Chair,
I heartily welcome Your Excellency Mr. Carlos Amorín as chair of the 75th Session of the Fifth Committee. Norway looks forward to supporting you in your capacity as Chair of this very important committee.
Chair,
2020 marks the 75th Anniversary of our United Nations. For seventy-five years, the United Nations has promoted peace, sustainable development and human rights, based on a shared vision of a better future for all of mankind. Our shared objective must now be a 21st century UN, focused more on people, and less on process. More on delivery, and less on bureaucracy.
Norway is strongly committed to the Secretary-General’s reform initiatives, which not only streamline and modernise our processes, but in turn serves the peoples of the world, and leads to effective mandate implementation. Together we have already come quite far in implementing these necessary changes, and only together we can continue to move forwards.
At the same time, the world is in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have ever seen. The pandemic is putting us all, including the United Nations, to the test. It presents a real litmus test for our organisation. A relevant UN is one which is able to deliver to those in need also during a pandemic.
Norway welcomes the budget proposal from the Secretary-General for the period 2020/21. While Norway continues to promote results-based management in UN institutions- adequate resources and flexibility to fulfil the mandates we have given are key to ensure a relevant UN. This extends to the UN human rights system- hampered by persistent under-funding- the UN development system, oversight mechanisms and the peacekeeping operations.
Finally Chair,
The Fifth Committee has a key role in steering our organisation towards success. A successful UN entails a strong culture of transparency, effectiveness and efficiency. For Norway, a core value of the Fifth Committee is to work tirelessly towards consensus, even on matters where we start from far apart. The Committee already illustrated its strong resilience when virtually reaching consensus on many complicated issues during the First and Second Resumed sessions of the 74th Session of the General Assembly. Norway again stands ready to continue to work on this basis.