Speaker: Nikhil Seth
United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, Executive Director, UNITAR

Moderator: Zhu Xufeng
Professor and Associate Dean, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University

Time: Friday, March 02, 2018    16:00-17:00 PM

Venue: Room 620, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University

Lecture Synopsis:
The challenges in implementing the 2030 Agenda can only be met with a significant increase in capacities, particularly in the 91 countries in special situations. At the heart of the 2030 Agenda is the promise to reach the furthest first whilst leaving no one behind. Over two years since the historic adoption of the goals and targets contained in the Agenda, the question is now how to translate these commitments to the lives and livelihoods of people in countries which are most severely distressed.

Capacity needs exists across various sectoral areas, e.g. health, education, water, energy, infrastructure, sustainable agriculture, cities and security sector reform, and in cross cutting areas especially in planning, budgeting, statistics and data, technology cooperation, assistance in raising financial resources, and in strengthening partnerships and multistakeholder engagement.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is committed to strengthening meaningful platforms for multistakeholder engagement and to delivering training to ensure that Governments, private sector, civil society and other key actors have the knowledge, skills and resources needed to deliver holistically on the integrated nature of the Agenda.

With the partnership and expertise of the Tsinghua University SDG Institute and the University of Geneva, hand-in-hand with the Government of the People’s Republic of China, I look forward to encouraging curricula that serve the needs of countries in special situations as well as provide a training platform for China, particularly in the context of the One Belt One Road Initiative; the size and scope of which presents a multitude of opportunities for sustainable development and progress across the 2030 Agenda. 

Speaker Biography:
On 8 June 2015, Mr. Nikhil Seth was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as UN Assistant Secretary-General, Executive Director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Before assuming the post of the UNITAR Executive Director, Nikhil Seth was the Director of the Division for Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. In this role he served as head of the Rio+20 secretariat and of the secretariat for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States, spearheading the preparations for these conferences in Rio, Brazil, and Apia, Samoa. He was also closely engaged in coordinating and advancing their follow-up. Mr. Seth’s Division was also responsible for supporting the intergovernmental negotiations for the post-2015 development agenda, which was adopted at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015 in September 2015.