The three-day conference featured morning and afternoon plenary panels that focused on best practices and lessons learned from the major world conferences and the identification of campaigns that will bring together multiple issues. The conference also examined the ways in which NGOs can participate in the decision-making process.

In addition to the plenary panels, lunchtime workshops were held each day from 1:15-2:45 at the United Nations and the Church Center for the United Nations.

For more information about the conference go to the DPI Web site.

On behalf of my colleagues at the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (often referred to as "CONGO"), I am happy to see all of you here - friends and colleagues, representatives of NGOs worldwide, as well as representatives of governments and of the United Nations Secretariat and agencies - and extend a warm welcome.

This is a momentous time for nongovernmental organizations working on issues being addressed through the United Nations. Last October, together with The DPI/NGO Executive Committee and Kyung Hee University, we co-convened the Seoul International Conference of NGOs. In her statement to the Conference, Deputy Secretary-General, Louise Frechette, quoted a scholar who said that the emergence of NGOs and civil society groups in the latter part of the 20th Century was "as important as the rise of the nation-state itself had been in earlier centuries." While we cannot know how history will assess this prediction, there is no doubt that - along with such more frequently cited forces as technological change, the communications revolution and globalization - the work of NGOs is helping to change the face of societies as we know them. It is changing too the way our public and private sector entities function, bringing people-centered ideas, new forms of organization, new approaches to ever-changing circumstances and a sense of accountability and transparency for the public good.

In the words of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Ottawa Convention banning landmines, the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Cologne decision of the G7 on debt relief are milestone accomplishments of "decisions taken by governments under the impulse of tireless work by NGOs." He further went on to say, "This is the new reality and this is the new diplomacy."

It is still another indication of these changing times that at least two important heads of state are individuals with great experience through NGOs and for whom NGOs campaigned actively while they were imprisoned. At the Seoul Conference, President KIM Dae-Jung cited years of persecution and said he was attending "not only as President but also as an NGO activist". As President, he has backed up his activism by providing NGO-friendly laws and state support for independent NGO activity. Far away in another continent, the world is now looking at efforts of the new President of Nigeria to reverse the long and unfortunate history of one of Africa's most important countries. Known as a former President and military leader, President Olusegun Obasanjo was also a tireless support of human rights and leadership NGOs in Nigeria, the founder and leader of the region-wide Africa Leadership Forum and an active participant in international NGO fora. Both leaders are at the center of efforts to bring about peace and reconciliation in their regions.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the growth in coverage of NGOs in academic institutions. In North America and in Europe it is possible to obtain postgraduate certificate and masters degree programs dealing directly with the work of nongovernmental organizations. There are also many training programs for practitioners and activists, as well as a wide range of research on NGOs, their programs, organization, effectiveness to cite a few. The Seoul Conference of NGOs was the occasion also for the establishment of a graduate degree program in Korea, staffed in part by prominent, independent NGO leaders.

The Conference of NGOs welcomes these indications of the importance of NGOs, because it has been fighting for inclusion of NGOs at highest levels of international debate for more than fifty years, before and through the world conferences of the 1990's. An association of national, regional and international NGOs which work closely with the United Nations - CONGO is at the same time autonomous in character. Its major objective is to ensure that NGOs - from the South as well as from the North - have the space to exchange information with governments over vital, substantive issues and to work together towards a greater and effective role for NGOs in the United Nations system. CONGO takes no position on matters of substance. It engages in discussion and debate on substantive international issues through some 36 NGO Committees in New York, Geneva and Vienna.

While our missions may be different, in recent years there has been an obvious complementarity in the work we do and the work undertaken by the DPI/NGO Executive Committee. On the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations in November 1995, we celebrated together in the Conference, The UN/NGO Partnership: The Way Forward. This past year we undertook a most significant collaboration in the Seoul Conference, and we collaborated in the organization of the Millennium Forum held in the General Assembly this past May. Copies of reports on both are available to you.

Over the next three days your six topics under "Global Solidarity: The Way to Peace and International Cooperation" are all of critical and central importance to nongovernmental organizations engaged in international concerns - especially by way of follow-up to the world conferences and the growing responsibilities that we NGOs now have.

If we could add a way to strengthen international solidarity, our experience suggests the need to help strengthen solidarity of NGOs at the regional or subregional level. This was certainly the sense that emerged from an Africa-wide Consultation of NGOs which CONGO held in February 1998. And major accomplishments of the Seoul Conference were needs identified and basis established for cooperation among NGOs of Northeast Asia. Strong regional networks will facilitate communication down to local levels and up to global decision-making.

Regardless of our focus, we as representatives of NGOs in consultative status and NGOs associated with DPI, have a responsibility to strengthen our own working relationship in a way that will ensure more effective solidarity nationally, regionally and internationally.

I am looking forward to our discussions over the next few days. We shall gain insight as to future effective actions to reach our ultimate goal of a true international peace. Peace, friends and colleagues, can only be reached in a world without poverty, a world without prejudice, a world which tolerates and accepts diversity, a world of democracy, of transparency and accountability, and finally a world which provides equal development to each of its boys and girls and just social and economic development for all. You can be sure that for this to happen, NGOs, and many of us, will be there.

Thank you.