Brunei, 2010

I would like to congratulate you, Mr. President, on

your election. I also thank Mr. Treki, the outgoing

President, for his strong leadership in support of

United Nations reform.

I would also like to express our great sympathy to

the Government and people of Pakistan and to our

fellow United Nations Members whose people have

suffered the terrible effects of natural disasters over the

past year. I also thank the Secretary-General and his

staff for coordinating international relief efforts.

We have had a long week of formal meetings and

sideline discussions, and there is still much more to be

done before we all go home. So, at this time, I would

like to be brief and offer a statement of support for

what our people regard as the most important aspect of

the work of the United Nations. By this I mean the

work of our United Nations agencies, their experts,

10-55128 48

their advisers and above all their volunteers in the

field.

I think the theme for this year’s debate underlines

the importance of their work. It asks us to recognize

the central role of the United Nations in global

governance and I have no difficulty in doing this.

Achieving security, progress and development is, of

course, our own individual responsibility. But as last

week’s high-level discussions on the Millennium

Development Goals made extremely clear, many of the

challenges we face reach beyond single nations and

even single regions. They are international in the full

sense of the word.

So we need help, experience and expertise and

for me, this is what the United Nations agencies offer.

As we all know, their support continues all year, every

year. In my own country it is taking place right now as

we speak, through the United Nations Development

Programme, the United Nations Environment

Programme, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Health

Organization and we are most grateful for their help.

They work in vital areas of national development,

education, health, agriculture, communications and

infrastructure. They meet with people directly, they

listen, they discuss, and they teach, train and

encourage. They work closely with our local

authorities and sometimes they do even more than that.

I think that we learned this during last year’s

influenza A (H1N1) health crisis. As the Assembly can

imagine, for a small nation like ours this was very

serious indeed. It could have almost closed us down

and could have certainly caused widespread panic. But

it did not. I think this was very largely due to one fact:

our people knew that they were not alone. They had the

guidelines given to us by the World Health

Organization and this gave them the confidence they

needed during that extremely worrying time; we could

not have made it without them.

Returning to our theme this year: it invites us to

reaffirm and, as I have said, I am happy to do this and I

do it without reservation. I reaffirm our respect and

deep appreciation for the work of all United Nations

agencies. We are delighted to be working with them

and we warmly congratulate the Secretary-General on

their work.

In the words of our theme, the United Nations

does indeed play a central role. In my view, without its

agencies the concept of global governance can only be,

at best, an idea and, most of the time, only words. It is

the agencies that help us turn ideas into real substance

and to change words into actions that our people

understand, respect and welcome.

In fact, I would like to end by saying that they are

much more than agencies. For countries such as ours,

they can help us to become far more than small

developing nations. I think this can be summed up

simply: they make us part of a United Nations that is

truly united.