DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL, IN REMARKS TO NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION, HAILS CIVIL

SOCIETY COALITIONS AS ESSENTIAL PARTNERS, NATURAL ALLIES OF UNITED NATIONS

Following is the text of UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro’s remarks to InterAction, as delivered in Washington, D.C., today, 14 December:

I am pleased to join you today.  I welcome this opportunity to exchange views with you on an issue of crucial importance to our two organizations -- the United Nations development and humanitarian work over the coming year and beyond. 

At the outset, let me say that civil society organizations and NGO coalitions such as InterAction are essential partners and natural allies of the United Nations. 

You bring outstanding outreach capacity, with the strong advocacy skills needed to mobilize citizens in support of issues on the UN's agenda.  Your organizations are among the largest on the ground in many crises, and your staff often work under difficult and dangerous conditions.  You play a critical role on the frontlines of our shared struggle to provide life-saving assistance to civilians affected by conflicts and natural disasters.  And you bring precious financial and other resources to our work for peace and human dignity.

InterAction, with your 165 member organizations working across the developing world, is a particularly important partner of the United Nations system.  Your strategic priorities are very much aligned with the UN’s own development and humanitarian mission.  And you are a key participant in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee -- the primary mechanism for coordinating humanitarian assistance among UN and non-UN partners.  I pay tribute to your dedication and your hard work to alleviate human suffering around the world.

Today, improving the way the UN responds to emergencies -- and the way we work with partners -- is one of our top priorities.  In 2005, we initiated a reform process to ensure that, for each and every emergency, we are able to meet the needs of its victims -- in health, in protection, in water and sanitation and in other essential areas.  We must reduce the gaps in our response.  We must bring more accountability, more order, and more predictability to the process.  And we must forge stronger partnerships with Governments and with national organizations on the ground.

Two years on, I think we have made considerable progress in improving the way we work.  For example, in the past, whenever an emergency occurred, the humanitarian community would scramble to find the resources to respond.  These often came too little, too late.  That is now changing, thanks in large part to the launching last year of the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

CERF allows donors to pre-position funding so that aid workers can jump-start humanitarian operations and rapidly deliver relief to victims during the first phase of an emergency.  That is when most lives are at stake.  CERF also provides assistance to underfunded “forgotten emergencies”.  Since its inception, CERF has contributed to saving the lives and livelihoods of millions of people -- in Bangladesh, Peru, Darfur, the Dominican Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in many other places.  CERF exemplifies the UN at its most effective, delivering real results on the ground, wherever and whenever it matters most.

The Cluster Approach is another aspect of the humanitarian reform package that deserves a mention.  Endorsed by IASC in 2005, the Approach ensures that there is a clear lead organization in each thematic sector, and in each country.  It helps avoid gaps and duplication in our assistance efforts and promotes a more integrated response.  And it makes the international humanitarian community a better partner for host Governments.  As a former Minister of Community Development, Gender and Children in my home country of Tanzania, I can personally attest to the importance of avoiding situations where Governments have to deal with a multitude of uncoordinated international actors on the ground.

The Cluster Approach is not a new idea -- in previous years, we called it “sector co-ordination”.  The real value is that it makes us all more responsible and accountable to our partners and, more importantly, to the beneficiaries of our assistance programmes.  But, it is not just about improving predictability, partnership and coordination at the country level.  It is also about building up a global humanitarian response capacity, particularly in areas where we often saw gaps in the past.

Thanks to generous donor contributions managed by designated “global cluster leads”, we now have a mechanism that Governments and humanitarian organizations can use to complement their own responses in the event of a large-scale emergency.  It provides them with access to globally-managed emergency stockpiles, rosters of trained experts in different fields and other resources.

Still, we all recognize that this is a work in progress.  Much more needs to be done to improve our humanitarian response.  And the demandsfor more timely, effective and equitable emergency assistance will only continue to grow due to a combination of factors -- the increasingly visible effects of climate change, rapid population growth in vulnerable areas, increasing competition for scarce resources, and the threat of pandemic diseases.

That is why it is more important than ever that we all work together to meet the needs of the populations we serve.  I welcome the creation of the Global Humanitarian Platform, which met for the first time this July, bringing together representatives from some 40 NGOs, UN agencies and other partners to explore ways of enhancing the effectiveness of our humanitarian action.  Its establishment is an explicit recognition of the need to strengthen the relationship between UN and non-UN actors, as equal partners.  Central to this effort is the belief that common purpose and collaboration are essential to ensure that the impact of our effort is greater than the sum of its parts.

Responding to emergencies is not only essential in its own right.  It is also intimately connected to our work to reach the Millennium Development Goals -- agreed by all the world’s Governments as our common blueprint for creating a better world in the twenty-first century.  In many of the countries in which we work, emergency relief is often the first rung on the ladder of development.  By providing immediate, life-saving assistance at the earliest stages of a crisis, humanitarian action provides a platform for future efforts aimed at reducing poverty, improving health and education, and reaching the other MDGs.

That is why I also wish to commend InterAction for the important contributions you and your member organizations are making towards achieving the MDGs.  NGOs such as yours are key actors in fostering development and combating poverty.  You are critical partners in our collective efforts to achieve all the MDGs -- by helping to improve health services, by empowering communities and combating gender discrimination, and by promoting literacy and food security, for example.

As you know, we are now at the midpoint to the target date of 2015 to reach the MDGs.  The results are mixed.  The good news is that, globally, if current trends are sustained, the target of reducing poverty by half will be met for the world as a whole, and for most regions.  The bad news is that progress towards the MDGs has been slow in some of the world's poorest countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa.

This week, at the UN General Assembly’s High-Level Plenary on follow-up to the 2002 Special Session on Children, we heard examples of the important progress achieved thus far:  fewer children under five years of age are dying each year; more children are in school today than ever before, especially girls; and HIV prevalence is declining in many sub-Saharan countries. 

But we also heard how much further we need to go:  some 9.7 million children still die before their fifth birthday every year, mostly from preventable diseases.  Nearly 900 million children lack access to basic sanitation facilities.  And over one million boys and girls are caught in the sex trade.

If we are to win the race to our shared development objectives by 2015, we need a strong and sustained effort by developing and developed countries alike.  In this common endeavour, the global partnership for development and the principles embodied in the Monterrey Consensus remain central.  Strong and transparent Government leadership in developing countries, together with good policies and practical MDG-based national development strategies, are essential.

Equally essential is adequate support from the international community.  Developed countries have pledged to increase development assistance flows and debt relief.  Unfortunately, many have fallen short on their commitments.  They must do more to meet their promises and ensure sufficient and predictable resources for financing development.  Similarly, developing countries need to have access to open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory trading and financial systems.

There is no time to waste.  We must act now, with renewed vigour and determination.  Towards that end, the Secretary-General and I, together with the UN system as a whole, are working on a number of fronts.

Earlier this year, the Secretary-General launched the Millennium Development Goals Africa Steering and Working Groups.  The aim is to help mobilize the full resources of the UN system and its multilateral and regional partners in support of achieving the Goals in Africa.

Moreover, the Secretary-General and I seize every opportunity to actively advocate for more political and financial resources in support of the MDGs -- in our encounters with world leaders, at high-level international meetings, with the help of the media and civil society, and in our discussions with friends and allies such as all of you in this room.

We are also committed to strengthening the capacity of the UN system to improve the delivery and coherence of development programmes at the country level, in support of national efforts to achieve the MDGs.

Coherence demands not only that UN agencies work better together, but also that all stakeholders -- Member States, international organizations, the private sector and civil society in its broadest sense -- work ever more closely together in pursuit of our shared objectives.  That is why your engagement, support and cooperation are so crucial.

Given the increasing challenges we face -- not only in the humanitarian and development spheres, but also in the interlinked efforts to promote peace, security and human rights -- we must keep asking ourselves how we can all work better together.

I would therefore like to conclude my remarks today by seeking your views and your suggestions on that central question:  how can we strengthen our already productive partnerships to better serve the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations?  And what more can we do -- together -- to build a safer, more prosperous and more equitable world for all, as envisioned in the Millennium Declaration?

For our part, I assure you that the entire United Nations system is committed to do its utmost to turn that vision into reality.

I will now be happy to take some of your questions and to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Thank you for your kind attention.

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For information media • not an official record