ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL BEGINS DISCUSSION ON COORDINATED IMPLEMENTATION AND FOLLOW-UP OF UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCES
Press Release
ECOSOC/5726
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL BEGINS DISCUSSION ON COORDINATED IMPLEMENTATION AND FOLLOW-UP OF UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCES
19970717 (Reissued as received.)GENEVA, 16 July (UN Information Service) -- The Economic and Social Council this morning began to review how the aims and promises of global United Nations conferences and summits are being realized.
Participants in the debate agreed that translating the vast array of goals and commitments of global conferences into coordinated action was a major task before the international community. Sarbuland Khan, Officer-in-Charge of the Division for Policy and Coordination and Economic and Social Council Affairs, said the United Nations system had a critical role to play in mobilizing the international response to that challenge.
Mr. Khan recalled that the Council had established the framework for a coordinated approach to follow up world conferences, consisting of, among other things, issuing recommendations on specific issues for the different parts of the United Systems to follow. Within that framework the Council focused last year on poverty eradication. This morning it took up a report of the Secretary-General on coordinated United Nations action on that issue.
Another part of the follow-up to international conferences are the inter-agency task forces and the Standing Committee on Women and Gender Equality established by the Administrative Committee on Coordination of the United Nations. Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said one of these new organs, the Task Force for Basic Social Services for All, has emphasized the need to enhance cooperation among United Nations organizations at the country level, and that there has been considerable progress on its designated topics.
Katherine Hagen, Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organisation, and Mark Malloch-Brown, Vice-President for External Affairs and United Nations Affairs at the World Bank, spoke on behalf of the task forces on Full Employment and Sustainable Livelihoods and on an Enabling Environment, respectively. Meanwhile, Angela King, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, told the Council about the
work of the Standing Committee on women. The Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, Rafeeuddin Ahmed, also addressed the Council.
Following their statements the panelists engaged country delegates in an informal dialogue. The Council resumes its meeting at 5 p.m. to continue discussions on the same item, following the address by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York on his reform proposals.
Statements
SARBULAND KHAN, Officer-in-Charge, Division for Policy and Coordination and Economic and Social Council Affairs, introduced the report of the Secretary-General on the agreed conclusions of the 1996 coordination segments of the Council on the eradication of poverty, part of the integrated and coordinated implementation and follow-up of major international United Nations conferences and summits. He said the cycle of global conferences organized by the United Nations had produced a vast array of goals and commitments, and that the challenge now was to translate them into a coordinated framework for national action and international cooperation. The Secretary-General's report highlighted the specific guidance provided by the Council to the functional commissions and their positive response to it in the areas of poverty eradication and gender perspective. The report recommended that sustained and coordinated follow-up to conferences had to remain a main objective of the system. It also contained more specific recommendations to strengthen the Council's role in promoting sustained and coordination in that critical area. The main task ahead was to take stock of the experience of the three Task Forces established by the Secretary-General to mobilize the United Nations in response to the common conference agenda; and to ensure that their recommendations and guidelines were implemented at the country level.
RAFEEUDDIN AHMED, Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said that global conferences had helped devise internationally agreed policies and programmes on environment and development, social development, women, children, human rights, small island developing States, human settlements, and food security. The result was a comprehensive development agenda with many common themes, and it was important to integrate these internationally agreed programmes into national policies and actions -- something that could occur only if the United Nations could mobilize a coherent response to vast and overlapping development needs. In this context the Organization•s Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) would hold a workshop in September to review the outputs of the inter-agency task forces
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and other bodies; develop proposals on continued coordination and sustainability of follow-up to international conferences; and address the need for further simplification and streamlining of meeting and reporting requirements.
Dr. NAFIS SADIK, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said the Task Force on Basic Social Services for All (BSSA) had emphasized the need to enhance cooperation among United Nations organizations at the country level; during the past year, the task force in its entirety had met twice, the working groups on primary health care, international migration, and on a common approach to national capacity building in tracking child and maternal mortality had met once, and the working group on reproductive health had met twice. There had been considerable progress on the task force's designated topics: a wall chart on basic social services; and advocacy card on "Why Invest in Basic Social Services?"; guidelines for the resident coordinator system; planning of a technical support symposium on international migration; preparation of a report on lessons learned and best practices in donor collaboration; and updating of a compendium of international commitments relevant to poverty and social integration.
KATHERINE HAGEN, Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), said the ACC Task Force on Full Employment and Sustainable Livelihoods had the ILO as its coordinator. While different countries had different specific objectives as regards the goal of full employment, the objective was valid for all countries. The Task Force had carried out country reviews which encompassed issues affecting the level and quality of employment, drawing up a fifteen-point programme as a result. Conclusions included the need to establish a sound macroeconomic policy framework, the need to invest in human capital and the importance of the general level of education and technical competence of the labour force for productivity and international competitiveness. The Task Force had finished its specific mandate, but follow-up implementation were proceeding at the country level.
ANGELA KING, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, said the ACC had established in February 1996 a Standing Inter-agency Committee on Women and Gender Equality to give itself the means to influence the mainstream and end the marginalization of women's concerns and to achieve the full implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. The Committee was tackling a broad range of issues, focusing, among other things, on women and health, gender mainstreaming, and development of tools to ensure accountability, monitoring, and evaluation. It had set up a working group to develop guidelines for budgeting processes and the coding of budgets, and together with its predecessor was contributing in a collaborative fashion to the preparation of reports to intergovernmental bodies.
MARK MALLOCH-BROWN, Vice President for External Affairs and United
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Nations Affairs at the World Bank,said the Task Force on an Enabling Environment was composed of sub-groups on capacity building for governance; the macroeconomic and social framework, and indicators. The first sub-group elaborated a common conceptual framework on governance for country-level programming by the United Nations system in that area, and studied the effects of growing globalization on national governance structures. The sub-group on macroeconomic and social framework focused country case studies on macroeconomic reforms, policies for external trade and investment, the relative roles of the public and private sectors, human capital development strategies and rural development. The main conclusion reached was that coordination could only flourish under a central authority to directly manage the activities of the individual United Nations agencies. As for the sub-group on indicators, it was important because there was a need for the whole system to measure the performance of its bodies and country clients.
The panelists then responded to questions from the delegations of United Republic of Tanzania, Malaysia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Argentina, Spain, Canada, Norway, the United States, Finland and the United Kingdom. Among their comments, Mr. AHMED said the resident coordinator system reported on conference follow-up at the country level. There would be an inter-agency meeting in early September and one of the many issues it would address was how to ensure the follow-up of the international conferences and to keep up the momentum, as well as maintaining set guidelines. There was no let-up in the momentum of the follow-up on the conferences.
Dr. SADIK said the resident coordinator system would put together reports on feedback from the countries on conference follow-up. But then, that information had to be analyzed to provide a more comprehensive picture.
Ms. HAGEN said the task forces shared information, interacted and coordinated action with regional commissions, and that their work was connected to some functional commissions. On the question of the cost of coordination, it was necessary to devote resources to ensure that follow-up occurred. Efforts were oriented to mobilizing resources so that they could be more effectively devoted to action plans, avoiding at the same time putting too many resources into that coordination exercise. Many stressed the need to coordinate and establish new bodies to articulate what had been agreed upon in international conferences. Yet, if new institutions were created on top of the old ones, bureaucracy would be increased. There was a need to streamline and identify the important things that needed to be addressed.
Ms. KING said it was essential for the Council to continue its of
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following up international conferences. But there was also a need for the Council, through its member States, to be more consistent with its policies. That was because sometimes inter-governmental bodies made certain decisions that were not relayed to other bodies. As for the cost of coordination, money spent on travelling was just one element of it. Follow-up on conferences had not declined for lack of vitality, but rather because of limited human resources to deal with the continuing stream of conferences.
Mr. BROWN said there was a tendency for too much coordination, and anything to discipline that and make it lean was good. The cost of coordination was partly financial, but the human cost was much higher. Furthermore, coordination was only successful if all the players provided an input. The real cost would be acceptable as long as results were seen. A stronger Council was necessary to follow-up on global conferences and ensuring annual progress on their goals.
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Correction: In Press Release ECOSOC/5722 issued on 14 July, the name of the representative of Swaziland on page 2 should read MOSES M. DLAMINI.