Remarks by Ms. Sofya Simonyan, Third Secretary, Permanent Mission of Armenia, at the briefing by the co-chairs of the multi-stakeholder forum on science, technology and innovation for the SDGs

29 January, 2018

Mr. President,

We thank you for convening this briefing today and we welcome the co-chairs of the Forum and the recommendations they have provided in their summary. We also thank delegations for their very insightful comments.

The UN, through its various platforms, remains an important partner in helping promote space for innovation, new ideas and creativity to help countries leap forward, beyond the traditional mainstream development cooperation. STI is a fundamental driver of change, with enhancing and transformational possibilities towards more inclusive and participatory systems. It is also the area that vividly demonstrates the most visible progress.

We are fully committed to promoting STI in our national policies, having embraced the innovation agenda as an important priority. In recent years, we have successfully embarked on innovative forms of governance, employing user-generated tools and inputs.

Together with the UN Country Team, we have been setting up national platforms /innovation labs/ to support the acceleration of the SDGs, with a focus on the strong impact of reform and innovation in advancing “smart development”. Our track record gives confidence to continue on the path of exploring further spaces for experimentation, the most recent and notable example being the Impact Investment for Development Summit initiative held in Armenia. The summit looked into the potential of leveraging social enterprise and impact business to achieve the SDGs. We are happy to support a follow-up on this process, and we are very encouraged by the interest this process has generated.

We thank the distinguished co-chairs for highlighting, in their summary, the importance of innovative instruments and channels, such as impact investing, crowd-funding, diaspora funders and local communities. We also welcome the reference to impact investment and innovative financing models in the GA resolution on science, technology and innovation for development, adopted upon the recommendation of the Second Committee of the current, 72nd session.

Mr. President,

We are keen to encourage further discussions on the role of STI and on ways to promote partnerships for innovation, in support of socially and environmentally impactful projects. In our view, this is particularly relevant in case of the lower-middle income countries. The data published by the Global Innovation Index highlights that innovation, in fact, is not limited to the most advanced economies.

We wish the distinguished co-chairs and the Forum much success in driving this very important agenda forward,

Thank you.

MFA RA
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