Your Excellency, President. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt

Ladies and gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to congratulate you, your Excellency, and the report team for the launch today of the Egypt Human Development Report 2021 “Development, a Right for All: Egypt’s Pathways and Prospects”, the twelfth report in the Egypt HDR series which began in 1994.

After a break of ten years, today’s report re-confirms Egypt's commitment to a path, that puts people at the center of development, in tandem with the human development concept that the United Nations Human Development Report has ascertained globally for 30 years.

The report examines a critical period in Egypt’s modern history that witnessed fundamental transformations, beginning with the revolutions of 25 January 2011 and in 2013 followed by the adoption of a new constitution in 2014.

In 2016, Egypt embarked on a bold national program for economic and social reform, which succeeded in achieving macroeconomic stability and promoting confidence in the economy. Hence, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the global economy in 2020, Egypt was one of the few countries globally that still achieved positive economic growth.

The report attests to huge strides in key areas such as education, health and adequate housing during this process. Egypt transformed and expanded its social security systems through conditional cash transfers with better targeting to include 3.8 million households in 2021. Egypt also renewed its strong commitment to consolidating the role of women as an effective, equal, and indispensable partner in achieving sustainable human development.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Your Excellency, Mr. President, for your strong support to enable Egyptian women’s equal participation in political, economic, and social spheres, and to strengthen measures that protect women from threats, such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), harassment, or infringement of their inheritance rights. Your Excellency’s belief in women’s full participation has been the cornerstone of the development process, that will strengthen and sustain Egypt in the decades to come.

Egypt also paid great attention to preserving its vital environmental assets and worked on reforming its comprehensive energy system, shifting to more renewable sources.

Looking ahead, the report highlights important areas of focus that can strengthen pursuit to guarantee the right to development to all its people, in line with Egypt’s Vision 2030 Development Strategy, which is fully aligned with the globally agreed Agenda 203o for Sustainable Development, and with the African Union's Agenda 2063. These include:

• Increasing financing for development;
• Improving the development information base for better planning;
• Expanding and accelerating digital transformation—to improve the delivery of public services and financial transactions; and
• Developing capacities and enhancing efficiency of executive institutions responsible for the provision of public services.

I seize this opportunity to congratulate Her Excellency Dr. Hala El -Said for her able management of the process of preparing this report, and as well to Dr. Maya Morsy, for her great effort in coordinating the work on the report, and the report core team on the richness of data and analyses of the report.

I am pleased to announce that we’ve agreed with the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development to develop a joint programme aiming to implement the proposed mechanisms in the Egypt Human Development Report 2021 are ongoing.

Finally, after five years of serving at the hem of UNDP in Egypt, my term of office is nearing its end, and I would like to record my sincere feelings of love and appreciation for Egypt, its leadership, and its great people.

I have been honoured to be given this opportunity to serve in this great country and work closely alongside many committed, highly qualified and effective executive teams.

My experience traveling throughout Egypt has deepened my long admiration for its history, culture and beautiful natural landscapes. Most of all, I have been blessed with the welcoming hospitality and the warmth of the good people of Egypt, which embodied for me the saying that "Egypt is the mother of all world."

Indeed “Masr-um-el-dunia”!