Five years have passed since world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, affirming both the values they considered essential to international relations in the twenty-first century and the central role of the United Nations in ensuring collective responses to global problems. The 2005 World Summit, to be convened in New York this September, has spurred much reflection on the progress made since then.

To prepare the ground for bold action by the Summit, the Secretary-General released earlier this year In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All. His report exhorts Member States to use the Summit to strengthen the world’s system of collective security, to forge a genuinely global and multisectoral strategy for development, and to intensify efforts to secure human rights and democracy for all peoples. Meeting thereafter in the United Nations System Chief Executives Board (CEB), the Executive Heads of all the system’s organizations expressed strong support for the overall thrust of the Secretary-General’s report and for its basic premise: the need for a comprehensive response to today’s challenges, one which addresses development, security and human rights—and their interlinkages—in a balanced way.

Since 2000 the organizations of the UN system have mobilized, individually and collectively, to help advance the Millennium Declaration’s implementation. Drawing on the “Road Map” provided by the Secretary-General towards this end (A/56/326), the CEB has devised common strategies to support intergovernmental follow-up processes and to drive effective inter-agency responses to the Millennium Declaration and related outcomes of other global conferences.

More recently, the system has begun to focus also on preparations for the forthcoming Summit. Earlier this month, a major inter-agency initiative produced a comprehensive report on the progress achieved thus far in each of the world’s regions towards the Declaration’s development objectives, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2005.

Prepared by the CEB, the present report, One United Nations—Catalyst for Progress and Change, has a complementary aim. The report’s shared reflection elaborates the work of the UN system to help governments meet all of the Declaration’s objectives and considers how to address challenges to further progress on that front. The report shows how the Declaration has brought the UN system together with a new unity of purpose and in a new spirit of cooperation and collaboration.

Much of what has transpired in the world since the Declaration’s adoption demands that we now revitalize consensus on the key challenges and priorities ahead—and that we convert that consensus into collective action. The organizations of the UN system stand together poised to adapt and intensify their efforts, with the support of Member States, and on behalf of them and their peoples, to bring the vision of the Millennium Declaration to life.