Brunei, 2006

I extend my congratulations on your election, Madam,

and my respects to His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa

Al-Khalifa and to the Government and people of the

Kingdom of Bahrain. I assure you of Brunei

Darussalam’s full support in the coming year and wish

you great success during your term of office.

I would also like to thank your predecessor,

Mr. Jan Eliasson, for his excellent leadership of the

Assembly over the past year.

Finally, may I express my special appreciation to

our Secretary-General. For many years, he has been the

United Nations most public figure. That has never been

easy, but he has served us with great distinction. His

programmes of action have strengthened our voice. His

personal leadership has inspired us, and I thank him

most warmly for that.

During the past few years, we have regularly

discussed United Nations reform, and I am sure that

discussions will continue in the coming years.

Therefore, at the opening of the sixty-first session of

the General Assembly, I would like to take this

opportunity to mention a few of our own feelings in

Brunei Darussalam about the question of United

Nations reform.

I would like to start by acknowledging the fine

work done for so many years by our United Nations

agencies in the field, particularly by the World Health

Organization, the United Nations Economic and Social

Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the United

Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations

Development Programme, and the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and

by United Nations volunteers all over the world. Those

agencies can truly be called our body’s life blood, and

at times literally so. Every day of every year, they

attempt to bring hope, confidence and meaning to the

lives of ordinary people. They provide people with the

simplest and most basic definition of security. By that,

I mean that they give people a feeling that even the

most severe problems can be faced and solved. I thank

them with great respect for their dedication and their

professionalism. They represent the United Nations at

its best.

Consequently, I believe that any reform of our

Organization should be considered with one crucial

primary question in mind: Does it directly strengthen

the work of our agencies and people in the field? That

is becoming more and more important to the ordinary

people we represent.

The new century has brought a host of new

challenges. The past year, like every year of this new

century, has presented problems that are typical of

those the United Nations is increasingly going to face

and expected to solve. They are, sadly, all the stuff of

regular breaking news: natural and environmental

disasters, health, economic and security disasters,

countless political failures and the enormous human

suffering that follows.

The immediate impression is a dramatic one. Our

new century seems to be defining itself in images of

disaster — landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis and

terrorist bombings. The most lasting images are human

ones. Those are the countless victims of events over

which they had no control and of which they had no

knowledge or warning. The long-term result is a deep

sense of insecurity. It is reaching into the lives of every

individual, every family and every community in every

country we represent.

Many people are feeling so insecure that they are

engaged in finding any way they can to salvage some

hope for themselves. In Asia, Africa and the Americas,

they are doing so in their hundreds of thousands. They

are leaving their families and homelands to emigrate.

They often put their lives at enormous personal risk in

the search for somewhere where they hope to find

hope.

That presents a bleak vision of the future for

millions of our people. It would be even bleaker

without the United Nations. Sometimes, in the refugee

camps, in the disaster areas and in all the other arenas

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of destruction, the United Nations offers all they have

by way of hope. Hence, the second consideration we

give to proposals for reform is a human one. We ask a

simple question: Is the proposal relevant to ordinary

peoples’ personal lives and problems?

Those lives are increasingly dominated by the

extremely complex challenges of our new century.

Those challenges are global. They are scientific,

technological, economic, environmental and political.

They now involve over six and a half billion people.

Those people are becoming more and more dependent

on each other for survival. That means, I believe, that

we must continue to stress the need for more than just

administrative reform. So our third consideration

regarding reform is practical.

Does the proposed reform reflect the current

century, its priorities, its special challenges and its

changing character? In other words, are we certain that

we are not trying to solve twenty-first-century

problems with the mechanisms, priorities and

procedures of the twentieth century and sometimes

even of the nineteenth century?

We look forward to continuing our discussions

with colleagues in the coming year on this critical

matter of effective and lasting reform. We are starting

to see what the twenty-first century is presenting, both

the good and the disturbing. We are also seeing the

demands it is making on the United Nations. They are

considerable. We believe, however, that the

considerations I have mentioned are the essential basis

for reforming the United Nations in a manner that will

ensure that our world body is well capable of meeting

the twenty-first century on twenty-first century terms.