Remarks from the Director of UNOOSA, Aarti Holla-Maini, on joint declaration with the Commonwealth Secretariat on 12 June 2025 at Marlborough House, London.
It is my distinct honour to be here today as we commit, together with the Commonwealth, to a partnership that will reach across continents and indeed across orbits.
Your Excellency Madam Secretary-General Botchwey, we met for the first time less than an hour ago so I would like to start by introducing UNOOSA to you and to all those here today.
Excellencies, distinguished guests, I joined the UN a year and 9 months ago, after 26 years in the satellite industry, 19 of which I spent reporting to a very demanding Board comprised of Chief Executives from the world’s satellite operators. That is a very different world that demands efficiency, impact, and results - principles I carry forward in my work at the United Nations and also require from my team.
Signing today’s Joint Declaration is therefore more than a signature ceremony; it is a responsibility that UNOOSA willingly assumes and a commitment to bringing impact to the Commonwealth nations, large and small, land-locked and ocean-bound, developed and developing alike.
Harsh realities are hitting countries all around the globe. The climate crisis is a reality of stronger cyclones, bleaching reefs, and vanishing coastlines. Small Island Developing States—many of them Commonwealth members—are navigating an existential battle against rising seas.
At the same time, deserts are expanding, harvests are declining, and floods are erasing years of hard-won development progress. These cascading impacts widen existing divides—be they social, economic, educational, health-related, geographic, or digital. Science tells us that these risks will grow, but science—especially space science—also equips us to respond and bridge the data and digital divides.
Earth-observation satellites track every fire scar, every heatwave and every chlorophyll bloom in near-real time. Satellite navigation systems guide relief convoys when roads are washed away. Communications satellites open lifelines to remote classrooms, clinics, and markets that terrestrial infrastructure will never reach. These technologies are not abstract—they are already saving lives & shaping futures.
UNOOSA’s mandate is precisely to democratise these benefits, to ensure all countries can harness space solutions for sustainable development and humanitarian action. The Commonwealth Secretariat’s vision—to support its diverse family of nations on issues from climate finance to ocean stewardship—complements our mission perfectly. Between us we have both the technical toolkit and the diplomatic reach to make a measurable difference where it is needed most.
The pillars of our collaboration, from space sustainability to education for all; from ocean conservation to food security; from space law to climate resilience – all align seamlessly with ongoing Commonwealth initiatives—from the Climate Finance Access Hub to the Living Lands Charter and the Blue Charter, as well as with UNOOSA flagships such as UN-SPIDER, the Global Space Law Project, Space4Women, Space4Youth and the Space4Ocean Alliance being launched tomorrow at the UN Oceans Conference in Nice.
Each of these application areas demands substantial effort—and the scale of today’s challenges means that they can only be met through strong and strategic collaboration. And that is precisely how we work. As a small office, we leverage the United Nations’ greatest strength: our convening power. In conducting our technical advisory missions, be they on disaster preparedness or on space law, we bring together expertise from industry, academia, government, and civil society, to harness their collective knowledge and deliver results efficiently and effectively, leaving behind an often regional or even local network, that nation states can call upon when needed.
Madame Secretary General, UNOOSA is not here for glory, and we do not believe in isolated partnerships and silos, we are here to drive results. We can only do that together and many members of our network are here with us today. Going forward, UNOOSA will work them to fulfil our commitment to you.
- We will work with the Space Data Association to bring capacity building on space sustainability and space traffic coordination to your nations;
- We will work with space lawyers to support your member states in implementing the space treaties and the long-term space sustainability guidelines, putting space law & policy into place and even understanding what to do if debris lands on their territory;
- We will work with companies like Maxar and SpaceData to equip States with the latest GEOAI solutions based on high-resolution data to build capacity and empower them;
- We will work with the Astra Carta launched by His Majesty King Charles to elevate, enhance and scale our work across the Commonwealth;
- And we will work with you, the Commonwealth Secretariat, to ensure that every Commonwealth State has a voice in multilateral space governance by being a member of COPUOS, the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
We are currently working on a toolkit for educating children in isolated communities via satellite and we will work with Avanti Communications to enrich it with their experience of connecting 245 schools across remote Kenya. By giving children online access to just 1 hour of maths quizzes per week, this satellite operator has been increasing the learning age of children by 18 months over the course of a single year - they have been doing it for over 10 years and they didn’t need 100 mbps or 1000s of satellites to do so.
Excellencies, colleagues, sustainable development is possible now, it does not have to be a stretch target and we do not need to wait for the next technological breakthrough. What we need is political will, commitment, collaboration, and a sincere human-centred determination to lift people out of poverty, protect our planet, and ensure that opportunity and dignity are within everyone’s reach.
Today’s signing is the beginning. I invite every Commonwealth Member State to engage actively: identify pressing challenges, nominate experts to participate for capacity-building workshops, share success stories, and—most importantly—hold us accountable for tangible outcomes. Let the metrics we celebrate be farmers reached with drought advisories, schools and villages connected to broadband, and youth-led start-ups that transform raw satellite pixels into prosperity and progress.
Madame Secretary General, I hope you do not think these are just words around a countless number of topics. They are not. We are the space office of the UN, and this is what we do.
Before coming here today, I made sure that our collaboration was already moving from concept to reality, starting with your home country Ghana. Next week, UNOOSA space law & policy experts, together with experts from Europe and Africa, will be flying to Ghana to conduct a first Technical Advisory Mission on Space Law.
But over the last month, my excellent team has been working with our generous partners Maxar Technologies and Space Data from Japan and HE Matilda Osei-Agyeman, the Ghanaian Ambassador to the UN in Vienna, on a special gift to you - a digital twin of Accra. We will follow up this work with capacity-building with your space agency and your National Disaster Management Authority.
Your Excellency, I hope you will showcase these initiatives taken for your own country amongst the Commonwealth family as a testimony to our joint commitment to making a difference for Commonwealth States. I thank you for your vision and your resolve in allowing us to make this Joint Declaration together, despite us never having met before. I would like to close with a short video of our gift, which was kindly narrated by HE Matilda Osei-Agyeman in Vienna.
