Ministry Statements & Speeches:
Thank you Madam President, tēnā koutou rangatira mā!
I take the floor on behalf of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and my own country, New Zealand.
First, we would like to thank the Heads of the Funds, Programmes and Entities for their rich insights. We would also like to express our sincere appreciation to the authors of the JIU Review of Governance and Oversight of the Executive Boards and underline the significance we believe this initiative should have in strengthening the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals.
We hope that better governance practice will improve efficiency, trust, and confidence in these institutions. Additionally, better governance will help us, as Member States, to better understand and support the entities to balance competing priorities in order to deliver public goods.
As the esteemed Administrator of UNDP observed, there is a real challenge for all Member States, but particularly for those of us with small Foreign Ministries and Missions, of staying abreast of the myriad activities across the UN, making it crucial to ensure that Board governance is robust without being unduly onerous. This is a key enabler of full, inclusive participation and Member States’ collective sense of ownership and responsibility for the Funds and Programmes, these pillars of global development.
We hope that coordinated reforms to Executive Board governance and oversight, assisted by the JIU recommendations, help to lighten the load on both Member States and the Funds and Programmes, by ensuring that everyone knows what will be included in reporting, where to find it, how to interpret it and what risks are entailed in any decision. We hope harmonised reporting will make it easier to identify trends across UN entities, as well as lessons, best practice and opportunities.
We recognise that expectations and practice have evolved since the governance arrangements of the Funds and Programmes were established. It is our responsibility as Member States to ensure that the discomforts of UN reform and remaining fit-for-purpose are not borne solely by UN agencies. We too have a role to play. Harmonised governance is a tangible contribution by Member States to UN reform.
We have reflected on the past failures of Executive Boards to identify or properly interrogate risks, failures which then led to the loss of public funds or insufficient measures to protect vulnerable individuals. Rightly or wrongly, any failure of this sort, in any UN agency, affects public confidence in the UN more broadly. And we know this has implications for funding and for the successful delivery of the SDGs.
We have proposed draft decision language for the Executive Boards with the goal of maintaining momentum towards reform. The impact of staff churn, both in capitals and in New York, means that any delay risks losing more institutional knowledge across Member States about previous governance errors, how they came to occur, and why we must maintain a sense of urgency in strengthening our processes.
The JIU’s recommendations are ambitious. Not all of them can be designed or implemented at pace. And it may be that not all of them are feasible. But we hope that the establishment of a cross-Board, cross-regional working group, a pragmatic workplan, and regular opportunities to report back to the Boards will deliver coherent, incremental improvements, with direct benefits for the performance of the Funds and Programmes, and for their ability to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.
Time is too short. We have an obligation - to the millions of people whose lives they save and improve – to ensure that our own processes meet the high standards we demand of the Funds and Programmes.
New Zealand and the Kingdom of the Netherlands are ready to put our shoulders to the wheel. We look forward to working with you all.
Thank you.