Annual Ministerial Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Least Developed Countries, 26 September 2025, 10:00-13:00
Mr. Chair
Excellencies,
The least developed countries continue to bear the brunt of a largely unequal international system. The Sustainable Development Goals and the Doha Program of Action, are not on the right track. Global commitments to redress the historical injustices suffered by LDCs have largely remained unimplemented. This reality has been exacerbated by the overlapping global crises for which our States are not responsible.
It is this grim reality that makes our meeting today both urgent and timely. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Chair for convening this important meeting.
For Eritrea, the challenges we have faced and continue to face are deeply rooted in a history of colonial exploitation and a long-standing struggle to preserve our sovereignty and independence. External threats have consistently hampered our development. The illegal unilateral sanctions have strangled our economy and limited our access to finance and technology. The repeated acts of aggression against our nation and sinister policies aimed at undermining our very existence have forced us to divert limited resources away from essential development programs toward defending our sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Beyond these external constraints, our main obstacles remain structural. After independence, Eritrea inherited a fragile economic base, underdeveloped infrastructure, and a weak system for the provision of social services, inadequate human and institutional capacities and persistent food insecurity, further exacerbated by growing climate vulnerability.
In the face of all these challenges, Eritrea has chosen a path of strategic defiance and national resilience grounded on a development model predicated on the principle of self-reliance and mobilization of our greatest asset: our people.
We have refused to rely on food aid. Instead, we have launched nationwide campaigns through large-scale projects to conserve soil and water, lay terraces, and build small, medium and large dams. Our focus has always been on empowering our farming communities to sustain themselves and to feed the nation and to lay a conducive ground for scaling up productivity and food sovereignty.
We invest heavily in education and health, and we prioritize access to basic social services, prioritizing the disadvantaged peoples in the periphery and hard to reach communities. Our network of clinics, health centers and schools, even in remote areas, is a testament to our commitment to equitable human development as the cornerstone of national progress and development. We are expanding critical infrastructure programs relying, primarily, on our national human and material resources, ensuring ownership and sustainability.
Today, Eritrea is a symbol of peace and stability in a region characterized by constant insecurity and instability. We have consistently contributed to efforts aimed at ensuring regional security, recognizing that there can be no development without peace and no peace without security.
Our national efforts to achieve sustainable development in the country are in tune with the spirit and goals of sustainable development and the Doha Program of Action. Although Eritrea has very little debt burden, we believe that the current international system, which allows for coercive measures and perpetuates the financial structures that trap countries in debt, is fundamentally incompatible with the aspirations of the Doha Program of Action and the global agenda of sustainable development goals.
Therefore, our call today must not focus merely on more aid, but on securing justice, equality and structural changes needed to address the historical imbalances and inequalities that have placed Least Developed Countries in this unacceptable and vulnerable situation. We must strengthen South-South cooperation through the sharing of appropriate and affordable technologies, know-how and expertise. And, we must also resist all efforts to weaken our collective voice and speak with a united voice to claim our rightful place in the global system.
We must also call with one voice and in solidarity for the immediate and unconditional lifting of all illegal unilateral sanctions that are crippling the economies of the targeted least developed countries.
The commitments contained in the outcome of the fourth international conference on financing for development and the long-standing commitments to provide official development assistance for LDCs must be fulfilled without further delay or precondition. Such support must be direct, predictable, and in line with our national priorities.
Above all, the international financial institutions, the development system and all relevant UN bodies must be reformed to give the least developed countries a meaningful voice that helps in accelerating the implementation of past and future pledges and commitments addressing the special situation they found themselves in.
In conclusion, Eritrea remains committed to the principles, priorities and deliverables of the Doha Programme of Action and the Sustainable Development Goals, and believes that achieving them requires a fundamental break with the failed models of the past, so that we can ensure the fulfilment of commitments, respect for national ownership, the unconditional removal of barriers to development and a genuine global partnership based on solidarity rather than charity.
Furthermore, the means of implementation and follow-up, evaluation and monitoring must be strengthened. This will allow us to deliver on promises to achieve sustainable and inclusive development that leaves no one behind.
As the midterm review of Doha Programme of Action approaches, we fully support the ministerial declaration we are adopting today, and we hope that this collective voice contributes to the achievement of the UN 80 theme “Better Together”, because only together can we achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the Doha Programme of Action.
I Thank you.
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