Good afternoon esteemed colleagues and distinguished guests,  

It is my great honour to welcome you to this high-level panel on Financing Resilience: Investing in Early Recovery for Long-Term Resilience.  

Today’s development landscape is shaped by poly-crises: conflict, climate extremes, economic volatility, and forced displacement – all converging with increasing speed and intensity. Crises are not only more frequent but more complex, overlapping and compounding each other in ways that challenge traditional financing approaches.  

Yet resources still flow to two extremes: life-saving humanitarian relief at one end, and long-term development programming at the other. The crucial ‘missing middle’ – early recovery and resilience financing that restores essential services, supports local governance systems, rebuilds critical infrastructure, restarts economic activity – remains chronically underfunded.  

Nearly 300 million people required humanitarian assistance in 2024, with 120 million forcibly displaced.  Despite this pressing need, humanitarian appeals are often largely unmet – only 43 percent of humanitarian financing needs were met in 2023. The Early Recovery sector received just 19 percent of required resources. Without early recovery investment, crises trap communities in poverty and aid dependency.   

With development cooperation under strain, the answer lies in unlocking private investment to bolster crisis recovery and to building resilience. However, the perceived risks of investing in fragile and crisis-affected contexts prevents this from happening.  On average, foreign direct investment inflows are 10 times lower in fragile and crisis-affected contexts than in other development settings.  

Capital hesitates and governments are left without the fiscal space or financial tools to invest in recovery. But if this financing gap is not closed, countries risk becoming trapped in a permanent crisis cycle, responding to shocks rather than building resilience to them. 

Addressing the ‘missing middle’ in financing is a development and peace imperative. Without timely, predictable and catalytic finance for early recovery and resilience, transitions from crisis to sustainable development will remain elusive.  

UNDP and UNCDF are joining forces to break this cycle of fragile and crisis.    

UNDP brings nation-wide policy engagement, crisis-sensitive programming, and deep field presence. We help governments to create enabling environments and address institutional and regulatory barriers to investment.   

UNCDF directly deploys financial instruments and catalytic capital to private sector, financial intermediaries, and governments to de-risk investments and mobilize additional public and private resources – both domestic and international. Through its investment mandate, UNCDF uses blended finance structures, such as first-loss capital, guarantees, and concessional loans, to mobilize public and private capital in high-impact initiatives, particularly in frontier and last-mile markets.   

Working side-by-side, our organisations have already delivered results in Afghanistan, Somalia, Papua New Guinea, and beyond.   

In Afghanistan, UNCDF worked on digital financial infrastructure, such as the national payment switch and interoperable systems, while UNDP supported policy coordination and crisis-responsive governance. This collaboration aimed to enhance financial sector resilience amid severe economic and institutional stress.  

In Somalia, UNDP and UNCDF partnered to strengthen Somalia’s financial ecosystem by supporting MSME access to finance. UNDP worked on policy reform and capacity-building for financial institutions, while UNCDF deployed catalytic capital to de-risk lending to small businesses, particularly those led by women and youth.  

Leveraging their complementary strengths, the two organizations will deploy integrated financing solutions to deliver rapid crisis response, support early recovery, and build the basis for long-term resilience through the joint ReStart Fund.   

Using a flexible, rapid, and risk-informed architecture, the ReStart Fund enables countries affected by crisis to access timely and tailored financing to stabilize institutions, support recovery, and re-ignite economic activity. The Fund offers a continuum of support – from initial recovery grants to catalytic capital for longer-term investments – allowing countries to respond to urgent needs while laying the groundwork for sustainable development.  

By investing early and strategically, the Fund seeks to accelerate the transition from crisis to opportunity. It is a tangible expression of our shared commitment to deliver financing that is fit for the future: timely, catalytic, and responsive to the realities of crisis-affected countries.  

This Fund is not just a UNDP or UNCDF initiative. It is a mechanism for collective action – a space for governments, development banks, philanthropic institutions, and the private sector to come together and direct financing where it is most needed and most impactful.  

It is important to highlight that the Fund does not exist in isolation. It is one of the key initiatives under the Recovery and Resilience Financing Platform, a Seville Platform of Action initiative launched earlier today by Spain and UNDP, with UNCDF as an endorsing partner.   

The Recovery & Resilience Financing Platform will bring together partners and initiatives to provide tailored and coordinated support to country-led efforts to access new sources of public and private finance for recovery and resilience.   

It has been endorsed by the African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the European Development Finance Institutions, the g7+, UNCDF, UNCCD, One Earth Future and Meridiam.   

While the Platform will support global advocacy, joint learning, and the co-designing of crisis-responsive financing instruments, initiatives like the ReStart Fund will implement financing solutions on the ground.   

We invite you to join us. To invest not just in recovery, but in the people, institutions, and economies that make recovery possible. To support a new model of financing that bridges the gap between crisis and development.  

In a world of uncertainty, recovery and resilience cannot wait. Let us work together to reimagine development and shift from a mindset of assistance to investment.    

Thank you all.