UN General Assembly
2019

I also want to express the appreciation of the people and Government of Tuvalu to the Secretary-General, His Excellency Antonio Guterres, for visiting Tuvalu in May this year to see first-hand our extreme vulnerabilities to climate change and to build momentum towards the successful Climate Action Summit, which we all witnessed and participated in earlier this week. Tuvalu wishes to acknowledge his incredible energy and commitment to saving our planet and humanity from the adverse impacts of climate change. I congratulate you, Mr. President, on the priority that you have given to multilateralism, poverty eradication, quality education, climate action and inclusion by making them the theme of the seventy-fourth session of the General Assembly. I am happy that those are the core development issues that my country set out to address in our recent national sustainable development strategy, Te Kakeega III. We have made positive progress in quality education, poverty eradication and health. We do not discriminate with regard to gender and our women have equal access to employment, rates of pay and decision-making processes as men, including political participation.