As prepared for delivery

1. Introduction 

Mr. President,

Distinguished Members of the Executive Board,

It is an honour to address you for the first time as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme.

I thank the UN Secretary-General and Member States for the trust placed in me to lead UNDP at this critical moment.

I also wish to express my deep appreciation to my predecessor, Achim Steiner, to the Associate Administrator, Haoliang Xu, and to you, the members of the Executive Board, for your guidance and support.

I take on this role at a moment that will test and define the credibility and relevance of multilateralism.

Conflict is spreading faster than diplomacy.

Climate shocks are intensifying and becoming more costly.

Inequality remains high, and progress on reducing global poverty has stalled.

These are not temporary disruptions. They are structural fractures, putting societies under strain, weakening institutions, and testing whether our collective resolve is strong enough to respond.

Taken together, they are eroding something more fundamental: trust.

Trust that we can solve global problems. Trust that international cooperation still makes a real difference in people’s lives. Trust that our shared future rests on solidarity and common values.

At the same time, expectations of the United Nations, and of UNDP, have never been higher, even as resources come under growing pressure.

Restoring this trust is perhaps the greatest challenge of our generation.

And it defines the task before us.

Our responsibility is not only to deliver development results.

It is to rebuild confidence that multilateral cooperation can adapt and deliver fairly and effectively, where it matters most.

So, the fundamental question before us is clear: how do we honour that trust and bring hope for the future?

In answering it, I see the Executive Board not only as a body of oversight, but as a strategic partner—helping keep UNDP focused, accountable, and responsive to Member States and to the people we serve.

2. Taking Stock: UNDP Has Delivered

Before looking ahead, let me briefly take stock.

At the end of last year, we concluded the 2022–2025 Strategic Plan. And I can say this clearly: UNDP has delivered, across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

• On poverty and inequality, UNDP supported reforms in countries home to over five billion people, focusing on systems that shape incomes, opportunities, and access to services. 

  Together with countries, the partnership between UNDP and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is estimated to have helped save 4.7 million lives.

• On governance, UNDP supported the participation of over 911 million registered voters in 78 elections in 51 countries. 
• On resilience, UNDP strengthened conflict-prevention capacity in more than 80 countries and supported over 19 million internally displaced persons. It is also worth noting that over the past decade (2015–25), UNDP has helped deliver USD 2.2 billion in funding for stabilization, benefiting over 20 million people.
• On the environment, through our Nature Pledge, UNDP helped to protect and restore 43 million hectares of ecosystems.
• On energy, we supported countries to accelerate the transformation of energy systems, strengthening livelihoods and driving sustainable growth, building on our work that has reached more than 82 million people directly and benefited more than 100 million indirectly.  
• On climate, through our Climate Promise initiative, UNDP supported more than 90 per cent of developing countries to design and implement ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). This leadership was recently recognized by the UN Secretary-General, who asked UNDP to lead the UN system-wide effort to support countries in the next critical phase of delivering those plans. 
• On gender equality: through initiatives such as the Gender Justice Platform with UN Women, we supported over 40 countries to prevent and respond to gender-based violence and strengthen women’s leadership – because development without upholding women’s rights is not development at all.

We also helped align and mobilize over USD 920 billion for the SDGs, unlocking public and private finance, accelerating sustainable investment, and generating revenues for country-led priorities.

And crucially, UNDP is not only responding to today’s crises. We are anticipating tomorrow’s, tackling risks that cut across nature, climate, peace and prosperity.

We also help the UN system deliver better through the partners we host.

• Through UN Volunteers, more than 17,000 UN Volunteers worked with communities in 172 countries last year. 
• As a system-wide UN asset, the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office disbursed over USD 860 million to 41 UN entities and 111 countries in 2025.
• Through the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation as the UN’s global focal point for South-South and triangular cooperation, and through UNDP itself, we helped countries scale solutions drawn from shared experience and grounded in national ownership. Notably, UNOSSC facilitated the implementation of South-South and triangular cooperation trust fund projects across 50 developing countries.
• In 2025, the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) completed a major reorganization and re-emerged as the UN system’s dedicated de-risking fund for the countries and markets furthest behind. A reinvigorated UNCDF will respond to an urgent call to action: “crowd in” public and private capital and amplify the UN development system’s impact where financing is hardest and the needs are greatest.

On the financial side, UNDP sustained delivery in 2025 despite an exceptionally constrained and deteriorating funding environment across the development sector. 

 Total contributions are on track to reach USD 4.77 billion while programme delivery is expected to reach USD 4.78 billion, slightly above target.

But core funding remains a pressure point.

Core contributions are expected to reach USD 442 million. Looking ahead to 2026, UNDP is expecting further drastic cuts to its already low core funding base of 11 per cent. This year, we are projected to work with USD 188 million less core funding than we received in 2024.

Without a reversal of core erosion, UNDP cannot sustain delivery at the level of quality, integrity, and accountability that Member States rightly demand. This matters because core resources enable UNDP to fulfill its core mandate and to operate where risks are highest and needs are greatest.  

We have already taken difficult but necessary steps to adapt. If this continues, further steps will be needed.

UNDP moved early on three interlinked fronts: budget management, workforce alignment, and relocation – to protect delivery and maintain financial discipline. At the same time, we remain future-focused through strategic investments and resource mobilization.

In 2025, we have reduced our institutional and core programme budget by over USD 80 million. For 2026, we estimate a further USD 113 million reduction and we will review our budget throughout the year against both core and non-core income. Where needed, we will take early in-year decisions, as we did in 2025.

Even though 91 cents of every dollar invested in UNDP already goes directly to programmes and services, we know we must stay focused and disciplined, and keep our work grounded in the local realities of the people and communities we serve.

Since early 2025, these measures have been implemented as part of a broader effort to strengthen UNDP’s organizational effectiveness at a time of declining core resources. Together, they allow us to deliver on the 2026–2029 Strategic Plan approved by this Executive Board with realism and resilience.

UNDP is also moving to a distributed global hub model. New York remains our global anchor, for corporate leadership, multilateral engagement and system-wide cooperation. Our mandate, our universal presence, and our commitment to programme countries remain unchanged.

At the same time, we are establishing a presence in additional strategic locations, including Bonn and Madrid – and we are grateful to the Governments of Germany and Spain. We have also relocated positions from New York to our regional offices. Today, 88 per cent of UNDP personnel are based in programme countries and regional hubs.

The relocation effort serves three purposes.

First, stronger partnerships, by placing policy advice and operational functions closer to programme countries and key partners.

Second, a more sustainable cost structure, by shifting functions to lower-cost duty stations, generating savings of approximately 17 to 20 per cent per position, while reducing travel costs.

Third, protecting delivery, by reinvesting savings to sustain country office support, preserve critical capacity and enable targeted innovation.

But let me be clear. UNDP will adapt but will not retreat. The constraints are real. But so is the opportunity. 

3. A Changing Development Landscape and Our Strategic Response

The Strategic Plan you approved sets a clear direction for a rapidly changing development landscape. The challenge is now not to restate it, but to implement it and seize the opportunities ahead.

The first priority is putting development back at the heart of global decision-making.

Today’s geopolitical agenda is dominated by conflict and extremism. These are not isolated challenges, but symptoms of deeper development failures: weak institutions, lack of opportunity, exclusion, and eroded trust.

Systemic risks are rising sharply. No country, rich or poor, developed or developing, will escape its effects.

This does not reduce the role of development. It makes it fundamental.

If we want to break these cycles, we must stop treating symptoms and start tackling root causes, early, at scale, and before risks turn into crisis. Development must not come last, as an afterthought. It must come first, as the first line of defence.

Done early, sustainable development prevents instability instead of managing it.

Done well, it strengthens institutions before they collapse.

Done together, it creates opportunity before despair turns into displacement or extremism.

This is why the Strategic Plan puts prevention and resilience at its core, especially in fragile and high-risk contexts, where the cost of inaction is highest.

Because once institutions collapse, rebuilding them takes generations.

Once families are displaced, futures are disrupted, sometimes for good.

And once crisis erupts, every response becomes slower, costlier, and less effective.

In fragile contexts, waiting is not caution. Waiting is failure and the most expensive choice we can make. Fragility anywhere fuels insecurity everywhere.

That is why the Strategic Plan shifts focus upstream. Development as foresight, not hindsight; as prevention, not repair; as responsibility, not reaction. 

Development is not a cost. It is an investment in stability, human dignity, and peace and prosperity on a livable planet. Neglecting it has real human, political and security consequences. Without human security, national security cannot take root.

For too long, development has been treated as secondary, something to address after crises erupt. Without development at the centre of geopolitics, we are left reacting to symptoms instead of shaping outcomes.

The second priority is to seize the opportunities ahead by creating the right conditions for inclusive private sector engagement.

Public finance remains essential, and governments must lead. But public finance alone will not deliver the scale, speed, or sustainability that today’s challenges demand.

UNDP is already working closely with the private sector. But we can do much more. There is no shortage of capital in the world. Too often, it does not reach the places where opportunity is greatest, because risks are perceived as too high for private investors to enter without strong public partners. 

Crucially, our approach to unlocking private capital is about expanding public purpose, not privatizing development outcomes.

This is where development makes the difference.

By strengthening governance, improving the investment climate, and reducing risk, we can unlock private capital in support of country-led priorities. This directly advances the Strategic Plan’s objectives on prosperity for all, effective governance and crisis resilience.

That is UNDP’s role. We do not replace markets. We improve conditions for markets to make them work. We make it viable. We help create an enabling environment and reduce risks while convening governments, businesses, and financial institutions, so investment translates into jobs, resilience, and shared value.

Through UNCDF, we also have a unique means to crowd in private capital using risk-absorbing instruments, making investment possible in the “C-grade” markets where development needs are greatest and finance is hardest to mobilize.

Because jobs are created by markets. Innovation comes from enterprise. And growth lasts only when local economies and sustainable practices are integrated into value chains.

That is why private sector development is not an add-on. It is a core driver of lasting development.

But markets do not emerge on their own, especially where risk is highest and margins are thinnest.

This is how the Strategic Plan’s sustainable finance accelerator turns public resources into far greater development impact.

The third priority is to seize today’s opportunities by harnessing digital and innovation as accelerators of scale, inclusion, and trust.

Digital transformation is no longer optional. From digital public infrastructure to artificial intelligence, technology is already reshaping economies, institutions, and the relationship between states and citizens, whether we are ready or not.

Used well, digital accelerates development. It lowers costs. It exposes corruption. It reaches people that systems and services have failed to reach.

Digital IDs can unlock social protection. Digital payments can reach the last mile. Data and AI can help governments anticipate crises instead of reacting to them.

But let us be clear: technology is not neutral. And innovation, left unchecked, can deepen exclusion, concentrate power, and erode trust as easily as it can build it.

That is why the question is not whether countries will digitalize, but how, for whom, and under whose rules.

This is where UNDP comes in.

Countries are asking us to help them seize the upside of digital transformation while managing its risks. This means building digital systems that are inclusive by design and people-centered: rooted in transparency, accountability, and human rights and steered by national priorities.

Systems that strengthen innovation and state capacity, not bypass it. Systems that protect rights and data, not exploit them. Systems that serve people, not the other way around.

This is why the Strategic Plan identifies digital transformation, in addition to gender equality and sustainable finance, as a core accelerator, to ensure innovation expands opportunity rather than deepens inequality.

Taken together, these three priorities form one systemic and integrated response, fully aligned with the Strategic Plan you approved, linking poverty reduction, jobs, governance, climate-environment action, and digital transformation into a single, coherent development approach for a changing world.

4. How We Adapt: UN80

Adapting to a changing world means adapting the multilateral system itself.

So that it meets today’s realities, it delivers for the people it exists to serve and remains faithful to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.

Here, the choice is clear: reform or risk irrelevance.

The Charter calls on us to promote peace, advance development, uphold human dignity, and cooperate to solve global problems. That mandate has not weakened with time. On the contrary, it has become more urgent than ever. That is why UNDP fully supports the Secretary-General’s UN80 initiative.

UN80 is more than a simple reform. It is about making sure that the United Nations can fulfil its Charter responsibilities in a changing world, by becoming more effective, more agile, and more accountable, and by making better use of increasingly constrained resources.

We share the UN Secretary-General’s determination to build a stronger United Nations:

one that delivers for people, upholds its values, and earns trust through results.

The real risk today is not change. It is drift, away from impact, away from relevance, away from the people we serve.

UN80 is our opportunity to renew our shared commitment to this universal mandate and show that the United Nations can adapt without losing its soul, integrate without losing its purpose, and reform without compromising the principles of the Charter.

For UNDP, one principle is non-negotiable: reform must be operational. We are a “delivery organization.” On the ground in more than 170 countries and territories, over 22,000 colleagues work every day, often in fragile and high-risk contexts, to translate the Charter’s ideals into real change and new opportunities for people.

We cannot pause delivery to reform. We must reform while delivering. That means continuity for countries and communities. It means reform grounded in detailed evidence and with a focus on results. And it means change that strengthens impact rather than disrupts it.

This principle guides our approach to all reform efforts, including the proposed UNDP–UNOPS merger.

5. Listen, Partner, Deliver

Excellencies,

In development, how we work matters as much as what we deliver. Our methods send a clear signal about whose voices are heard, whose priorities shape decisions, and who ultimately benefits.

That is why, from day one, I have been clear about the approach I will take as UNDP Administrator.

We will listen.

To Member States.

To national and local leaders.

And above all, to the communities whose lives our work is meant to improve.

We will partner.

Because no country, no institution, no sector can deliver sustainable development alone.

We will work with governments, the private sector, civil society, international financial institutions, and the wider UN family, bringing strengths together around country-led priorities.

And we will deliver.

Dialogue that leads to change on the ground.

Commitment that turns into results.

Evidence that drives impact.

Development that people can see, trust, and rely on.

Listen. Partner. Deliver. 

That is UNDP’s promise: accountability to Member States, and impact for the people we serve.

6. Call to Action: Restoring Trust Through Delivery, Enabled by Core

Excellencies,

Mr. President,

Distinguished Members of the Board,

At the start of my remarks, I spoke about trust. How it is being eroded, and what is now at stake for multilateralism.

The question before us is simple: how do we restore this trust?

Not with declarations alone. Not with good intentions. But with delivery people can see, measure and rely on.

Because trust in international cooperation is rebuilt on the ground, when institutions function, when basic services reach those who were excluded, and when opportunity expands.

Our credibility comes from showing up early, staying engaged, and helping countries move from crisis to stability, from plans to progress, from ambition to results. Not through short-term transactions, but through sustained, programmatic partnerships that strengthen institutions, expand opportunity, and last beyond any single project or funding cycle.

Moments like this test institutions. They show whether we retreat, or whether we rise. UNDP has made its choice.

We are adapting without abandoning our values. Reforming without losing sight of the people we serve. And delivering, even when conditions are hard. Because I am convinced that rebuilding trust and realising the Pact for the Future starts with delivery and results.

So, today, my appeal to this Board is clear and direct: be an even stronger partner in this life-changing delivery.

A crucial part of that effort starts with a healthy funding mix. 

Flexible, predictable and, ideally, multi-year core contributions are the foundation of what UNDP does. They allow us to fulfil our core mandate.

Core funding gives us the ability to act early, to stay present when others cannot, and to work where risks are highest and needs are greatest, before crises erupt and costs multiply.

To those Member States who continue to provide this support: thank you.

Your leadership matters now more than ever.

At the same time, we see encouraging signs of change.

More developing countries are financing their own development. New partners and non-traditional donors are choosing to invest through UNDP, drawing on our local presence and our expertise to ensure delivery and results on the ground.

This is a strong vote of confidence in our role and in our performance. And that confidence comes with responsibility.

If we want a system that delivers, we need predictable funding, fair burden-sharing, and mutual accountability between Member States and the UN development system. That is precisely the ambition of Funding Compact 2.0.

 So let us honour these commitments and build a multilateral development system that is stronger, more effective, and grounded in responsibility and trust.

And I urge you to continue championing reforms that strengthen our ability to deliver – not reform for its own sake, but reform that improves impact and strengthens delivery on the ground.

Together, we can deliver.

Thank you.