副事務総長による教育変革サミットに関する初回非公式ブリーフィングにおける石兼大使ステートメント

令和4年2月18日

（As delivered）

Japan aligns itself with the statement delivered by the Permanent Mission of Kenya, representing the Group of Friends for Education and Lifelong Learning. I would like to touch upon the following three “necessities” in my national capacity.

Necessity to succeed

We welcome the kick-off of the Summit preparation process.

Education is not only a matter of education experts. It is a subject with cross-cutting nature that constitues one of the most important elements in assuring human security, dignity for all. We strongly support the holding of a Summit on Transforming Education. Given the daunting challenges people, especially the vulnerable such as youth, women are facing, we need to make our endeavors in education a success at the Summit and beyond.

Necessity to proceed pragmatically with inclusiveness and transparency

As the SG made clear during the thematic consultation on OCA last week, the TES should be considered as a high-level event not an intergovernmental meeting. In view of the short preparation time, we support it to be an SG-led event and support the proposed procedural arrangements and work streams, which build on the existing mechanisms and on the existing achievements. The effective cooperation between Paris and NY is indispensable. At the same time, we reiterate that the preparation process needs to be open, inclusive and transparent.

Necessity to work together to have updated, useful and workable commitments

Regarding the outcomes of the summit, we want the meeting to be impactful to unite all of us in mobilizing political wills towards the summit of the future, and to creat momentum to further develop our common agenda on education

We need to accelerate the progress on SDG4 by 2030, by scaling up ongoing initiatives and commitments. Commitments should reflect the changing needs on the ground, with prioritized updated clear objectives and with feasible resource mobilization and allocation in mind that make commitments a reality. In this vein, the summit should aim at strengthening, upgrading and synerging various on going efforts, for example, Education for Sustainable Development.

Japan stands ready to contribute to the Summit preparation and its follow-up, as a country that has been long active and seriously engaged in education, leveraging a wealth of ideas and networks of the Group of Friend for Education and Lifelong Learning, together with other education alliances and groups.

Thank you.