On 24 October, Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova met on 24 October with participants of the 3rd Sustainable Development Goals Dialogue, themed The Results of the Global SDGs Summit 2023 and the Role of Supreme Financial Control Bodies in the Implementation of the SDGs and held in Baku.

Saying that she was glad to greet the guests on behalf of the Parliament of Azerbaijan, Mrs Gafarova underscored the relevance of the topic of the event in Baku: it deals with the role of supreme audit bodies in achieving the SDGs. This assembly, Mrs Gafarova continued, was bound to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and to strengthening co-operation amongst audit bodies alike. According to the Milli Majlis Speaker, the modern world encounters many problems and faces many challenges, which poses serious difficulties for countries. In this sense, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs, adopted under the aegis of the UN in 2015, are the tremendous means designed to ensure countries’ steady socio-economic development and implementing a systemic approach to solving what problems countries encounter.

Madam Speaker went further to say that Azerbaijan, too, is consistent on a course charted by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Suffice to say, Azerbaijan was the first in her region and the 12^th in the world to submit three Voluntary National Reviews to the UN. Besides, the national legislature is amending the legislation as needed to ensure that the SDGs be achieved.

The dialogue-format co-operation amongst audit bodies arranged in Baku is especially relevant to ensuring purposeful expenditure of public funds on achieving the SDGs as well as on enhancing transparency and ensuring accountability, in the opinion of Mrs Gafarova.

The speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament also praised the activities of the Chamber of Accounts of Azerbaijan and its co-operation with the Parliament. The Chamber of Accounts’ engagement in the budgeting process as a supreme audit body submitting annual reports to the Milli Majlis, acting constantly and executing external state financial control constitutes a special field of interaction between the Chamber and the Milli Majlis, according to Sahiba Gafarova.

Our country liberated her territories from the 30-decades-long Armenian occupation and is now busy carrying out a large amount of work restoring and rebuilding them. The ‘smart’ town and village projects are afoot. A third airport’s construction is nearing completion in those lands. This process is closely connected to the progress towards the SDGs as well, with the Chamber of Accounts having a great task to discharge in this respect.

Sahiba Gafarova went further to say that Armenia had planted more than 1 million mines in those territories during the 30 years, which hinders the current work dramatically. The explosions of those mines take human lives. Azerbaijan offered Armenia to sign a peace treaty but to no avail as yet. Still, we do believe that the signing of such a treaty will influence the progress of the South Caucasus as a whole, Mrs Gafarova said.

The chairs of the Chambers of Accounts of Türkiye, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil and Belarus said they were glad to be in Azerbaijan. Metin Yener, Almazbek Akmatov, Walton Alencar Rodrigues and Dmitry Basko also thanked the Azerbaijani side for the high-standard arrangement and conduct of the 3^rd SDGs Dialogue. They said that the conclusions drawn from such gatherings as well as exchange of experience are extremely useful for the audit bodies’ eventual work. Besides, the guests congratulated the Azerbaijani side on the 100^th anniversary of the Grand Leader Heydar Aliyev celebrated in the country this year.

Then, the meeting participants expressed their appreciation of the meeting’s organisation to Chairman of the Chamber of Accounts of the Republic of Azerbaijan Vugar Gulmammadov and said they trusted that the event held in Baku was going to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.

The Press and Public Relations Department

The Milli Majlis