Mr. Secretary-General,
Minister Dlamini Zuma,
Madame President,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me begin by joining the Secretary-General and others in expressing my deep thanks, and the thanks of UNDP, for the way in which South Africa has chaired the Group of 77 in what has been a critical year for the United Nations and for its role in development. Minister Zuma, we thank you, Ambassador Kumalo, and your team for your excellent leadership of the G77.

I would also like to congratulate the incoming Chair of the G77, Pakistan. We look forward to our collaboration with you in this important leadership position and to continued close cooperation with the Group of 77 in the year ahead. As the Secretary-General has said, a huge amount of work lies ahead of us. Let me also say, what a privilege it has been for me to work with the Secretary-General this year. It has been a very, very special year thanks to his leadership and his support.

Excellencies,

It is indeed a privilege to address the G77 at this moment of opportunity for all of us in this Organization. A year has passed since we made solemn commitments at the World Summit—commitments to establish strong links between the Millennium Development Goals and the actions on the ground that are necessary to achieve them. Our attention has now turned to implementation: turning promises into sustainable human development for all.

I know developing countries want a strong role for the United Nations in development. Of course, others have essential parts to play; the multilateral development banks and other development partners bring to the table expertise and resources that well complement our own. But in my work in recent months on the High-Level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence in the areas of Development, the Environment and Humanitarian Assistance, one message has come in loud and clear from developing and developed countries alike: The UN family, with its strong normative and operational mandate, global reach and local expertise, belongs at the centre of development work. We have a critical role to play in assisting governments and their people in their efforts to tackle poverty and accelerate pro-poor growth and human development.

You in the G77 see the work of the United Nations firsthand in your own countries every day, from assisting refugees, the poor and the hungry, to promoting child survival, environmental protection, crime and drug control, human rights, women's equality and democratic governance. However, the UN has too often taken on these challenges in piecemeal fashion, with agencies approaching problems from many directions and at times straining for resources.

It’s clear that the UN must move ahead in taking on a greater, more unified role in helping to address the challenges developing countries face. To do this, we need the support and experience of the G77 in all its diversity.  The constraints to development vary widely across countries. Identifying these constraints requires close attention to programme countries’ individual needs.   We have been able to identify some of the more common constraints on growth—deficits in governance, a lack of strong institutions, and lack of sustainable and equitable growth. Indeed, we are constantly building knowledge to leverage our efforts towards supporting countries in achieving the MDGs. To do this to the greatest effect, we need a more coherent UN. We need to recast our enormously capable but often-fragmented development apparatus into a focused and unified team with a common vision so that the UN becomes more than just the sum of its parts. 

While we respect the great diversity of the various UN agencies, funds and programmes working on development, a more cohesive UN development system would serve to promote a vision that brings the economic, the social and the environmental elements of our work into an integrated whole. It would  provide the core framework in which both the UN Secretariat’s entities and UN specialized agencies with specific normative, analytical and operational mandates can work. Such system-wide cohesion would also contribute to providing the framework for the concept of One UN at the country level to enable the UN to better assist the countries we serve.

To this end, I look forward to working with the G77 to put in place the elements of a coherent development system that can help us to address the many development challenges we face, including one of the greatest of our time: making globalization work for all people. It has, therefore, never been more vital that we have an effective United Nations as a force for development, greater equality and legitimate multilateralism. We need your support to make this happen.

Thank you.