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Excellencies Head of States and Head
of Governments;
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Excellency Hak Ja Han Moon, Co-Founder
of Universal Peace Federation;
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Excellency Ban Ki-moon, Former
Secretary General of the United Nations;
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Excellency Jose de Venecia,
Co-chairman of the ICAPP;
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Dr. Thomas G. Walsh, Chairman of the
Universal Peace Federation;
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Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen!
Today,
I am honored and delighted to join the “World Summit
General Assembly: Centenary General Assembly and International Summit Council
for Peace”. At the outset, on behalf of the Royal
Government of Cambodia (RGC), I would like to express
profound
gratitude to the people and the government of the Republic of Korea and
Universal Peace Federation for the warm welcome and hospitality extended to me
and Cambodia’s delegation.
This
World Summit is an important forum, providing a rare opportunity for both
government and non-government leaders from all corners to discuss and exchange views
on the development of regional and global situations, with the aim of resolving
common challenges so as to maintain peace, security and ensure sustainable
human development for the world. Furthermore, the theme of this forum “Peace,
Security and Human Development” is relevant and important
while all nations around the world are currently facing with a wide range of challenges
threatening peace, economic growth, prosperity and harmony of the people in the
world.
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Certainly, peace is the
foundation for development. But
now
global peace remains rather fragile as the world is moving toward a new
multi-polar framework with competing interests and rebalancing of global power.
For instance, the world is facing with severe and potentially protracted
trade-war that are creating economic risks and negatively impacting medium-term
economic growth as well as overall socio-economic development.
In recent years,
climate change has also become a huge risk threatening the development and
security of humankind. Global warming, rising sea level, loss of biodiversity
and natural resources, bigger and more frequent natural disasters as well as dry-up
of main water sources one after another, have become topic for which many
countries are hotly debating about, and are
likely to be a cause of dispute between countries in the future.
By and large, all these issues have
become concerns, created uncertainty and deteriorated mutual trust in our cooperation
as well as damaging sustainability of regional and global development. In this
context, we must firmly uphold an inclusive and comprehensive approach to
address all these challenges by building mutual trust and confidence, so as to
ensure peace and sustainable human development in the region and the globe, and
more importantly to unlock full potential of the world so as to become a truly
prosperous one.
Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen!
For Cambodia, a country that used to experience wars and destructions, peace is definitely priceless. So far every achievement,
including the development and prosperity, that Cambodia has accomplished are the
fruitful outcomes of peace. Along with that, RGC has vividly learnt that in
order to further maintain peace, we must provide opportunities, arising from economic
development, equally to every citizen as well as develop human resources into resources
with inexhaustible potential. In this regard, since Cambodia achieved complete peace
nationwide in 1998, Royal Government of Cambodia has always placed great
importance on the development of human resource by regarding it as one of 4 main
priorities.
On this basis, Royal
Government of Cambodia has implemented in-depth reform in education sector with
the aim of enhancing the quality and expanding the coverage of educational services
so as to have productive human resources that can contribute to achieving Cambodia’s
long-term vision. To that end, Royal Government of Cambodia has substantially increased
budget for education sector. I would like to inform the summit that the budget for
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport increased more than threefold in 2018
comparing to the budget in 2013, while the total national budget increased only
twofold. This reflects the utmost
priority that government has placed on education sector. The Royal Government
of Cambodia will continue attaching high priority to education sector, and
further increase budget for this sector. The spending of this budget is mainly for
construction of school buildings, supporting school operations, improving quality
of examination at all levels, strengthening quality of New Generation Schools, enhancing
technical skills at the General and Technical High School as well as research
on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and providing scholarships
to poor students at all levels etc.
In addition, the Royal Government of
Cambodia has further improved and developed higher- education toward research
and innovation in order to strengthen the competency and skill of Cambodia’s
human resources, corresponding with the new context for development, especially
enhancing entrepreneurship for the development of startups business model. In
order to seize opportunities stemming from Fourth Industrial Revolution
and Digital Economy, the Royal Government of Cambodia has also promoted the
development of ecosystem to provide conducive environment for invention, innovation,
research and development.
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Based on these practical
experiences, and as a leader of Cambodia who has personally gone through war
and persistently sought peace for this small nation: the building and maintaining
of peace is priceless; and peace is the foundation for socio-economic
development as well as the strengthening of security and human development.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to share my view so as to make contribution
to enhancing peace, security and human development as follows:
1st. Continuing
to promote multilateral system and rule-based international orders with the aim of further strengthening and broadening
cooperation so as to fully secure peace, security, safety and stability, through
promoting close dialogues, building trust as well as resolving regional
challenges with peaceful means based on international laws.
2nd. Promoting
culture of interfaith dialogues in order to build mutual understanding, respect,
trust and tolerance, as well as strictly adhering to the principle of
non-interference with other countries’ internal affairs as meddling in others’ affairs
would always bring about destruction and disasters to the development of the
country.
3rd. Enhancing
cooperation to further promote globalization: ensure openness for cooperation
mechanism and support the multilateral trade system, especially accelerate the
connectivity between our societies and economies so as to promote the
implementation of each country development agenda and achieve sustainable and
inclusive development.
4th. Fostering
development through people-centric approach, especially for the
development and strengthening of social protection system such as the
enhancement of quality education, improvement of people well-beings, the reduction
of poverty and narrowing of development gap in accordance with steady and rapid
changes of socio-economic structure.
I firmly hope that
this World Summit 2020 will promote vigorous discussions on the situations and
challenges that the world is currently facing, especially on the issues related
to peace and human development, as well as identify viable solutions that can contribute
to building a peaceful world. Taking this opportunity, I would like to inform Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen that Cambodia will host the 13th Asia-Europe Meeting
(ASEM) under the theme “Strengthening Multilateralism for Shared Growth”,
scheduled to take place in the upcoming November 2020, with the aim of building
international consensus on the importance of multilateral framework in addressing
global challenges.
Finally, I wish the World Summit General Assembly: Centenary General Assembly
and International Summit Council for Peace great
success with fruitful outcomes; and wish Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen good
health, prosperity and success in all the endeavors.
Thanks to Peace! Peace for All – All for Peace!
Thank you!