Madame President,

We thank you for organizing this meeting. We also thank Under-Secretary-General Griffiths and Under-Secretary-General DiCarlo for their briefings.

In addition to the loss of thousands of civilians’ lives, millions of displaced people and billions of dollars of material damage, the ongoing war in Ukraine also continues to have negative repercussions on energy prices, supply chain disruptions and global food insecurity.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative has had a stabilizing effect on the prices of grain, and contributed to global food security for almost one year.

This Initiative has allowed more than 32.8 million tons of various grain products to reach the world markets since August 2022. It helped avert a major food shortage and eased the lowest-income countries’ access to food products. The World Food Program also benefited from the reduced prices in its operations.

Therefore, the resumption of the Black Sea Initiative remains crucial as part of common efforts to fight global hunger and ensure stable food prices for consumers everywhere.

The permanent termination of the Black Sea Initiative will be harmful to the global food market. The countries that depend on the price stability provided by the Initiative will suffer the most.

Both the Black Sea Initiative and the Memorandum of Understanding between the UN and Russian Federation are crucial for the vulnerable people around the world.

This is why we need to combine our efforts and find a way to implement the two components of the deal simultaneously.

To this end, we commend the efforts of the Secretary General for the facilitation of the export of Russian food and fertilizer products. We recognize that there is still room for improvement. This also requires further steps from all relevant stakeholders.

We must be mindful that the world's most vulnerable communities depend on a compromise we would devise to revive the Initiative.

We hope that the current suspension will be temporary and the operations will be resumed as soon as possible by addressing the needs and expectations of all stakeholders. We will continue our efforts in coordination with the UN and the two sides.

In the meantime, we urge all sides to remain calm, exercise restraint and avoid taking any unilateral steps that might jeopardize prospects for the resumption of the initiative.

I thank you.