For more than half a century the Annual DPI/NGO Conference, organized by the Department of Public Information and the Non-Governmental Organizations associated with it, has highlighted the very concrete ways in which the United Nations and NGO partners can collaborate to advance our common agendas. Over the years, NGO attendance at this conference has increased steadily from a few hundred representatives in the 1940s to more than 2,000 this year. Their direct participation, together with UN policy makers as well as representatives from Governments, academia, the media and other sectors of civil society, make this a unique and particularly dynamic forum for the exchange of information, opinion and experience.
This year, I am especially gratified to welcome you to the United Nations and to the 52nd Annual DPI/NGO Conference on Challenges of a Globalized World: Finding New Directions. The challenges posed by globalization are enormous. It is not only fitting, therefore, but imperative that the United Nations should be at the centre of the debate on the directions in which globalization will evolve in the coming years.

While it appears that the process of globalization is inevitable, it is by no means beyond our control. The United Nations has no higher priority than to explore and support ways of ensuring that the forces unleashed by globalization can benefit people everywhere. To achieve this, we need to draw on many different fields of expertise. Whatever your particular focus -- human rights, good governance, peace and security or sustainable development -- all of you in the voluntary sector have indispensable insights to offer.

We will have an unprecedented opportunity to channel and synthesize those insights at next year's Millennium Forum, which will bring together non-governmental organizations from all over the world to address the great problems of the coming century.

I am confident that this last DPI/NGO Conference of the 20th century will make a valuable contribution to that debate. I wish you every success in your deliberations and I look forward to welcoming you back in the next millennium.

Kofi Annan
United Nations

Accreditation
Form 2006

22-23 Feb. 2006 Annual DPI/NGO Orientation
Programme