UN General Assembly
2005

Let me first welcome you, Sir, to your position. I know we will enjoy working with you, given our past experience. Let me also express our appreciation to the outgoing President for the leadership that he provided during the previous session. When the Millennium Summit was held in 2000, in another New York and another era and before unspeakable events overtook our agenda, the lack of universal economic development was the supreme challenge and security concern that we had. That is why the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were created. It took the commitment and firm belief of almost 200 of our world leaders to come up with simple, obvious, straightforward objectives, which I think can be best summed up by Amartya Sen’s eloquent formulation, “Development as freedom”. Five years later, I think these goals are still relevant and they are no less imperative. Pretending that anything less would do is, I think, disingenuous, dangerous and unfair. If, today, our focus is on global security, and we all clearly understand and see that the path to security