Thank you, Mr. President, distinguished members of the Executive Board, observer representatives, friends and colleagues.

It is a distinct pleasure to congratulate you Ambassador Koonjul, upon your election as president of the Executive Board and to wish you and all the vice presidents, representing Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, the Republic of Korea and Switzerland, every success in your important endeavours. I also would like to thank Ambassador Petersen and all his vice presidents for their services during the past year and for their invaluable contributions to our work, especially leading us to our new Strategic Plan. It has been a privilege to work under your guidance.

Reform priorities

Distinguished members.

One year ago, I said to this board that we at UNOPS are well-positioned to support the SecretaryGeneral’s reform agenda, which he had just announced. We continue to be so.

The Secretary-General has called for a more field-focused United Nations. A UN more decentralized, with more people and resources in the field and less administration at headquarters level.

UNOPS has always been field-focused. We continue to improve this model to secure stronger impact on the ground. Our management budget remains unchanged over the last decade, while delivery went up threefold. The management budget now represents less than 4% of our total gross revenue whereas a decade ago it was about 8%.

The Secretary-General is also aiming for a clear separation of policy from operations throughout the whole UN.

In 2017, we revised internal governance, by separating policy and control functions from operations across all aspects of our organization.

Through this approach, responsibility, authority and accountability are fully aligned, and we reduce the potential for any conflicts of interest.

Beyond UNOPS, we offer our services in support of broader UN reform.

We stand ready to support implementing the Secretary-General’s reform priorities in peace, sustainable development and internal management.

We welcome the move towards an impartial Resident Coordinator system. It can be particularly challenging for UNOPS, which is a non-resident agency in so many countries, to have a voice and be called upon when the RC is not independent and only promotes resident agencies for implementation of areas where UNOPS has comparative advantage. Often we are left out.

I have reached out to UNDP, and we recently met at the Executive level from both organizations in an effort to improve our joint capacities. Together we have committed in good faith to identify common areas where we can support and complement each other, to increase the impact of our work on the ground.

We recognize challenges where the work of sister agencies overlaps with our own. We have years of experience running shared service models, and offer to share our expertise for the benefit of all. We hope and expect that this approach will be shared by all parts of the UN system, since we are all in this together. It’s about mutual recognition.

With our infrastructure mandate, our abilities managing procurement processes across the UN family, and our vast implementation experience, we welcome the opportunity to work together more closely, so that we can provide cohesive and coordinated solutions to meet the needs of Member States. 

Distinguished members.

Last year, a board member asked me a simple question: “We hear a lot about your successes, but where are your challenges?”

So today, I will address, in particular, one such challenge: The gender challenge

Before I continue, I want to say the following: Gender is a bigger challenge than many recognize even today.

Gender is a matter of rights.

Gender is about opportunity.

But gender is also about hard economic facts.

People and countries that limit the opportunities of girls and women to pursue an education and to enter working life are really undermining their own growth potential. This applies to the countries we call rich and the countries we call poor alike.


There is a strong correlation between inequalities of working opportunities for women and men, and the performance of these countries expressed in Gross National Income.

So what we do here at the UN is really a reflection of a global challenge, which at the end of the day, if we fail, will impede our chances of realizing the Sustainable Development Goals.

Gender targets

We will soon launch the UNOPS Gender Parity Strategy.

First, we have committed to gender parity throughout our entire workforce by 2020.

Second, we are poised to meet the UN system-wide gender targets to achieve the equal representation of men and women among staff by 2026 for P4 and above levels.

Third, we will increase the representation of women at senior and decision-making levels, by extending the principles of the system-wide approach, to all personnel, not only UN staff.

To reach these targets will require leadership. It will cause changes to the way we manage our people, change to the way we recruit, and change to the way we report to you.

As we reported to the board last year, 37% of our personnel are women.

And when we survey our personnel, the results also show clear differences in engagement and career expectations amongst men and women.

This was not welcome news. But it is a challenge we can and will take.

Last week the Secretary-General informed us that, for the first time, the UN had reached gender parity at senior leadership levels. We are not there yet.

Across the UN, the extent of this challenge differs. It is influenced by many factors, including different mandates and structures.

We are field-based, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected settings, areas where the underrepresentation of women remains a stark challenge.

We do construction. Gender data in infrastructure, in the places we work, is sparse in the field of engineering. Globally, the International Labor Organization tells us that the percentage of women in the construction sector has decreased over the last twenty years.

And in emerging countries, women face the largest gender gap in labour participation rates. We are still committed to improving our performance in this field. And as an example, our operations across the Middle East – and in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Tunisia – are led by women. But these are slim examples amongst a male-dominated workforce.

And beyond the issue of balancing our personnel at all levels, we will aim to develop a gender balancing strategy in the design of our projects. Our partners may or may not have included gender considerations in their project specifications. But we will get to a point where we are able to point out gender relevant effects of different possible project designs and propose new solutions.

Still many project templates have an implicit gender bias. We can help identify such and propose change in the pursuit of gender balance.

To meet our goals is a leadership responsibility.

It is my personal responsibility – as it is the personal responsibility of each member of my senior leadership team. All personnel with leadership responsibility will be measured by how they deal with the gender challenge.

There are positive examples we can learn from across the work we undertake for partners.

For example, in Somalia, with the Government of Japan, we have been helping traders, particularly women, develop new skills to help their businesses thrive.

Or in Kenya, with UNICEF, we build on existing cultural practices. We provide training to challenge gender norms and stereotypes, to positively impact the lives of women and girls in remote communities. This is part of a broader project where we build and improve health centres across Kenya. Here, we also train local construction teams, some led by women, in sustainable building techniques,
with the overall aim to improve maternal healthcare in a country that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

The current global focus on sexual assault and harassment in the workplace only serves to reinforce the importance of this commitment.

There is, of course, no alternative to a zero-tolerance policy in this area. In this respect, I would echo and support the recent announcement by my colleague from World Food Programme on the need for expanded and dogged commitment to address all allegations whenever and however they are raised. If needed, we will change our policies accordingly to clarify the message.

We have set ambitious targets, but above all else, this new strategy is driven by a simple principle: To do what is right, and provide equal opportunities and a safe environment for women in all areas of our work.

Conclusion

Distinguished members.

To conclude, we share a sense of urgency, and are committed to supporting efforts across the UN family, in support of our mutual goals.

And we share a common aim: To do our utmost to ensure implementation of Agenda 2030.

I look forward to hearing both your comments and your questions. Thank you.