Dr. Peter Preziosi, PhD, RN, CAE
President and CEO, TruMerit
Newly elected members of the Board of Directors, leaders of our Substantive Committees, and distinguished colleagues—
Thank you. I accept the honor of serving as President of CoNGO with profound humility and deep gratitude. I am mindful of the legacy of visionary leaders who built this organization into a vital bridge between civil society and the United Nations, and I am especially grateful to President Bautista for his steadfast stewardship and his call for transformative multilateralism. I accept this responsibility as a shared mandate — entrusted to all of us —at a decisive moment for our community and for multilateral cooperation.
Our theme for this 28th General Assembly — “Defining the Present, Securing a Shared Future, Asserting Civil Society Participation at the United Nations” — is not a slogan; it is a charge. To define the present, we must see clearly the world as it is: a world of converging crises and rising skepticism, where poverty, hunger, climate change, inequity, threats to peace, access to health, and assaults on human rights demand boldness and unity. To secure a shared future, we must act together — deliberately, creatively, and with moral courage. And to assert civil society participation at the United Nations, we must strengthen CoNGO’s unique role: convening the breadth of NGO expertise and channeling it into the heart of UN deliberations.
CoNGO stands at a crossroads — and so does multilateralism. Retreat is not an option. Renewal is our calling. I pledge to lead with the three C’s — Convene, Communicate, Collaborate — and to do so with our Board of Directors and through our Substantive NGO and Regional Committees – from New York to Vienna, Geneva to Nairobi, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America–Caribbean, and the Arab States. We will align strategies, synchronize calendars, and amplify each other’s strengths so that our whole is greater than the sum of our parts.
Convene. We will sharpen CoNGO’s convening power by making our committees the most inclusive, active, and impactful forums for NGO collaboration in the UN ecosystem. We will cultivate regular cross-committee dialogues on cross-cutting agendas—health and climate, peace and development, human rights and technology (including the ethics of AI and digital transformation)—so that our contributions reflect the complexity of the challenges at hand. We will build agendas that welcome both global networks and grassroots practitioners, ensuring that diverse voices—especially smaller and under-resourced organizations—shape the solutions we advance.
Communicate. We will modernize how we listen and how we share. That means a shared calendar of
engagements, timely briefings, and smarter digital tools to gather insights, synthesize perspectives, and amplify member expertise. We will make transparency our default and accountability our culture, clarifying roles, expectations, and outcomes while celebrating progress across our more than 500 member NGOs. Our communications will not be a broadcast — they will be a dialogue that informs action.
Collaborate. We will break down silos and move from intention to outcome through targeted,
time-bound collaboration tracks — small, diverse teams co-creating policy inputs, joint statements,
toolkits, and learning resources aligned to UN processes. We will invest in practical capacity-building, so more NGOs can navigate status parameters, procedures, and opportunities with confidence and speed. Collaboration is not just how we work; it is how we win credibility with partners and impact for
communities. These commitments must translate into impact and action. Here, I am proud to spotlight a concrete step forward. TruMerit, has developed a Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Survey to capture how our member NGOs are advancing the 2030 Agenda — through independent projects, collaborative networks, and innovative partnerships.
This survey will do more than offer a snapshot. It will showcase success stories, measure progress, and identify areas needing greater support. We will present the findings to this General Assembly, and we will use them to guide CoNGO’s contributions to the UN80 commemorations and to inform our inputs to multiple UN events in 2026. In doing so, we will ground our advocacy in evidence, elevate what works, and recommend resources toward the gaps that matter most.
To make this work, we will review and refresh our internal infrastructure—not to digitize for digitization’s sake, but to connect our people, align our efforts, and track our collective impact. We will create simple, shared ways to see progress across committees and regions, identify synergies, and avoid duplication. When something works in one committee, we will scale what’s promising across others. When a new partner offers complementary capacity, we will welcome them into the mission.
Colleagues, CoNGO’s strength does not reside in any single NGO or single voice. Our power lies in how we convene, how we communicate, and how we collaborate — how we turn the wisdom of many into the action of one community. We must be the beacon that keeps peace, sustainable development, human rights, gender equity, and social justice at the center of the global agenda. We must also be the backbone — the steady, reliable conduit through which civil society knowledge flows into UN processes with rigor, timeliness, and practical effect.
In the weeks ahead, you will see us work shoulder-to-shoulder: the President with the Board of Directors, the Board with our Substantive Committees, and all of us with our regional counterparts. We will listen first, align second, and act third — and then we will learn and iterate. We will set clear priorities, map them to UN milestones, and track outcomes we can stand behind. And we will keep our doors open — to new members, new ideas, and new forms of partnership that stretch our imagination and multiply our impact.
Let us measure our success not by the number of meetings we hold, but by the policies we shape, the communities we uplift, and the partnerships we forge. Let us aim not only to define the present, but to secure a shared future worthy of those who will inherit it. And let us assert civil society participation at the United Nations not as a plea, but as a principle — essential to legitimate, effective, and ethical multilateralism.
To every committee chair, every regional lead, every member organization, every volunteer who keeps this community moving: thank you. Your work is the heartbeat of CoNGO. I will do my part — with humility, with urgency, and with steadfast commitment — to ensure that your expertise reaches the forums where it can change lives.
Together — Convene, Communicate, Collaborate — we will define this present with clarity, secure our
shared future with purpose, and assert civil society’s indispensable role at the United Nations with
conviction.
I am honored to serve you. Now, let’s get to work.
Thank you.