With three U.N. agencies backing the new “Joint Presence Initiative” in the Marshall Islands and ready to focus on needs in this western Pacific nation, President Litokwa Tomeing challenged Marshall Islanders during the nationally broadcast opening ceremony with the question: “Are we ready to do our part to help ourselves?”
The president thanked the U.N. for opening the new office in response to requests from the government. Encouraging Marshall Islanders to play their part in improving health and social indicators in the country, Tomeing said that the U.N. is “ready to do their part to help us for a better future for Marshallese people. Our responsibility is to engage in innovative thinking and hard work” to produce benefits for Marshallese society at all levels, he said.
The Marshall Islands is faced with high levels of communicable diseases, including tuberculosis and leprosy, and poor academic results from its public schools.
The Majuro office is a joint initiative of the UN’s Population Fund, Development Program and Children’s Program. Similar offices are being opened in Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia Friday and in Palau next week.
Tomeing and three U.N. officials emphasized the focus of the U.N. office for supporting achievement of “Millennium Development Goals” — a set of eight target goals set by global agreement to reduce poverty and improve health and equality of people by 2015.
Highlighting the office opening in Majuro was the presence of Najib Assifi, the U.N. Population Fund’s Pacific representative, Dr. Isiye Ndombi, UNICEF’s Pacific Representative, and Toily Kurbanov, the U.N. Development Program’s deputy representative. All are based in Fiji.
“The United Nations through the Joint Presence is committed to continue hand in hand with you find Marshall Islands solutions for the burdens that challenge the livelihood and well being of your men, women, young people and children,” Assifi said.
Assifi praised the government for its commitment to working on the MDGs, and added: “I am optimistic, but I am also realistic, because there are challenges. There is opposition, and sometimes political priorities and views collide with public health imperatives. Today, sexual and reproductive health remains vulnerable and under-funded.”
UNICEF Pacific Representative Ndombi said that the Marshall Islands can see “how the future will be by looking at the state of today’s children.”
But, he asked: “How often do planners and others charged with the responsibility of visioning and designing frameworks of future national investment sit down to start their work by reflecting on the reality of today’s children?”
Planning, Ndombi said, “should be about people and a country’s future people are its children.”
UNDP’s Kurbanov said that as a low-lying atoll nation with a small population, the Marshall Islands is “particularly vulnerable” to the impact of global financial crisis and high fuel and food prices. It is unclear, he said, how long these problems may last. “But some of the implications are already clear: we all will need to take care that vulnerable groups — women, children, elderly people, Marshallese on the outer atolls — do not suffer first, especially as these crises tend to disproportionately affect these vulnerable groups.”
The challenges to improve life in the Marshall Islands are big, Kurbanov said. “But Marshallese people have been known as builders of the fastest canoes in the middle of the vast ocean and resilience of the Pacific communities is centuries proof,” he said, adding he hoped this new U.N. office can help contribute to the partnership.
Tomeing called on people in the Marshall Islands “to engage in innovative thinking and hard work” to produce benefits for all levels of society.
