Interactive Dialogue with Professor Olivier De Schutter
Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights
Statement by the Delegation of the United States of America
Delivered by Oliver Osuna Hernandez
Human Rights Council – 53rd Session
Thank you Madam Vice President and thank you Special Rapporteur De Schutter for your efforts to end extreme poverty.
The United States remains committed to addressing the global causes of inequality. This includes the effects of climate change, which affect communities’ livelihoods and increase the threats of food insecurity.
The United States is working with its Congress to scale-up our international public climate finance to more than $11 billion a year to help lower-income countries implement ambitious climate goals and build resilience. This includes a six-fold increase in U.S. adaptation finance to more than $3 billion per year under the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience. More than 100 member states have supported the “Call to Action: a roadmap for global food security” that the United States introduced.
The United States has worked hard in recent years to increase economic security by bringing our unemployment rate down to 3.4 percent, the lowest in half a century. We are experiencing record or near-record lows for Hispanic and Black unemployment and for child poverty. Even compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, American workers are now more likely to have health insurance and better able to pay their bills.
Mr. Special Rapporteur, how can governments accelerate poverty alleviation efforts as they address climate change?
I thank you.
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