第8回人間の安全保障フレンズグループ会合における山﨑大使ステートメント

Thank you, Ambassador Seck,
 
At the outset, I would like to thank all the participants, including today’s eminent speakers. With national, regional, and global challenges becoming more complex, and human dignity being threatened in many parts of the world, the human security perspective is increasingly important. Against this backdrop, it is meaningful to strategically raise the profile of the human security approach, including by strengthening our advocacy activities.
 
To this end, we, the Co-Chairs of the Group of Friends, have launched The Human Security Award as a new initiative. The Award recognizes the achievements of specific projects implemented by UN agencies which have made significant contributions to ensuring the dignity and well-being of people through a cross-sectoral perspective. The Award aims to further spread the concept of human security by introducing good practices around the world, so that the benefits of human security can be understood by a wider audience, both within and beyond the UN system.
 
The UN Human Security Unit serves as the secretariat for this initiative, and I would like to express my deep respect for their expertise and thank them for their kind cooperation and hard work.
 
For this first year, the application process for the Award was open to all UN agencies from March 9th to April 12th, and we received over 30 nominations. The Human Security Unit is now conducting technical screening and preparing a short list of potential awardees. Later, we, the Co-Chairs of the Group of Friends, will hold consultations at an appropriate time and will select the final awardees, who will be notified of the results by the end of May. We also intend to organize an award ceremony followed by a roundtable discussion in late June or early July, hopefully with the presence of high-level representatives of the UN system. While the details of the event are still to be determined, we strongly hope that all of you will join us there. We hope this new initiative will improve the visibility of human security.
 
Before concluding, I would like to briefly touch upon the  importance of UN Trust Fund for Human Security. Japan has been the top donor to the Fund since its establishment and will continue to spare no effort to maintain the Fund's activities at an appropriate level. For this year, the Government of Japan has been able to commit to disbursing approximately $9.2 million to the Fund. But it is clear that the Fund needs to expand its donor base, and in that respect, we are pleased that Italy and Thailand have made concrete financial contributions in recent years. We sincerely hope that the circle of political and financial support to human security will continue to expand as much as possible.
 
Thank you.