Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It gives me great pleasure to be with you today, at the launch of the MDG Globalwatch. I would like to thank the organizers of this event, especially Her Excellency Irma Tobing-Klein, for her outstanding leadership in respect to this project and her tireless efforts to make this a reality. Ambassador Tobin-Klein has worked diligently to forward to goals and objectives of the MDGs and I personally am proud to associate myself with her efforts.

I was asked today to give you an update on the meeting held by the Conference of NGOs, known as CONGO, but not to be confused with the country, of course, in order to describe the beginning of a regional coalition to bring NGOs together to work with their governments to make a better world.

The Latin American Seminar gathered over 130 participants at the Headquarters of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) representing some 120 local, national and regional NGOs from 33 countries of the region. During the four days that we met, the participants worked effectively together and with representatives from governments, the UN and UN agencies to produce a comprehensive Plan of Action focused on seven of the MDGs – poverty, education, empowerment of women, maternal health, child health, combating infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV and tuberculosis, and improving environmental quality.

Joining us in the discussion and/or providing substance to the debate were the messages from Kofi A. Annan, the UN Secretary General and Julian Hunte, the President of the General Assembly; representatives of ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean); the OSA (Organization of American States); the UNDP (UN Development Program); the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA); the UN Children's Educational Fund (UNICEF); the Department of Public Information (DPI); the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the UN AIDS Program; the UN Environment Program (UNEP); the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and of course the NGO representatives who participated in the Seminar.

The Action Plan we developed, together with the pressure exerted by the global community to achieve the partnerships called for in goal 8, will give NGOs a road map to create a better world – one fit not only for children, but fit for us all. One that can be a stronger approach to the global problems we find ourselves in right now.

For the MDGs are not just a formula for a “more just world.” They are in fact the best way to combat global terrorism, and a humane way in which we can find the respect we seek to live together on the same planet. The MDGs provide us with an approach to life that can work -- if we pull together to make them happen.

At the United Nations Millennium Summit held in September of 2000, 189 member countries unanimously adopted an ambitious agenda to reduce poverty and improve human lives. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of 8 time-bound goals, with targets and indicators that the UN Development Programme (UNDP) extracted from this UN Millennium Summit Declaration. UN and international efforts to achieve these goals include operational support, research initiatives, awareness campaigns, and country-specific annual reports that will help monitor progress. Progress cannot be achieved without multi-stakeholder cooperation and collaborative action from the UN, governments, NGOs, private sector and foundations.

The MDGs are centered around and respond to the reality and dreams of the people of the world. Governments that adopted them see them as tools and effective mechanisms for poverty eradication, economic and social development, human rights, gender equality, and environmental protection. As NGOs, while we have to continue our advocacy and lobbying to pressure governments to fulfill these commitments, we also have to create new partnerships to work side by side to achieve them.

CONGO's role, which became more visible in the 1960s when we organized the first NGO forum to accompany a UN meeting, gives voice to the people's concerns and helps integrate these concerns into the international agenda. NGOs that had been active since the formation of the UN in 1945 are a voice for their constituencies. During the 1990s a more vocal, participatory NGO movement sprang up at the UN – one which enhances intergovernmental decision-making and which calls for a more responsible UN system. New NGOs have joined these voices and the pressure to be heard has been met with a report from an eminent panel created by the Secretary General Kofi Annan. CONGO continues to help get those voices heard, and more recently has responded by hosting regional consultations and seminars.

In 1998 CONGO began this process with a seminar held in 1998 in Kampala, Uganda. This seminar examined issues such as peace, women's issues and health, and set in motion CONGO's regional approach. CONGO organized the first Asian Civil Society Forum (ACSF) in Bangkok, December 2002 entitled “UN/NGO Partnerships for Democratic Governance, building capacities and networks for human rights and sustainable development. It was attended by more than 500 participants representing local, national, regional and international NGOs, and it created a sensitizing process with follow-up initiatives, including a second Forum to be held in November 2004 on "Building UN/NGO Partnerships for Democratic Governance through MDGs"

Due to the overall mobilization of Civil Society and the international community around the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs, CONGO's main focus is to raise NGO awareness of the MDGs and to promote NGO contributions to and involvement in the implementation of these Goals.

The Latin American and Caribbean Seminar (LAC) continued this process under the theme: Partnerships for a new Era: Implementing the Millennium Development Goals. The seminar was organized to facilitate dialogue, capacity building, and partnerships between public and private sector organizations towards the establishment of sustainable programs and projects to achieve these Goals in the Latin American and Caribbean region. We believe that collaborative interventions are the key to achieving the MDGs in the region.

Though the UN Secretary General in 2003 gave a mixed picture of the global possibilities of achieving the MDGs, the prospects for Latin America in general are good. But the region, with all its achievements in economic reform, in increasing life expectancy, literacy and reducing child mortality, has been frustrated by a quarter century of financial instability and macroeconomic crisis. Economic stagnation is seen stemming from deep-rooted social and racial divides that have translated into huge income inequalities with vast pockets of extreme poverty, and secondly from systematic underinvestment in higher education and research for development.

As CONGO we emphasize the interconnectedness of all these issues and it is within this framework that we want to approach the ambitious agenda that is focused around the MDGs, drawing inspiration and commitment from the Millennium Declaration. For this to happen, synergies must be created among grassroots organizations that know the needs of the peoples in their communities, the groups working at the national level responsible for monitoring and influencing governmental policies, and those NGOs focussing their activities at the international level to influence the global agenda.

The Seminar we held in Chile did produce the outcome document we wanted. When the NGO representatives came together, we knew we had a process that would produce the roadmap we desired. In fact, the commitments that came from this meeting have been even more far-reaching than we expected. Here's why.

We thought that most of the NGO representatives that attended would not know very much about the MDGs. In fact, if they had heard about them, they were not sure what they entailed. Was this just another intergovernmental decision that would see no change on the local level? We began by giving information about the MDGs, about the monitoring and evaluation process at global and regional level, and about how to seek this information at national level.

Some of the representatives who attended were worked at the national governments level, in addition to representing an NGO. Some had no idea about where in their government they could find information. Some were sophisticated in both education and exposure to other countries and cultures. Others were not. This microcosm of the region presented the challenges that could be expected in the regional environment.

But all came with the focus of trying to work together to make a better world. They saw how they needed to work together to improve their communities, their countries and their regions. They committed their personal power to making the project work, as best they could.

They identified obstacles and real concerns about how this project could reach its goals by 2015. Even in areas where they felt the national governments had worked hard, they identified gaps and began to work out solutions that they could implement on their own levels.

Some made personal commitments – commitments that went beyond their own organizations.

The seminar provided skills to the participants for ways in which they could move forward. The DPI, for example, described how NGOs could apply for consultative status and how they could begin to participate in sharing knowledge and information with others on a global level. And in fact, several of the participants did attend the DPI/NGO Conference held last September related to the MDGs.

But the road map needs someone to help coordinate the follow up. MDG GlobalWatch is the organization that can help do that. By placing documents on the MDG GlobalWatch website, NGOs can begin to send in information about what they are doing to produce concrete results. Venezuela, for example, has a well-organized coalition of NGOs that are working together to implement the MDGs. They send me updates weekly. Bolivia has also organized, through PROCOSI, another coalition. Coalitions are forming in Argentina and Mexico, and others throughout the Caribbean. In the Dominican Republic the new President, as you have just heard, has organized a Presidential Commission to implement, monitor and follow up with progress in that country.

Conflicts in the world continue to increase, and it is our job to bring respect to all people, hope to the human condition, and stability to our world. Working together we can achieve more than we can working in isolation. We invite you to join in this effort to create a world that is better than the one we entered.