Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The “UN75 2020 and Future: The Consultative meeting with media organizations” was just successfully organized by the United Nations Resident Coordinator Office in Mongolia, on July 28^th in 2020 at UN Mongolia House in Ulaanbaatar city.

On the occasion of the UN's 75th anniversary in 2020, the UN Secretary General has launched the “UN75 Initiative” which is one of the biggest ever global conversations on the world's next 25 years of future development, under the theme “Building the future we want”. Historically, the United Nations and multilateral cooperation have always played an important role in solving certain critical problems facing the world and humanity.

Today, the United Nations is marking its 75th anniversary at a time of great challenge. Covid-19 is a stark reminder of the need for cooperation across borders, sectors and generations. At a time of this global challenge, the value and importance of international cooperation and their friendship are being increasingly appreciated by global communities, including Mongolia.

While all of the UN member countries are invited to this initiative of global dialogue and nearly all of them have taken part, Mongolia also graciously welcomes this initiative. Since Mongolia became a fully-fledged member of the United Nations on October 27th, 1961, it has been actively participating and contributing to its activities. “I am very pleased to see Mongolia’s strong commitments to implement the Sustainable Development Goals throughout the country first through the SDV2030 and now through Strategy 2050”, said Mr. Tapan Mishra, the Resident Coordinator of Mongolia.

We need to sustain momentum and consolidate our efforts to prevent a backsliding on progress achieved to date. Our response will determine how fast the world recovers, whether we achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and how well we handle the global trends shaping our future, from climate change to new technologies.

The UN75 initiative seeks to engage in dialogue with all segments of society, including UN colleagues governments, private sector, civil society, academia, think tanks, youth, local communities, herders, elderly people, people with disabilities, and media, based on its core development principle of “leaving no one behind”.

Opinions and comments of these groups of society will be reflected and collected through both physical and virtual platforms of dialogues, media engagement meetings as well as online and offline surveys. It is vital that peoples’ voices are heard at this crucial time for the world and engagement of media organizations is considered significant in terms of further dissemination and promotion of the UN75 initiative to wider public. We value the great potential of media organizations and journalists in terms of outreaching this initiative to local communities and herders from distant regions, as well as those whose voice is often not well heard in international level dialogue such as youth, elderly people, and disabled people.  

There were about 32 representatives of Mongolian 24 major top media organizations gathered and discussed about opportunities and challenges facing our collective vision of sustainable development of the next 25 years and proposed potential collective solutions and recommendations in response to the following key three sets of guiding questions:

1. What are the main obstacles and challenges that will block your prospective development vision? (for instance in respect to the following challenges identified during the preliminary result of the global dialogue on UN75 initiative, in a timeframe of the next 25 years)

2.  How can global cooperation – particularly the UN – better manage these challenges? What can the UN do differently and how can the UN change and reform? How can the UN better work with other actors?

3. What impact can the engagement and cooperation role of the media have on addressing the challenges you have identified?

Views and ideas collected from participants of such series of local dialogues and consultations will be featured and presented to world leaders at the official commemoration of the 75^th anniversary in September 2020. After September, the dialogues will shift from gathering views to discussing how best to take forward the priorities and proposals generated.

D.Sengelmaa