ISLAMABAD, 23 Oct  –  The European Union congratulates the United Nations on its 75^th anniversary and recognizes its tremendous achievements in a number of areas – including conflict prevention and resolution, development cooperation and humanitarian assistance.

The EU is a strong supporter of multilaterism and believes that multilateral cooperation is key to sustainable peace, respect for human rights and development.

“In an increasingly complex world and amid more pressing global challenges – such as the COVID pandemic and climate change – there is an urgent need to work together to come up with joint responses. The UN is a unique platform for bringing together the international community to provide global responses to global problems,” said European Union Ambassador to Pakistan, Androulla Kaminara.

The EU and its Member States are the largest financial donors to the UN system, providing almost a quarter of all financial contributions to the UN’s funds and programmes – for humanitarian support, fighting climate change, upholding human rights and conflict prevention and resolution.

In Pakistan, the EU and a number of UN agencies – including FAO, UNICEF, ILO, UNHCR and UNODC – continue to work together to implement projects in a number of areas such as education, food security, environment, counter-terrorism and short and medium term response to COVID-19. This partnership accounts for EUR 172 million – or 30 percent of the EU’s total development portfolio in Pakistan. (For more details, see attached factsheet.)