Mr President,
We thank you and the Secretariat for arranging these five consultations with member states on the visions and proposals laid out in “Our Common Agenda”.
We align ourselves with the statement by Denmark on behalf of the Nordic countries.
We will add a few comments in our national capacity on the topic of enhancing international cooperation, and focus specifically on the question of adequate financing for the UN.
First of all, we welcome the transformation towards a United Nations 2.0 and the “quintet of change”. The Secretary General will have our support.
UN funding is global burden-sharing in practice. For multilateral cooperation to be effective, and to achieve the ambitions of Our Common Agenda, it is crucial that Member States provide financing that is sufficient, predictable and sustainable. Norway is deeply committed to ensuring predictable and sustainable financing of the UN's work.
It is necessary to continually look for possible savings and we support measures that can contribute to a more efficient UN, but not at the expense of the UN's ability to fulfill complex mandates in increasingly demanding country situations.
Secondly, Norway remains supportive of the Funding Compact as a means to provide flexible financial support for the alignment of the UN development system with the 2030 Agenda. We recognize that bold changes in the way the UN works require substantial changes in the way the system is funded.
Our impression is that the reform in the UN development system is moving in the right direction. The Development Coordination Office in New York and the regional DCO offices give good support to the resident coordinators.
The COVID 19 pandemic has been a test case for the ability of the UN country teams to deliver coherently and collaboratively under the leadership of the resident coordinator and to respond quickly to new circumstances. We are pleased to see that most country teams have passed the test. However, the funding situation of the resident coordinator system remains a concern.
Thirdly, the UN's budgets should provide flexibility and enable the organization to respond quickly to new emergencies. We should study carefully the possibility of creating a new liquidity reserve for peacekeeping operations.
I thank you.