New Zealand is a founding member of the United Nations, having taken part in the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. Since its formation, New Zealand has been actively engaged in the organisation. New Zealand sees the UN as a means of collective security, mainly in the South Pacific region, particularly because New Zealand is a relatively small nation and has very little control over much larger countries or significant events. The UN was also seen as a way of safe-guarding New Zealand, a somewhat fledgling country at the time. The successor New Zealand governments also felt that the United Nations was an important political and military ally to have as it was an integral part of New Zealand's "Collective Security". New Zealand represents itself and the other constituent countries of the Realm of New Zealand (Niue and the Cook Islands) in the United Nations. The Cook Islands and Niue have full treaty-making capabilities recognized by United Nations Secretariat in 1992 and 1994 respectively and have the option of seeking membership in the United Nations. The Cook Islands and Niue are both associated states of the Realm and members of specialized agencies of the UN such as WHO and UNESCO. They have since become parties to a number of international treaties which the UN Secretariat acts as a depositary for, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and are treated as non-member states. Both the Cook Islands and Niue have expressed a desire to become a UN member state, but New Zealand has said that they would not support the application without a change in their constitutional relationship, in particular their right to New Zealand citizenship. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark headed the United Nations Development Programme from 2009 to 2017, in which role she was the most senior New Zealander in the UN bureaucracy. In 2016, she stood for the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations, but was unsuccessful. History New Zealand's membership of the United Nations as a founder was a considerable change in foreign policy, although strongly supported by the First Labour Government which in 1935 had a firm belief in the concept of collective security through the League of Nations. Previous governments had put all their political and military reliance in the "Mother Country" (the United Kingdom),