Mme. President,

Distinguished Delegates,

It is with a sense of excitement, but also humility, that I come to this first session of the Executive Board of 2005, which is also the first session in my second term as Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

This year the eyes of the world will be upon us – to see how our common response to the Millennium Declaration will rise to their yearnings for human security, human rights and dignity. Our work in this Board, and in the field, will be a major part of that response and we cannot, we dare not, fail them.

The year 2005 will be a period of review – not only of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but also of the Beijing Platform for Action and its related quest for the advancement of women, and the global commitment and response to HIV/AIDS.

UNFPA is committed to making this year of review a year of renewal — renewal of the tremendous trust placed in us to advance human rights and human well-being. As we seek to rise to the challenges ahead this year, leadership by this Board will be as critical as ever. I am, therefore, pleased to congratulate you, Mme. President, as well as the members of your bureau, on your election. On behalf of my colleagues, I also welcome the new members that have joined the Board. We very much look forward to working closely with you in the year ahead, and I pledge to you our full support and cooperation.

I would also like to thank members of the outgoing bureau for their excellent contributions over the past year and for the able manner in which they guided the work of the Board. Under the able leadership of Ambassador Abdullah Alsaidi, Permanent Representative of Yemen, in his capacity as President of the Board, UNFPA and I personally received strong support from the Board and its bureau and I am most grateful to all of you.

I would like to take this opportunity to inform the Board of the retirement of Cecile Cuffley, Chief of my office, after decades of unstinting commitment to UNFPA. I honour her service and her great sense of professionalism. I am also pleased to introduce to the Board her successor, Bjorn Andersson, whom many of you know already from his days on this Board.

Mme. President,

Almost one month ago, the world was shocked by the unimaginable scale of the disaster unleashed by the tsunami, especially in southern Asia and, to a lesser extent, in Africa and the human tragedy it has left in its wake. The shock and sorrow have only grown as the death toll continues to climb. I would like to express our deepest sympathy to all the countries that were affected by the disaster, including those that lost citizens. Our heartfelt condolences go to the families across the world whose loved ones perished in the disaster. Beyond sorrow, we all know that action had to be taken, and quite rapidly. Right at the beginning, UNFPA joined with others in the United Nations system to mobilize the necessary resources to assist the countries and victims affected.

I would like to repeat to all of you what Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, recently told me while on our way from Geneva after a ministerial consolidated appeal. He said, "I am very happy to report to you that your country offices were on board very rapidly and that they are doing a great and visible job in the countries of the tsunami tragedy. You should be proud."

We are committed to keeping tsunami survivors alive and supporting their efforts to recover. Of particular concern are more than 150,000 pregnant women, of whom 50,000 will give birth in the next three months. Some women have been forced to cut their newborn babies' umbilical cords with shards of bamboo. Others have had to walk through miles of jungle for prenatal help. After surviving the tsunami, many pregnant women are facing the danger of giving birth alone because of the deaths of midwives in the disaster – and the damage and destruction of health facilities. UNFPA is working with its sister United Nations agencies and other partners to restore reproductive health services. Reports confirm that many of the women are still haunted by nightmares of giant dark waves, and are too traumatized to come down from the hills. It is important to reach them with services so that they do not experience any additional trauma, especially during childbirth, which should be a joyous and life-affirming experience.

UNFPA is also monitoring and addressing sexual abuse and gender-based violence and exploitation, which often increase during periods of stress and crisis. We are also working with governments and local partners to provide psychosocial support, especially for households newly headed by women, to help them deal with the loss of their families, especially the loss of their children, which is the hardest emotional trauma a parent can face. We all must help them gather the strength they need.

UNFPA believes that the support of women and youth must be an urgent priority during this critical period, to strengthen families and communities that will speed recovery and reconstruction in the months and years to come. To address these and other urgent needs, UNFPA has made available $3 million for emergency response. We also issued an appeal for $28 million to help meet the urgent needs of women and youth in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. We are most grateful to all countries that have so far responded to the appeal, including China, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Mme. President,

Our work this year will be taking place against a background of great expectations—expectations for moving forward the global development agenda and advancing United Nations effectiveness and reform. Recent years have seen major changes in economic policies and instruments in many countries and an increasingly competitive global assistance environment.

The challenges are real and daunting. We know that a large group of countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and also least developed countries in other regions, are not likely to achieve the MDGs, based on recent trends, unless more decisive action is taken. Despite the progress reported by Member States during the 10-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) last year, the situation remains dire. The Secretary-General has described the high rates of maternal deaths in certain regions of the world as appalling, and HIV/AIDS continues to pose a serious threat to populations in every region. We have seen the numbers of people with AIDS increase, with the numbers of yearly infections also rising, especially among young women. While progress is being made towards achieving parity between boys and girls in primary and secondary education, progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment still lags behind in many significant areas, with greater visibility of gender-based violence and trafficking. All these seriously affect our capacity to make greater progress in poverty eradication, the prevention of HIV/AIDS and the promotion of the human rights of women and children.

The report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change has also highlighted the implications of demographic challenges to global security as well as the need for adequate public health systems and infrastructure to address the threats of our times, especially HIV and AIDS.

The scope of the global development challenge becomes increasingly obvious with each passing conference and report. In the case of the ICPD and its Programme of Action, the cost is clear. As the Secretary-General stated: “The eradication of extreme poverty and hunger cannot be achieved if questions of population and reproductive health are not squarely addressed.” It is important that we grasp the opportunities that will come up this year—through the work of the subsidiary bodies of the Economic and Social Council and other meetings leading to the summit in September—to integrate more firmly the linkages between reproductive health and rights, and the achievement of the goals of the Millennium Declaration.

Progress in Positioning the Organization

Mme. President,

Last October, at the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of ICPD in the General Assembly, ministers and other high-level officials reaffirmed their countries’ commitment to the Cairo consensus. They recognized the importance of the ICPD Programme of Action to the achievement of the MDGs. And they confirmed that, despite the several obstacles that hampered implementation, considerable progress had been achieved.

Last October, I had the privilege and honour to speak at an informal meeting of European Union (EU) ministers of development cooperation and engage in discussion with them during their meeting in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The Ministers, like their counterparts in the other regions, showed keen appreciation of our work and its contribution to development. This was later reflected in the EU Council conclusions on the ICPD, which called for the Programme of Action to be central to the high-level review of the implementation of the Millennium Declaration. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Government of the Netherlands and, more specifically, the Minister for Development Cooperation, Agnes Van Ardenne, for taking the initiative to invite UNFPA and to ensure that we had a warm welcome throughout the day-and-a-half meeting.

Strategic Direction

We see the growing recognition of the importance of our work not as a signal to rest on our oars, but as a challenge to be more effective in our delivery and support. In the context of the new United Nations harmonized programming process, this requires that UNFPA at all levels play an active and equal role with its sister agencies to ensure that the most critical challenges facing a country in terms of demographic dynamics and reproductive health and rights are properly reflected in poverty reduction strategies, SWAps, and United Nations strategies and programmes.

Over the course of the past year, UNFPA, together with a number of Member States, worked towards developing evidence-based advocacy to enhance understanding of the linkages between reproductive health and HIV/AIDS and between reproductive health and poverty eradication. Those efforts still continue with a high-level ministerial meeting scheduled for Stockholm in April this year, which would include, for the first time for UNFPA, ministers of finance and development from both developed and developing countries.

The report of the Millennium Project, launched only a little over a week ago, reinforces the conclusions of our efforts on the critical importance of access to reproductive health information and services, including voluntary family planning, to the achievement of development goals. Indeed, one key recommendation of the Millennium Project is the need to introduce an additional target to the maternal health goal—the target being universal access to reproductive health services by 2015 through the primary health care system. Naturally, we support this recommendation and look forward to seeing it eventually find its way, through your support, in the new declaration of commitment to be adopted in September 2005.

Responding to the Needs of Countries

In order to make UNFPA a more effective development partner in a rapidly changing environment, we held a Global Staff Meeting in Princeton, New Jersey, from 28 November to 2 December last year. Over the course of a week, we engaged in open, spirited, stimulating and inspiring dialogue on what we, as UNFPA staff members, needed to do to achieve our goal to foster national ownership of the ICPD agenda and the Millennium Development Goals. In the Spirit of Princeton, we all committed ourselves:

• To become a better organization for advocacy and policy dialogue around population and development and reproductive health and rights;
• To focus our work even more on people, in the countries we serve;
• To be champions of human rights and gender equality;
• To be champions of United Nations reform; and
• To hold ourselves accountable to each other and, of course, to Member States.

Everyone left Princeton energized by our encounter. My heart is full of pride and gratitude for the very special group of people who make up our UNFPA family. This year and in the coming years, our actions will be guided by the recommendations of the Global Meeting. In a few weeks, we shall hold our Executive Committee retreat to follow-up on those recommendations.

Mme. President,

The true test of success for UNFPA is how effectively we restructure our organization to better meet national needs and the needs of poor men, women and young people.

I shall address those issues, some of which fall under UNFPA’s direct control while others depend on decisions and guidance from you, our Board, and from the Member States of the United Nations.

I am committed to making UNFPA a development organization where learning, career development and training are encouraged and expected. To this end, we are going to invest heavily in 2005 and 2006 in these areas. Our focus is on helping people manage their own careers by identifying their options and gaining the skills they need to move forward within UNFPA and the entire United Nations system. All Country Representatives will be provided with 12 days of training on leadership, policy dialogue, and capacity-building to be completed by the end of June. We are offering online management training to all staff, whatever their level or location, to increase their leadership skills. We are relaunching our Distance Learning Programme on population issues, with dedicated training in universities in Botswana, Mauritius, Costa Rica and Thailand. Career workshops are being offered and we are developing sabbatical and leave programmes so that staff can refresh and update their knowledge and skills. In March, we are launching an induction course to provide an overview of UNFPA to both new and old staff members and anyone else who is interested in our work. Needless to say, we would welcome any support to this ambitious investment in staff development.

While we recognize the importance of learning and training, we also know that, in order to be effective, we must support countries to achieve the goals they have set themselves. And we must support civil society to be part of the decision-making and delivery and evaluation process. Our focus must be on the priority areas where impact is most decisive and where we play a unique role. And here I am talking about the specific areas of population, reproductive health and rights, HIV/AIDS, gender, adolescents and ageing. Through a renewed emphasis on helping countries to develop capacity, to manage, implement and track programmes in the context of a poverty reduction strategies, we create the conditions that enable them to achieve their development objectives.

This requires that we become more involved in policy dialogue, particularly at the field level. While we will look at further reviewing competencies to improve the profile of our field staff, the question as to whether we sit at the table or not depends to a large extent on our ability to provide high-quality advice and strong evidence to governments, which would then ensure UNFPA is invited to the policy dialogue as an active and necessary partner.

Over the past years, we have seen steady progress both in the number of countries where UNFPA is participating in poverty reduction strategies and sector-wide approaches, and in the level of participation. UNFPA is working within United Nations country teams in a number of selected countries to contribute to cohesive poverty reduction strategies in line with the Millennium Project. These countries include Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal and Yemen.

We are already providing or planning to provide pooled funding in several countries, including Bangladesh, Ghana, Mozambique and Zambia. UNFPA has, on an on-going basis, put great emphasis on strengthening the Fund’s capacity to participate actively in SWAps and other forms of national dialogue and development frameworks, especially through knowledge-sharing, participation in international meetings and training opportunities mainstreamed in our training of UNFPA Representatives.

Over the years, UNFPA has actively participated in efforts to better harmonize and simplify country-level programming processes and strengthen the Resident Coordinator system to support national efforts. The on-going initiatives as well as the triennial comprehensive policy review (TCPR) of last year all reinforce a trend towards a unified approach to United Nations field presence, to which UNFPA is fully committed.

The way the Resident Coordinator system functions and performs will determine the success of United Nations efforts at country level. We all have the responsibility to make the system fully owned by all United Nations agencies. We look forward to the forthcoming General Assembly debate on the report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, and its decision on the report’s recommendations, especially those relating to strengthening the Resident Coordinator system.

Within this context, it is especially important that the Results Matrix of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework should represent the programme of the United Nations team at the country level. It should guide the United Nations country team’s collective support to host countries to achieve their MDG-based national development strategies, including the poverty reduction strategies.

I am also pleased to inform you that this year, Kunio Waki, the Deputy Executive Director, Programme, will chair the Programme Committee of the United Nations Development Group. Under his leadership, we shall work closely with other United Nations agencies to further enhance a unified and coordinated United Nations field presence.

Furthermore, we believe that overall donor harmonization and United Nations reform are crucial to the effectiveness of development cooperation and we are fully committed to the reform effort as well as the partnership needed to achieve it. The meeting of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which will be held in Paris in early March will be critical in furthering our joint efforts to strengthen coordination and collaboration among development partners. I am looking forward to participating in that meeting.

Mme. President,

The programming process is central to the unified approach. At the system-wide level, we need to overcome the remaining obstacles that prevent us from working together effectively in joint programming, including joint programmes. There is no doubt that joint programming is the most appropriate response for an integrated and coordinated support for the achievement of the MDGs. Our task is to make joint programming more effective, to ensure it is driven by national needs, and to maintain the transparency and accountability that is necessary for success.

We will also place increasing emphasis on facilitating the flow of technical assistance between programme countries in the various regions. In this connection, we shall continue to support regional and global training programmes and knowledge-sharing opportunities to facilitate the exchange of South-South experiences.

All these challenges require that UNFPA become an even more effective organization and development partner. These challenges have already put increased pressure on our staff whose numbers and capacity are inadequate for our growing responsibilities. You, our Member States, expect us to perform as an effective member of the United Nations country teams and as an active member of the United Nations Development Group. And, rightly so, but we need to expand our capabilities in order to become the organization we all want us to be. No matter how we prioritize our work, the challenges of the 21st Century that we all face, as translated into our daily work, are greater in number, scope and depth than anything we have been doing for the past 50 years. We will, with your support, initiate a review of the implications for the Fund of the reforms and the expectations of Member States and come to you with specific proposals for your guidance.

This exercise should also extend to reviewing the decisions of this Board, including on our humanitarian response, and their utility or appropriateness in the light of recent developments. I will give just one example. Understandably, we have all been struck by the magnitude and the tragedy of the tsunami disaster, but we face humanitarian crises constantly, every year and, in every case, UNFPA’s services are sorely needed as women bear the brunt of such emergencies. Yet, by decision of the Board, our budget for emergencies is restricted to $1 million. While we accept that our contribution to humanitarian emergencies should not come at the expense of our regular programmes, the reproductive health risks faced by women and girls make no such distinctions. Pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, and sexually transmitted infections take place regardless of whether it is a natural or human-made disaster, whether it is war or peace, whether it is in a crisis or development environment. We should consider how UNFPA could best be positioned and have a certain level of flexibility to be effective in its response to crises, such as the recent tsunami. We will come to you at a later stage with our proposal for this area of our work.

Financial Situation

Mme. President,

I am happy to report that 2004 was a good year for UNFPA from a financial point of view. As a result of the support of all Board members and the United Nations membership at large, we not only met our benchmark of 150 donor countries, we surpassed it and obtained 166. This is certainly a significant increase from 2003, when we had 149 donors, and particularly in contrast to 1999, when we had 69. This achievement can be attributed in no small part to the initiative and interest shown by our programme countries. I consider it a strong vote of confidence and I am very much inspired by this wide level of support. In particular, we would like to thank Belize, Brazil, Chad, Colombia, the Comoros, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Paraguay, Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, for their first-time contributions or for having returned to our family of donors in 2004. I would also like to thank all 45 countries that have made pledges in the multi-year format, thus making funding for UNFPA more predictable.

I should also mention here the contribution of $119 million that UNFPA has received for other resources. This includes $37.5 million out of the $80 million EU members have pledged for reproductive health commodity security. We are very grateful for this unique contribution. It shows the commitment of the EU, including the European Commission, and the leadership of the Netherlands during its EU presidency. We would also like to thank Canada for its generous contribution for commodity security.

I am also very much encouraged by the fact that the regular contributions increased during 2004. The total amount we have provisionally recorded is $326 million, a new record. This has exceeded the previous record of $312 million set in 1995 for regular resources. I thank all of you who have provided support to UNFPA last year. However, I must put these figures into perspective, because the issues addressed by UNFPA, such as HIV/AIDS, have become far more serious than we could have ever imagined. In other words, I consider it imperative that our regular income continues to grow over the next few years to the $400 million level. This will enable UNFPA to maintain its relevance in promoting reproductive and sexual health worldwide and to prevent HIV, particularly with respect to the world’s largest generation of adolescents.

In this connection, it gives me pleasure to confirm to you that we will be making a significant step in this direction this year, as our regular income forecast for 2005 is $360 million. Several factors are responsible for this financial upswing, including the substantial increase from Sweden. Possible other increases are expected from Finland, Norway, Canada and France. We also hope that the contributions from other Member States will be adjusted upwards.

I must also acknowledge the pivotal role played by many Member States last year in the events that led to the enabling environment in which UNFPA worked and promoted the mandate you – the Member States – have entrusted to us. In this regard, the financial contribution of the Netherlands, which is responsible for 22 per cent of our core budget, was noteworthy. I would also like to encourage more countries to join the 45 countries that have already made multi-year funding pledges.

Mme. President and members of the Board,

As we all know, development depends on partnerships, not only between rich and poor nations, but also between governments and civil society, and between the public and private sectors. I would like to take this opportunity to report on a new partnership that UNFPA has developed with Virgin Air and the advertising firm, Young and Rubicam. Both firms see a huge potential in partnering with UNFPA in our global campaign to end fistula. Virgin has agreed to fly doctors at no cost to Nigeria to cure fistula patients. And, as I speak, Young and Rubicam is creating a campaign in the United Kingdom to raise awareness and funds to prevent and treat fistula, which affects at least 2 million women and girls in the developing world. UNFPA is excited about these developments, which will pave the way for more partnerships of this kind in the future.

Before I end, I would like to inform the Executive Board of a dream I had, which has now become a reality. Together with my colleagues, I established last year a programme to bring the knowledge and experiences of young people into UNFPA, and we are calling it the Special Youth Programme. It “employs” young people between the age of 20 and 24 for a maximum of nine months, between UNFPA Headquarters and country offices. I am pleased to introduce two of our first young “employees”: Katia Loukitcheva from Kyrgyzstan and Allan Kayanja from Uganda. Both Katia and Allan have helped us to sharpen our thinking regarding the needs of young people, providing insights, ideas and comments on our ongoing work. After serving in New York for some months, they will return to their respective countries and work with our field colleagues to translate their ideas into practice. We are serious about involving young people in our work, and this is our first step towards a better integration of young people’s visions and views in our programming. We are expecting four to six more young people from the different regions to join us this year, with six-month stints at Headquarters and three months in their respective countries’ UNFPA offices.

Mme. President,

When I spoke to my colleagues in Princeton last year during our Global Meeting, I shared with them my vision of what I wanted to say to you. While the issues I raised dealt with the nuts and bolts of our mission — developing national capacity for ICPD, building strategic partnerships; strengthening alliances; expanding and integrating sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS services; becoming a learning organization and being accountable, among others — I would like to conclude my remarks today by reminding us all as to why we, as an institution, exist. None of us should forget for a moment the central goal of our mission. The goal of UNFPA is to save lives, to bring dignity to every life and to make every human being count. By expanding opportunities, choices and respect for human rights, we can, and will, create a better world for all.

Thank you, Mme. President.