Ladies and gentlemen,

It is both a pleasure and an honour to receive you all in The Hague, or, to be more precise, Scheveningen. As you will find, the UN is a very welcome presence here. I would like to extend a warm welcome to Kemal Derviş and his staff. And I also would like to extend a warm welcome to Ad Melkert. Ad, I’m sure you will do a fine job as Associate Administrator of UNDP, I wish you a lot of success. The Netherlands is a country with a long-standing tradition of multilateral engagement: in fact, our first act in development cooperation was a contribution to the UN’s Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance, later to be known as UNDP. We contributed one point five million guilders to the programme in 1949, a time when we ourselves were still recovering from war. Today, with an annual contribution of ninety million euros, as part of a multi-year commitment, the Netherlands is UNDP’s main donor: we are key partners in the ongoing struggle against poverty.

Before I begin, I’d like to take you back to the place where you usually gather for your Global Management Team Meetings: Turtle Bay, New York. I want to take you past the 191 national flags, past the large blue UN flag, into the UN garden alongside the East River. There, we find a simple monument to the victims of extreme poverty. It’s a stone engraved with the words: ‘Wherever men and women are condemned to live in extreme poverty, human rights are violated. To come together to ensure that these rights be respected is our solemn duty.

These words of Father Joseph Wresinski, a priest who dedicated his life to the poor, live on as an urgent appeal to each and every one of us. We have unfinished business to take care of – as long as we live in a world where the daily turnover on the foreign exchange markets is 1.9 trilliondollars and more than a billion people have to survive on less than a dollar a day. The urgent matter before us now is whether the UN has what it takes to wrap up that unfinished business. My answer is: not today. Maybe tomorrow. But only if all the parties involved are willing to subscribe to an agenda of radical reform. This means clearing out dead wood and combining the multitude of development agencies. Fortunately, after last year’s World Summit, there is now a window of opportunity to reform this flawed, yet vital world body.

Ladies and gentlemen, While there have been brave attempts at reform in the past, the UN often makes the mistake of measuring reforms by its own historical standards, rather than by those of the world outside its walls. That world is changing at breakneck pace. Security is not what it used to be: the power of today’s nuclear weapons is one million times greater than that of the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. And there’s the added threat that international terrorist cells could get their hands on these weapons. Sovereignty is not what it used to be: after countless shameful scenes of carnage, notably in Rwanda, the international community has finally realised that it cannot look away when sovereign governments betray their own people. Governments are not what they used to be: for the first time in history, a majority of the human race is living under democratic systems. Distance is not what it used to be: national, corporate and family relationships have been fundamentally altered by the communications revolution; in theory, the whole world is now just a mouse click away. Given all this, it is hardly surprising that development isn’t what it used to be either: on the one hand, for the first time since the industrial revolution, emerging economies last year produced more than the ‘first world’ economies. On the other hand, Sub-Saharan Africa has yet to reap the fruits of globalisation, entering the twenty-first century with a lower per capita income than at the dawn of independence in the 1960s.

In this brave new world, sustainable poverty reduction is still the most pressing issue for most UN member states. This makes ending poverty and saving our global environment the core business of the UN. In the long run, it is not security but sustainable poverty reduction that will determine whether we achieve the lofty goals enshrined in the UN Charter. A decline in economic growth rates can often spell an increasing risk of conflict. And at the same time, the global resource squeeze caused by the rise of China and India is threatening the world’s ecological and political balance. Will globalisation unite us or divide us? As far as I’m concerned, this is the major question of our time.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The UN’s ability to influence the way that question is answered depends partly on current reform efforts. The declaration to come out of last September’s summit contained good news for the world’s poor: all countries rallied around the Millennium Development Goals and pledged more and better development aid and debt cancellation. But not even six months later, the momentum for reforming the UN’s development agencies is fading fast. If delegates and international civil servants don’t soon pick up where they left off, the words of the declaration will be wasted. Right now, we have a brief window of opportunity to clean house and create a world body that can make a difference to the world’s poor.

No international organisation is indispensable. Only last year, Dutch citizens voted down the EU constitution. The public’s message for multilateral organisations is clear: prove your added value, or be sidelined. On many occasions throughout its history, the UN has found itself under threat: too many of its supporters were uncritical, and all too often its critics were unsupportive. In an interdependent world, it makes no sense to carve up international problems and divide them among thirty-eight UN organisations. The result is too little coordination and too much bureaucracy. Too little efficiency and too much overlap. Too little action and too much talk. The only rational solution, as proposed by the Secretary-General, is to select those organisational units that have proven their worth. We could reorganise them into three strong operational agencies, dealing with development, humanitarian affairs and the environment. The EU already supports the creation of a single United Nations environmental organisation. Apart from that, we would need a few global centres of excellence, which would develop norms and standards and provide a platform for international dialogue on issues like health, energy and agriculture. The WHO’s swift and successful response to the SARS outbreak a few years ago demonstrates the potential of such knowledge centres.

This vision of the UN as a three-pronged unit augmented by a few think tanks is far from where we are today, but it gives us reformists something to work towards over the coming years. In the next few years, we should focus on the UN’s effectiveness where it matters most: at country level, where you work. The public has heard too many stories of UN organisations in developing countries squabbling over money, office space and Land Rovers. And sadly, many of these stories are true. The way to solve this problem of ‘too many cooks’ is simply to assign each country a single UN team, responsible for a single UN programme. The team should work under the leadership of one UN resident coordinator selected from one of the agencies. It would be useful if they also participated in a constructive but critical dialogue with national governments. Obviously, the UN should maintain its presence in the poorest countries, since it would be counterproductive to try to be everywhere at once. At the same time, we could start the undertaking at central level by merging smaller agencies like UNIFEM, UNCDF and UNV into UNDP. While our main strategy for the advancement of such an agenda should be an open dialogue between all parties, I believe that member states should not be afraid to use the power of the purse when necessary.

Ladies and gentlemen, An ambassador once accused Secretary-General Kofi Annan of failing to reform the organisation in his first six weeks on the job, pointing out that God needed only six days to create heaven and earth. For many years, the responsibility for reform has been passed around like a hot potato, with the secretariats blaming the member states, and vice versa. It is sad to say, but member states have contributed to these problems, thanks to half-hearted support for reform and unpredictable funding. But since the World Summit, a new wind is blowing in many missions and ministries. That is why I’ve taken the initiative to write a non-paper with an ambitious reform package, which I presented to the Secretary-General yesterday. A group of thirteen major donor countries, including the Netherlands, are working together to come up with a joint input for the recently launched UN Reform Panel. Now is the time to forge a strong partnership around this agenda. Any reform effort without the US on board is dead in the water. Luckily, there is ample scope for cooperation with the Americans. For example, I fully agree with the US that transparency and accountability must remain top priorities, if the stains of the ‘oil-for-food’ debacle are to be wiped away. Countries like China, India and Brazil have been disappointingly absent from the reform debate up to now, but we have to convince them to take up their seats at the table. Much more disappointing, however, is the passive attitude of many poor countries. We should spare no effort to engage them, since their citizens will be the first to benefit from a new and improved UN.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are also certainly counting on the reform-minded forces within the UN secretariats. Reform should come from the inside as well as the outside. More specifically, I am counting on UNDP. On you. Last year, I decided to increase the Dutch contribution to UNDP because I was impressed by your leadership in creating a United Nations for the twenty-first century. UNDP is also a key player in what I see as UN niche areas: conflict prevention, democratic governance and the status of women. And not just in stable countries. In Afghanistan, for example, UNDP was the driving force behind the organisation of the elections and the disarmament of the militias. We’re all in this for the long haul, and our commitment extends to the whole of Afghanistan. This week, the Dutch parliament is debating the government’s decision to deploy troops to the southern province of Uruzgan under ISAF. With the crucial support of the United Nations, we can also put the South of Afghanistan on the path towards long-term stability and sustainable development. With respect to UN reform, I expect UNDP to continue its leadership role, developing innovative and daring proposals for the Secretary-General’s Reform Panel. The coming months will be crucial. You have the knowledge; you have the skills. We all have a formidable task ahead of us, but, in the words of an old saying: ‘You don’t ask for a light load but rather a strong back.

Ladies and gentlemen,

A few years into the twenty-first century, the UN is beset by problems that cannot be solved by mere tinkering. Without major reforms, the UN will be little more than a memorial to people living in extreme poverty, rather than their saviour from it. A keen observer once remarked, ‘If the UN’s friends don’t reform it, its enemies will.’ Well, today I’ve outlined the plans of some of your friends. To turn our good intentions into reality, we need to build a strong partnership for robust reform. I’m sure we can make it happen, it’s high time for a race to the top: a brave new world needs a brave new UN.

Thank you.