Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. The 76th Session of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) was held via videoconferencing on May 21. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia D.Tsogtbaatar chaired the opening of the session.   

The ESCAP is the largest regional intergovernmental platform with 53 member states and 9 associate members. Mongolia served as a chair of the 75th Session of the Commission in 2019-2020.

"Mongolia has realized several social and economic projects during the period of this partnership with the Commission. In doing so, we have worked together under a goal ‘To bring about smooth development by ensuring no one is left behind’, Minister of Foreign Affais D.Tsogtbaatar emphasized.  

“A large number of social issues are abandoned with an economic development of any country. Therefore, we need to pay attention at a regional level on ensuring that people are benefited from economic growth and improving the citizens’ quality of life through health and education sectors. International organizations should invest in it as well.” 

Minister Tsogtbaatar further continued “As an educated person is able to feed himself, we strives to attach significance to enhance human development. Another issue we were also concerned about was a protection and preparedness for unexpected disasters, and as post-disaster relief takes longer for low-income citizens than others, it is necessary to focus our attention on providing assistance to low-income citizens at national and regional levels. Countries make a huge amount of investment in the defense area and some countries also jointly uses a military formation of ‘Rapid Deployment Force’. Regarding this, a proposal has been put forward to mobilize ‘Medical Rapid Deployment Units’, at the level of regions under the oversight of the WHO, which, in the event of an epidemic or pandemic, would be employed in an area where there is an outbreak of a disease with the mission to provide integrated management, guidelines, instructions and recommendations and, where necessary, it may help setting up quarantine regimes.  

The Foreign Minister also voiced a proposal to establish a confidence-building mechanism in the health care area. “It remains uncertain how the countries would reopen their borders and resume their trade cooperation once the pandemic subsides. As people are more cautious during the pandemic, economic ties will not immediately resume when the borders are reopened. Therefore, there is a necessity to create a mechanism to strengthen confidence in the health and medical arrangements among the countries same as the mechanisms already in place in the politics and military fields. In other words, trade and economic cooperation will be quickly restored, when a country’s health care capacity, medical reports and quarantine regimes are understood and accepted by the citizens of another country. 

The 76th session in 2020-2021 of the UN ESCAP will be chaired by Bangladesh. 

Previously, Kh.Olzvoi, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs chaired the 45th session of ESCAP in 1989-1990, and N.Tuya, Foreign Minister chaired the 55th session in 1999-2000 and D.Tsogtbaatar, Minister of Foreign Affairs chaired the 75th session in 2019-2020 from Mongolia.