN Cooperation Frameworks for Mauritius and Seychelles are our five-year blueprints, which guides the operational work of the 25 UN agencies who work here and which we designed in consultation with the governments and national stakeholders.  They are rooted in the three core pillars of People, Prosperity, and Planet, and guided by the cross-cutting principles of inclusion, gender equality, youth empowerment, human rights and digitalisation. They are aligned with the two national development strategies, namely the Seychelles five-year National Development Strategy 2024-2028; and the Mauritius new Government Programme, "A Bridge to the Future", with both national agendas focused on resilience, inclusive prosperity, and regional cooperation.

Looking Back - A Year of Unprecedented Transition

We are in a world where development faces many headwinds.  Trade wars, pandemics, geopolitical tensions and the rising cost of living proliferate. Protracted and new forms of conflict have shifted focus on defense spending at the expense of preventive development and undermine humanitarian responses.   Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Mauritius and Seychelles are at the forefront of the climate emergency and are most impacted by these geopolitical and economic disruptions. As the global financing forum just opened yesterday in Seville to address the urgency of financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), innovative forms of financing are a priority for High-Income Countries (HICs) and Middle-Income Countries (MICs) to enable bold investments that green and future-proof their economies.  

In a globally connected world, multilateralism is more important than ever to solve national issues which transcend borders and boundaries.  Last year, UN Member States resoundingly approved the “Pact for the Future” as an urgent call for multilateral reform, action, and renewed commitment to the SDGs. The fourth International Conference on SIDS in Antigua and Barbuda launched the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS), which charts action for the next 10 years. We saw bold calls for turbocharging progress on food systems, energy, digital connectivity, education, jobs and social protection, and climate, biodiversity and pollution – all of which are high priority areas in the national development agendas of our two countries. 

To rise to the challenge of effectively accompanying member states, we need to be forward-looking, impactful, agile and efficient.  This is the ambition of the UN Secretary-General who has launched the UN80 initiative. A deep organizational transformation of the UN which was established in 1946, which, since its creation has achieved remarkable results and breakthroughs and which now needs to be fit to tackle the evolving challenges of the modern world to include the dizzying takeover of the digital and technological world. 

As explained by our UN Secretary-General the UN80 reforms are anchored on three pillars efficiency: mandate implementation review; structure change and programme realignment.   While the review is going on at headquarters, here on the ground, and despite the uncertainty of financial cuts being felt on the ground by all of us, we have an even greater shared responsibility to ensure that our work results in real transformation and improves the lives of the people we serve. 

Retreat Priorities

Against this backdrop, the priorities of this retreat are clear and urgent: 

• Review our first year of UNSDCF implementation, highlighting successes, lessons, and strategic pivots. The agenda is structured for open, results-oriented dialogue.
• Strengthen UN coherence through joint planning, programming, and communication. We must identify high value accelerators, where programmatic integration and synergies can enhance impact.
• Align our efforts with high-impact national priorities, including climate finance, regional cooperation, renewable energy, and blue ocean economy.  
• Reinforce internal collaboration and cohesion within the UN Country Team, enhancing our collective delivery.

The engagement strategy and value proposition of the UN in high and middle-income countries are not delivering things.  It is about delivering thinking that strengthens institutions, connects knowledge and know-how, that fosters innovation, reinforces social contracts, brokers partnerships with private and capital markets and derisks investments, that strengthens south and regional collaboration.  

So, bring all your ideas to the floor – constructively, frankly and collaboratively, so we leave this space committed to transformation and impact. 

Our Shared Achievements

You have seen our annual reports – they highlight the many salient results we achieved together in partnership with our national stakeholders, and I congratulate all of the UN agencies, and our partners gathered here.  These include helping launch circular economy roadmaps, STI roadmaps in Seychelles, SDG investor maps for both countries,  accompanying governments in their national reporting and reviews such as the UPR and VNR process; advancing National Skills Roadmap and Employment Policy, catalysing investment in climate and disaster financing, notably through the development of Seychelles’ Integrated National Financing Framework and Early Warning for All initiative, strengthening national capacity for systems thinking and strategic foresight. 

Recognizing the shared threats posed by illicit drugs and organized crime, we strengthened regional integration and law enforcement capacity through joint initiatives—bringing together agencies, ministries, and regional organizations to increase maritime security, share intelligence, and coordinate strategies to disrupt trafficking networks across the Indian Ocean. We have supported modalities for streamlining orderly migration and enabled both countries to connect to new regional agri-food and fisheries value chains.   We supported IOC countries in the launch of the pooled procurement Secretariat for medical supplies as well as the launch of a sustainable business coalition network on for the West Indian Ocean with improved regional collaboration. Leave No One Behind (LNOB) is a priority with a focus on addressing Gender Based Violence (GVB) and youth engagement, but we need to do more through a more science and data-driven approach to policymaking and targeting.   

Ministers, your leadership has been instrumental in these joint results, and we thank our development partners and national stakeholders who we collaborated with to obtain these results.  We will equally continue to deepen engagement with the private sector, civil society, youth, academia and donors. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let us use these three days to strengthen alignment, deepen collaboration, and reaffirm our shared purpose to impactfully supporting Mauritius and Seychelles in their vision of moving from SIDS to big ocean states, and for resilient, prosperous and thriving nations where all citizens live fulfilled lives.  I am looking forward to very rich and fruitful discussions with you all.  Thank you.