Mogadishu - Your Excellency, Mr. President and Your Excellency, the Prime Minister; Your Excellencies in general.My goodness I am almost lost for words. The Foreign Minister’s reading of the communiqué was the fastest I have ever heard. But my goodness what a lot we have achieved. I want to talk about three things; firstly why the HLPF is important; second I want to attempt another metaphor; and third there are a lot of thank yous to say.

This has been the largest international conference in modern times in Somalia, with 32 international delegations here. It is a landmark because of all the discussions and agreements made in the last two days. I will not try to summarise them as we just heard them in the communiqué. The communiqué refers to other key documents, such as the guiding principles for an electoral process in 2016 and the UN Security Council Resolution 2232.

We have made important agreements and commitments and we have set important deadlines. Let us keep them. Let us respect them now. We are against the clock, there is a lot to be done. We have identified the key things, politically, security-wise and socio-economically. So for goodness sake, let us do them!

I shared with you my metaphor of a river and crocodiles earlier in the week. Well, I have another metaphor related to building a new nation. When you are building a house you do it in three steps, you build the foundations first, strong foundations, then you put up the walls and then you put on the roof. There is really no way to do it differently.

In Somalia the foundations are federalism, and the formation of states. We have made good progress on that but it is important to finalise things. The walls are formed by the new Constitution, which needs to be revised so it will hold up the new Federal Somalia. The roof was going to be the democratic elections in 2016. Here we have all recognised that putting a heavy roof on when the walls and foundations are not strong enough would be risky. But there will have to be a roof. We must now agree on the best kind of roof we can achieve in 2016.

I have used that metaphor before, but sometimes forgotten three important ingredients. Building a house is an expensive business. It requires money, funding. It is a costly process and the money must be used wisely and all of it needs to be used in a well accounted and transparent way.

The second ingredient is cement, which sticks things together. For us that cement is inclusion. Not just the spirit of inclusion, it is real inclusion, tangible inclusion. It goes across the board, from involving all stakeholders - Parliament, Civil Society, the Regional Administrations and importantly women as well.

On the inclusion of women the point made here has been very clear. Nobody is able to point the finger at anybody else. When we look around the table, international partners, as well as Somali institutions have poor representation of women. At the next HLPF you might have a new female SRSG, or in the future a female President of Somalia.

The last ingredient is courage. We can all be proud of the courage we display. We are all taking risks on a day-to-day basis to try and help the Somali people build a better future. Our Somali partners take most of that risk. But international partners do as well. I salute our courage - physical, moral and intellectual. For we are forging something that has never been done anywhere else in the world. The New Deal in Somalia is the most advanced, the most comprehensive of all agreements ever taken by the international community and a fragile country. It is cutting edge.

Finally, I want to give my thanks. Starting by thanking all the participants that came, and those that played a key role in the PSG Working Groups throughout the year. I would like to thank AMISOM for the security they have provided and for their constant assistance. I would like to thank UNSOA, which is an organisation primarily focused on supporting AMISOM, but which has found time to help organize and stage a conference as complex as this. I would like to thank UNSOM and in particular the New Deal and Stabilisation team led by Sofia. There are too many others to mention. On the Federal Government side, my greatest thanks to the President, the Prime Minister, and particularly the ACU and Dr. Awes.

I think we go away thinking this has been a useful conference, well organised. We go away with a renewed sense of enthusiasm, determination and commitment to making a difference.