Dear CoNGO Members:

We have just recently finished the 25th General Assembly of CoNGO, held in New York this month in the Auditorium of the Salvation Army, whom we thank most warmly for their continued generous support to CoNGO.

The Assembly was an overall positive event,  reviewing the hard financial circumstances of the past three years and welcoming the genuine achievements  made in NGO cooperation and NGO-UN relationships over that period.   The Assembly was particularly alert to the many

opportunities  for deepening UN-NGO partnerships over the next three years,  in connection with such major upcoming UN events as

• The Third  International Conference on Small Island Developing States (September 2014)
• The 20th Anniversary  -  and reinvigorated follow-up  - of the Beijing World Conference on Women  (2015)
• The 20th Anniversary  -  and reinvigorated follow-up  - of the Copenhagen World Summit on Social Development  (2015)
• The close-out of the Millennium Development Goals  (2015),  leading to
• The establishment of the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda (2015-2030...)
• The Thirteenth UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (2015)
• The  first UN World Humanitarian Summit  (2016)
• The Third UN Conference on Human Settlements  -  HABITAT III   (2016)
• The UN High Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament  (2018)
• The Centenary of the International Labour Organization  (2019)

To spearhead these manifold activities, the Conference re-elected  (with 74% of the votes) the undersigned for a second mandate as President of CoNGO,  and renewed the CoNGO Board.   The new First Vice-President is Soon-Young Yoon,  and the  IFBPW was renewed as Treasurer,  represented by Elizabeth Benham  whom I heartily thank for such diligent, imaginative and determined service to CoNGO in her first term,  knowing she will surpass herself in the second...

CoNGO is thus  again  "up and running",  and I look forward to intense interaction with the membership over the coming three years.   I shall be conducting Presidential Briefings in several UN Centres in coming months,  to review progress and solicit input from the members. Our common task will be made so much smoother if those member organizations which have not yet paid their 2014 membership dues do so IMMEDIATELY !

CoNGO's potential for service is unlimited:  let us go to work TOGETHER !

Cyril  Ritchie,    President  of  CoNGO  2011-2017