51ÁÔÆæ

Mr. Chair,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,

This morning, my memory returns to 1986, when I first came to serve in this Committee as a young delegate representing my country, Bangladesh.

Here, I learned that development diplomacy is ultimately about people: whether a child attends school, a mother receives health care, a farmer reaches a market, and a vulnerable country has a fair opportunity to prosper. And I learned that international cooperation is an indispensable tool to advance global development.

I later joined the United Nations Secretariat, working on trade, development and technology, and subsequently coordinated economic, social and development issues at the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.

Through the years, I have witnessed our world changing profoundly, as has our thinking about and approaches to development.

Allow me to organize my remarks around four key points.

First: We must focus on development that reaches people.

We have moved from the development debate of the 1980s, through the Millennium Development Goals, to the universal 2030 Agenda. Development now means not only income growth, but dignity, sustainability, resilience, equality and freedom from want. It remains a fundamental pillar of the United Nations.

Millions know this Organization not through resolutions adopted in New York, but through vaccines delivered, classrooms supported, safe drinking water provided, and opportunities created and livelihoods protected.

Since 2015, nearly one billion people have gained access to safely managed drinking water, 1.2 billion to safely managed sanitation, and global electricity access has risen to 92 per cent.

Yet progress in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals remains far too slow. Of the 139 SDG targets for which trend data are available, only 36 per cent are on track or showing moderate progress. Nearly half are advancing too slowly, while 15 per cent have fallen below their 2015 baselines.

With the 2027 SDG Summit approaching, this is not the time to revisit our commitments. It is time to deliver on them.

Second: our ambition needs adequate and properly designed means.

National ownership is indispensable. But vulnerable countries-especially LDCs, LLDCs, SIDS, and African Countries, as well as MICs – continue to depend on external finance, technology, capacity-building and equitable market access.

Those means are weakening when we need them most. Official development assistance fell by 23.3 per cent in 2025-the largest annual contraction on record-and is projected to decline by 6.9 per cent in 2026. Bilateral assistance to LDCs is expected to fall another 10.9 per cent.

A development-oriented trading system can make a measurable difference. I recall that during preparations for the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Brussels, I worked closely with the European Union, to advance duty-free and quota-free market access for LDC exports. We successfully agreed on the “Everything but Arms Initiative” at the Brussels Conference.

In 2024 alone, beneficiaries of the European Union’s Everything But Arms initiative secured tariff savings exceeding €3 billion.

Such support has helped several LDCs, including my own, to expand exports, generate revenue, create employment, particularly formal employment of women – and advance towards graduation.

For many years, the number of LDC category kept rising. It began with 25 countries in 1971 and expanded to a peak of 52 in 1991. Today, that number has fallen to 44, with 14 countries at various stages of the graduation process.

This progress demonstrates an important truth: when international support measures are well designed, properly targeted and sustained over time, they work.

The experience of LDCs should give us hope that with properly designed national and international support measures we can still reverse the negative trends in the achievement of the SDGs.

Third: Reform and revitalization are essential and we must embrace it in our work.

The Second Committee has shaped development discourse and amplified overlooked voices. Preserving that role requires an honest examination of our work.

Let us be honest and ask ourselves-does every resolution require annual negotiation? Too many paragraphs move almost unchanged from one text and year to the next. Repetition can protect agreed language, but also consume scarce resources without producing a new direction.

Texts genuinely requiring annual decisions should remain annual. Others should be biennialized or triennialized. Related texts should be merged; completed mandates retired; and thematic clustering made standard.

A point that I want to make: there are about 4,000 live mandates that we have in this organization. And especially for small delegations, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to navigate through all this. So this burgeoning mandate is actually not good news for small delegations, and I ask that you keep this in mind.

Existing review tools should ensure every mandate is clear, relevant, implementable and results-oriented.

Too often, however, reform resembles moving Lego pieces from one place to another while leaving the underlying design untouched.

We rename structures, relocate functions and redraw organograms, but fail to question the system’s underlying logic. That is rearrangement-not transformation.

My fourth and final point: We cannot make digital-age decisions through analogue reporting and we must break this systemic cycle.

We cannot work effectively in the digital age with an analogue reporting culture.

Reports considered by the Second Committee-and, indeed, by other committees-are often prepared at least six months in advance because of complex clearance, editing and translation processes. During those six months, circumstances may change-indeed often change – dramatically.

Yet our analysis, deliberations and decisions continue to rely on a static document containing information, statistics and analysis that often are outdated.

Consider this year’s reports on international trade and external debt, for example. Although issued in late July, much of the underlying data and information extended only to March or April. We are therefore debating rapidly evolving realities on the basis of evidence that may no longer reflect conditions on the ground.

Take for instance the consequences of the ongoing global economic crises-which are serious. Trade and supply chains have been disrupted, with potential effects lasting many years. Following the outbreak of conflict at the end of February, daily vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz fell from more than 130 before the conflict to single digits on some days.

The International Energy Agency has described the situation as the largest energy-security crisis the world has faced, while peak daily oil-supply losses have exceeded the combined peaks of the two major oil shocks of the 1970s.

We should recall that the dual oil crisis in the 1970s was followed by a lost decade of development in the 1980s for many developing countries. Do the reports before this Committee help us analyse the effects of these developments on food and fertilizer prices on inflation, debt sustainability, and employment in the vulnerable economies?

I have read these reports and I don’t think they do.

Excellencies,

We are trapped in a complex loop: reports are prepared on the basis of yesterday’s information, debated months later and followed by new reports and the cycles keep going.

These reports are prepared by highly competent staff members and the rest of the process is handled highly professionally. Yet, the system is such that by the time they reach the delegation, this value is greatly diminished.

This system does not do justice to the Secretariat’s expertise, Member States’ time or the urgency of the challenges before us. We the Member States deserve better, and the people affected by our decisions deserve better still.

So this is an area where I’d like your help; this is one aspect of reform that I have personally discussed with the Chair of the Committee.

Static tables should not occupy page after page of documents translated into six languages. In one recent debt report, nearly half of the pages consisted of tables. Such tables should be maintained on secure, multilingual, user-friendly and continuously updated digital dashboards, leaving paper reports to do what reports should: provide analysis, identify emerging risks, present scenarios and offer clear policy options.

The underlying statistics of every report should be continuously updated online as new information becomes available, accompanied by a clear record of any revisions. Member States should not be asked to make today’s decision for tomorrow, using evidence frozen six months in the past.

We must also know what each report costs-not only in editing and translation, but in staff time, coordination and opportunity cost. We should know who and how many use these reports, what decisions it informs and whether it continues to justify the resources devoted to it.

The UN80 review has examined more than 600 series of mandated reports, while proposed changes could eliminate approximately 700,000 words of reporting in a single year.

I therefore propose a new compact for Second Committee reporting: shorter analytical reports focused on the decisions required from Member States; real-time, user-friendly digital dashboards for statistics; updated briefing notes immediately before consideration of items; transparent information on preparation costs and usage; and proper human oversight of any artificial-intelligence-supported analysis or translation.

I do not place responsibility on the Secretariat alone. The problem is systemic, and we the Member States create and sustain many of these mandates ourselves. We should therefore take our share of responsibilities. Yet, I expect the Secretariat to anticipate emerging needs, bring outdated practices to the attention of Member States and present practical options for reform.

Excellencies and colleagues,

Finally, a word about the use of technology in our work.

As I have repeatedly said, I am a firm believer in the practical application of technology. In this house, we spend countless hours debating the importance of technology and technology transfer. But we must also ask ourselves: how effectively are we applying technology to our own work?

We cannot credibly advocate digital transformation across the world while continuing to operate through outdated systems within our own Organization.

Technology must not replace judgement, multilingualism or intergovernmental authority. It must enable us to exercise them more effectively.

The objective is not technology for its own sake; it is better evidence, more timely analysis, more informed decisions and more resources directed towards implementation.

So excellencies, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

Let us preserve what is essential,
reform what no longer works;
and redirect resources from repetition to implementation.

People do not measure us by meetings, resolutions or pages of documents.

They measure us by whether development reaches them.

Let us ensure that this Committee does exactly that.

I thank you.