Discorso pronunciato dall’Ambasciatore Maurizio Massari, Rappresentante Permanente dell’Italia presso le Nazioni Unite, alla Riunione Plenaria Informale dell’Assemblea Generale di presentazione delle raccomandazioni dell’Independent Panel for Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) —
Thank you, Mr. President. Italy aligns itself with the statement delivered by the European Union and wishes to add the following remarks in its national capacity.
We join others in thanking the Co-Chairs of the Independent Panel for their presentation of the Panel’s Report and Recommendations, which represent a remarkable contribution to the ongoing work in the area of pandemic preparedness and response.
Over the last year and a half, strengthening global health security has become a key, global priority and multilateral action is our most effective tool to address such priority.
Italy has placed “Global Health and Pandemic Preparedness and Response” at the center of its G20 Presidency.
We have proactively engaged to facilitate consensus-and-evidence-based solutions for strengthening global health architecture and pandemic preparedness and response, facilitating dialogues and advancing coordinated actions in relevant fora, including here in New York and in Geneva.
While addressing the most pressing issues pertaining to the COVID-19 response – including advancing the equitable and global access to COVID-19 vaccines and ensuring the full support to the ACT-Accelerator and the Covax Facility – we also supported the inter-connected processes aimed at improving pandemic preparedness and strengthening the global health architecture.
As already highlighted in the intervention by the EU, the Global Health Summit’s “Rome Declaration” laid the foundations of key principles for pandemic preparedness and response, which constitute a clear pathway towards improving our global health action and architecture.
During the Summit, Italy announced an additional 300 million euro contribution to the Covax Facility and the dose sharing of 15 million vaccines as part of the EU-vaccine-doses scheme.
Earlier this month in Venice, the G20 Members received the report of the “High Level Independent Panel on Financing Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response”, launched by the G20 last February.
We welcome the collaboration between the IPPPR and High Level Independent Panel and the synergy of their respective outcomes.
As an immediate follow-up to the Report, G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, who recently met in Venice, highlighted “the urgent need to be better prepared for future health threats” and committed to work with relevant partners, including the WHO and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and agreed “to develop proposals for sustainable financing to strengthen future pandemic preparedness and response, and to improve international governance and coordination between global health and finance policy makers”.
The G20 will continue to be highly engaged in this area of work, in view of the G20 Health Ministerial, next September, the Joint Finance and Health Ministers’ Ministerial Meeting, next October, and the G20 Leaders Summit, at the end of October, in Rome.
Ensuring the consistency, complementarity and coordination of existing mechanisms and initiatives will be of the utmost importance. We stress the need to strengthen the current global health architecture, starting from the WHO, taking into account the working groups and initiatives already activated in Geneva, including with regard to a potential new Pandemic Treaty.
You can certainly continue to count on Italy’s proactive engagement, including in our G20 Presidency capacity.
Thank you.
