Mr. Vice-president,
It is my honour to deliver this statement on behalf of the fourteen Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). We extend appreciation to the panelists for their presentations.

CARICOM recognises the importance of efforts to strengthen the effectiveness, coherence and delivery of the UN development system, including through a reinvigorated Resident Coordinator system. The 2026 UNSDG Chair’s report affirms how central this system is to UN development support, while identifying that rising demands are being met with declining resources. 
The Caribbean hosts four of the nine UN Multi-Country Offices globally, in addition to dedicated offices in Haiti and Guyana. Our highly vulnerable Small Island Developing States depend heavily on responsive and coordinated UN country teams, particularly as climate-related disasters intensify in frequency and severity.

Dedicated coordination capacities are crucial to facilitating coherent and integrated UN support at country-level. As such, a tailored approach to national development plans should include sustained access to strategic and specialised support on which programme countries rely.

CARICOM therefore is keenly interested in the implications of the UN80 Initiative, including proposals related to the “Regional Reset” under Workstream 3. While we support efforts to improve efficiency, reforms cannot be ‘one-size-fits-all’. Adjustments being made must not dilute in-country expertise, reduce responsiveness or undermine priorities such as climate resilience and disaster preparedness. We look forward to receiving timely information about proposed initiatives, such as the Joint Knowledge Hubs.
Mr. Vice-President,
At a time when SDG progress is alarmingly off-track and official development assistance is declining, the RC system is more citical than ever.

Reductions should be balanced with sustainable, corresponding arrangements that account for multidimensional vulnerability and resilience needs. CARICOM Foreign Ministers have emphasized that any recalibration of the UN development system must safeguard local presence, ensure predictable and sustainable financing, and prioritize delivery tailored to the unique vulnerabilities and capacity constraints of SIDS.

CARICOM will engage constructively in these discussions, with the goal of a strong and adequately resourced system to accelerate SDG implementation. 

I thank you.