Remarks by Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan in UNICEF EB

02 February, 2016

UNICEF Executive Board 2016 first regular session: Item 1

Remarks by Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations

Mr President,

It is a great pleasure to see you presiding over this Board and we join others in welcoming you and the other new members of the Bureau. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to UNICEF’s Executive Director, Mr Anthony Lake, for delivering a comprehensive statement on UNICEF’s vision and activities.

Indeed, 2016 is a crucial year for the UN Development System after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and the COP 21 landmark agreement. The Member States and the Children’s Fund should work hand in hand to translate these ambitious goals into tangible results for the children who need them most. We expect that UNICEF will continue playing an important role in driving more coherence and efficiency and greater impact within the Development System.

The Executive Director makes a salient point in that it is merely impossible to build a sustainable future without supporting the poorest and most disadvantaged, and neither without addressing urgent humanitarian crises, nor without addressing climate change. It is our common understanding that a stronger future can only be achieved and properly utilized if we effectively promote the rights of children, invest in and sustain the children and youth empowerment, education, health and socio-economic inclusion.

The unprecedented rise in humanitarian emergencies and the complex nature of many of these crises have highlighted the urgency of strengthening the integration of development and humanitarian efforts. In this respect we support the systematic efforts of the UNICEF to strengthen the humanitarian action and deliver better results. We commend the Fund’s essential role in improving our collective emergency response system to be more resilient in applying its Cluster Lead Agency Role in Humanitarian Action. Investments in health and other essential services and in basic infrastructures need to reduce inequities among children and withstand climate-related disasters.

In order to cope with all the challenges and support the implementation of the Agenda 2030 the Fund should be better “fit-for-purpose”. It is good to learn from the present reports that the overall financial position of UNICEF remains sound. We welcome the UNICEF’s new resource mobilization strategy, which aims to maximize flexible and predictable revenue to achieve significant results for children in accordance with its Strategic Plan, increase the share of regular resources, encourage multi-year commitments for resources, and expand strategic engagement with public and private sector partners to leverage resources and support for the most disadvantaged children. Moreover, we share the vision in this strategy that UNICEF and other sister agencies need to explore and better utilize funding modalities that support integrated delivery and results with complementarity between humanitarian and development funds.

Mr President,

As a member of the Executive Board of the UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS, the delegation of Armenia looks forward to continuing to work with our partners towards a better dialogue and cooperation between the agencies and member states. The First Regular Session will be followed by a joint field visit (JVF) to Kyrgyzstan and a Joint Meeting of the Boards in June. From the perspectives of the UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS Executive Board and its Bureau, we look forward to working closely with you and your Bureau to expand collaboration between the Executive Boards and within their memberships. I hope together we can contribute to such UN system-wide issues as inter-agency coherence and coordination, and partnerships with civil society, the private sector, local diplomatic missions and other multilateral and bilateral agencies.

Mr President,

The UNICEF, together with other UN organizations can be of an important assistance in strengthening national capacities of domestic resource mobilization and access to different external funding resources. Last year, the Government of Armenia and the United Nations signed the third Development Assistance Framework, which is a strategic document to guide our cooperation until 2020. The framework underlines Armenia’s vision and commitment to improve the living standards of its people including children, while taking into account the realities and opportunities of its standing as a lower middle income country (MIC). In this context, I would like to emphasize the need for the UN agencies, including the UNICEF, to continue their programme support in MICs in order to reduce inequalities.

With a growing relationship of over 20 years, there have been a number of joint projects conducted in Armenia by UNICEF in several key areas, such as young child and adolescent health and development, basic education, and child protection. In its 2015 annual session, the Executive Board approved the new UNICEF CPD for Armenia, which highlights the need for further investment in inter-sectoral cooperation to address issues of children facing multiple deprivations, as well as reinforcing the alignment of childcare system policies with integrated health, social protection and inclusive education reforms. Major priority areas outlined in the CPD clearly articulate our renewed joint commitment to reinforce focus on most vulnerable and marginalized children and families based on inclusive, child-centred and rights-based development approach.

At the regional level, we believe that the activities of the UNICEF and other partners in Armenia can benefit from and contribute to experiences of other countries facing similar development challenges. Involving children through employing a comparable mix of implementation strategies, sharing best practices and institutional knowledge are relevant instruments to this end. In this respect, we are pleased to see the management response and progress to date in implementing the recommendations of the independent Multi-Country Evaluation on “Increasing access and equity in early childhood education in the CEE/CIS region”. As Armenia is one of the six cases in the evaluation, it is encouraging to see that the management fully agrees with most of the recommendations. The recommendations, among other things, indicate knowledge sharing, mutual support and strengthening horizontal cooperation amongst countries across the region.

Mr. President,

Armenia is deeply concerned about and is closely following the developments of the on-going refugee crisis as a result of conflicts, and its impact on children. As a nation who continues to suffer from the serious consequences of aggression and illegal blockade, we condemn all violations of domestic and international law committed against children whether in peace or in situations of armed conflict.

With the recent influx of refugees from Syria, which currently exceeds 17 thousand, a large numbers of who are children, the Government of Armenia spares no effort to meet their needs properly, adopting and implementing a comprehensive Action Plan since 2013. This new wave of displacement adds to similar challenges already faced by Armenia, who hosted and integrated hundreds of thousands of IDPs and refugees from Azerbaijan, and over a thousand displaced persons not so long ago from Iraq.

In these challenging times, Mr President, I would like to reiterate Armenia’s commitment to furthering its partnership with UNICEF and other stakeholders for delivering the most benefits and results to the children and making the world safer for them.

Thank you.

MFA RA
official website

Dual citizenship

Electronic visa

Visa applications