Thank you Mr. President and thank you Mr. Administrator for your well thought through, and at the same time thought provoking, introduction. I, like others, would also like to congratulate you Mr. President and the members of the Bureau upon your election and wish you every success. The Netherlands is and remains committed to UNDP and their work. This is exemplified by the recent substantial increase of our contribution and the fact that we made our contribution multi-annual. We hope other donors will consider following suite because predictability of resources is important for the efficient functioning of UNDP.

We welcome the recent appointments in the senior staff. We are particularly proud and pleased with the nomination of my fellow country-man and friend Mr. Ad Melkert as Associate Administrator. I also welcome the three new regional directors to the senior management team of UNDP. They are all excellent appointments. We are looking forward to working closely with all of them. At the same time I would also like to thank whole heartedly Mr. Diabré and the outgoing regional directors for their outstanding contribution to the work of UNDP and to global development more generally.

In this brief statement, I would like to touch upon four issues: human rights, gender, UN reform, and transition.

First on human rights.

The Netherlands attaches great importance to the human rights based approach and encourages UNDP to continue its efforts to mainstream human rights in its operations. UNDP has already gained considerable experience in applying the human rights based approach. The challenge now is to move towards a more institutionalised approach. We would welcome the system-wide integration of human rights in the work of UNDP, as well as the inclusion in the accountability systems. We propose to put this issue on the agenda of one of the next Board meetings and invite the Secretariat to submit a paper to the Board on the human rights based approach and on human rights mainstreaming within the organisation.

On the gender issue.

The Netherlands greatly appreciates your personal involvement with and commitment to gender mainstreaming. Personal commitment of senior management is essential if gender equality is to become a reality. We welcome the concrete measures you have announced just now and also the gender event, which I had the pleasure to attend yesterday. We will reserve our more detailed comments on this issue for after lunch.

 On UN-reforms it is clear to us all that the UN Summit concluded that the management and coordination of the United Nations operational activities need further strengthening. It is our strong opinion that the system needs to be considerably simplified to make the UN a more results-oriented, financially stronger, more effective and more efficient player in the global aid architecture. I feel that we all share a sense of urgency and a genuine concern that the UN should become a more effective and efficient partner in assisting countries to reach the MDG’s. In this context we welcome the study the Secretary General has commissioned on system-wide coherence in the areas of humanitarian assistance, the environment and development. I am pleased to note the strong commitment of the Administrator personally to UN reform. We expect UNDP to fully engage itself in this process for wide-ranging and courageous UN-reform. I support the idea of putting benchmarks, as e.g. proposed by Ambassador Thomson of the UK.

Lastly on transition we are aware that the international community has been grappling for years with the issue of transition from relief to development. UNDP has the lead within the UN system regarding planning for early recovery. It is clear that improvements are required in the ways in which the United Nations system and UNDP in particular support a comprehensive and integrated approach to post disaster assistance, early recovery and longer-term development at the field level. There is a need to provide coordination support capacity to the Resident Coordinator system in transition situations. Sudan is a case in point where we feel that UNDP should do a better job in developing a comprehensive and integrated approach. But also at HQ-level changes are required. Transition concerns need to be mainstreamed. Different skills and competencies from staff are required. We request the Secretariat to submit a report to the Board on how UNDP implements its lead role within the UN system in planning for early recovery.

In closing, Mr. President, UNDP is facing a number of important challenges. Your statement, Mr. Dervis, inspires confidence that you and UNDP as a whole here and in the field will live up to the development challenges. You can count on our support in doing so.