Glamourous Royals Rania and Máxima Descend upon New York

The Prince of Orange and Princess Máxima of the Netherlands were in New York this week to participate in various panels and meetings revolving around water, sanitation and finance. On Monday, Princess Máxima took part in a panel entitled “Microcredit, Microfinance, Inclusive Finance: Building on Success for Innovative Solutions for Poverty Eradication in Africa.” Below are some highlights from her speech before the panel.

“During the International Year of Microcredit, the United Nations asked me and 24 other distinguished colleagues from a variety of professional arenas including finance, academia, development, government and the regulatory community, to become a part of a new Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors.”

“Our task was to identify and define the key issues limiting access to financial services and advise the United Nations and its member states on strategies and concrete steps to remove these constraints – a task we gladly took on.”
“Inclusive finance” is so much more than microcredit. There are more than 2.1 billion “unbanked” people around the globe - people who do not have access to even the most basic types of financial services that we often take for granted: bank accounts, insurance, savings, mortgages, money transfers and – yes—credit.”

Meanwhile, her husband, Prince Willem-Alexander gave speeches before various panels such as the Round Table on Health and Education, High-Level Event. Below are some highlights from his round table address.

“As chairman of his advisory board on water and sanitation I feel privileged that the Secretary-General offered me the opportunity to speak at one of the Round Tables, especially as he also allowed me to choose which discussion I wished to address. This shows that he shares my concern about the water and sanitation crisis, suffered by more than 40% of the World’s population.”

“You might think I am in the wrong room right now and should be speaking at roundtable number 3 on Environmental Sustainability which is where MDG 7 target 3 would seem to belong with conventional wisdom prevailing. I prefer a more unconventional out of the box approach and chose this Round Table – on Health and Education – to speak about water and sanitation because you cannot achieve the MDG’s in these areas without improving water, sanitation and hygiene. The lack of access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation causes lasting negative effects on the health and development of human lives. Those effects will only increase if we do not intervene…”

“The sanitation target is linked to health and education in so many ways. MDG 4 for instance, reducing child mortality: it is estimated that the lack of access to sanitation causes at least a quarter of all child deaths in the developing world. MDG 5 speaks of improving maternal health: the World Health Organisation calculates the impact of the lack of safe drinking water and basic sanitation to be around 529,000 maternal deaths a year. And MDG 6 is aimed at combating diseases: WHO estimates that improving water, sanitation and hygiene has the potential to prevent at least nine per cent of the disease burden.”

“Besides these synergies with health, we can see an unmistakable relationship between education and the targets on water and sanitation. To achieve MDG 2, universal primary education: by meeting the water and sanitation targets, an estimated 272 million school days would be recovered which are currently missed by school children suffering the effects of waterborne or sanitation-related diseases and related problems.”

Whilst the Dutch royals were expounding on their areas of expertise, Queen Rania of Jordan was fulfilling engagements close to her heart. She attended various panels, meetings and award ceremonies such as the Class of 2015: Education For All pledging summit , the Condé Nast Traveler World Savers Awards, the Global Campaign for Education event, the UNDP World Business and Development Awards and In My Name: MDG Call to Action event.

On Tuesday, the queen received the David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award at the Synergos University for a Night event. She was recognized for her endeavors in “education, health, youth, and the environment.” Rania was also praised for her core efforts in the areas of microfinance, family issues and cultural understanding.

For more information on Synergos, visit the official website.

Photos: ANP/Rene Clement, Petra