$944 MILLION PLEDGED FOR UN DEVELOPMENT FUNDS AND PROGRAMMES AT TWO-DAY CONFERENCE
Press Release
DEV/2172
GA/9348
$944 MILLION PLEDGED FOR UN DEVELOPMENT FUNDS AND PROGRAMMES AT TWO-DAY CONFERENCE
19971105 Some $944 million in real or anticipated contributions were pledged for development activities of the United Nations system at the two-day pledging conference which concluded this morning.A total of 59 countries and observers addressed the event, with 47 announcing pledges and 12 making provisional pledges for the Organization's funds and programmes during the 1997 Pledging Conference for Development Activities.
Including estimates of the pledges yet to be announced, a total of $800 million was pledged to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and approximately $40 million for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Pledges worth approximately $68 million were received by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and approximately $36 million was pledged to other United Nations trust funds and programmes. (Pledges made today appear later in this press release; yesterday's pledges are contained in Press Release DEV/2170-GA/9344.)
In concluding remarks, James Gustave Speth, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said UNDP's core resources had declined by 9 per cent in both 1996 and 1997. That decline was hitting the poor the hardest, and would cause the elimination of valuable initiatives, the undermining of the incentive element of programming arrangements, and the wrong signals being sent regarding the importance of the United Nations as a development institution.
Of the pledges announced during the Conference, the United Nations Volunteers was expected to receive $7 million, he said. The United Nations Revolving Fund for Natural Resources Exploration was expected to receive $1 million in pledges.
The Executive Director of UNICEF, Carol Bellamy, said children must be at the centre of development for they were the most important resources for the future. The world looked to UNICEF as a moral force for children. The international community must redouble its efforts on behalf of children.
The UNFPA Deputy Executive Director, Hirofumi Ando, said many industrial countries had recently reduced their financial support for population activities. For the UNFPA, that reduction in income could not come at a worse time. The Fund had recently redesigned its programming process and taken concrete steps to improve programme delivery in the field. Every contribution was being invested to improve the programmes and activities of the UNFPA.
The Officer-in-Charge of the New York office of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), Aliye P. Celik, said the contributions from developing countries underscored the importance they attached to the human settlements sector and to the work of the Centre. The Centre would continue to improve the living conditions of people.
Pledges were made by the representatives of South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, Mauritania, Maldives, Tunisia, Romania, Malaysia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Andorra, Malawi, Sudan, Russian Federation, Pakistan, Philippines, Nigeria and Jamaica.
The representatives of Indonesia and Singapore made additions to their countries' pledges of yesterday.
The representatives of Japan, Uganda, Spain, Cyprus and Mexico declared their countries' intention to contribute at a later date.
Also, this morning, the Conference adopted its report for the two-day meeting.
Officers of the pledging conference were Jacob Botwe Wilmot (Ghana), President, and Svetlozar Panov (Bulgaria), Vice-President.
Concluding Statements
JAMES GUSTAVE SPETH, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said official development assistance (ODA) had dropped to its lowest level in 1996. Therefore, the international community had an important collective obligation to reaffirm its commitment to development assistance and multilateral development cooperation and the role of the United Nations in development cooperation. One of the defining international concerns continued to be the struggle for equity. That concern had not lessened in the past year. Most developing countries were still striving to pull themselves out of the poverty trap, and eliminating absolute poverty was still a challenge for many countries.
Eradicating poverty meant unleashing human capacities to trigger economic growth which enabled the benefits of globalization to be more equally spread, he said. Most developing countries still relied on ODA to combat poverty, and only a few reaped large benefits from increased flows of private
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financing. There remained a large need for development cooperation and for reform of capacity-building measures to take advantage of globalization and to attract technology and trade opportunities.
It was a myth that increased private flows could replace official development assistance, he said. The ODA and private financing could not be seen as alternative paths or substitutes. Commitments had been made repeatedly by the international community to increase ODA and to support the role of the United Nations in international development. Unfortunately, the reality had been different from those statements and ODA had fallen dramatically in recent years.
The UNDP had worked hard to become better at responding to the needs of the programme countries that it served, he said. The Programme had gone through a process of fundamental change to initiate measures to increase effectiveness, accountability and efficiency. As a result of those cross- cutting actions, the UNDP had reduced its core administrative budget by 19 per cent, and it was much better equipped to address the evolving needs of the poorest countries and to make the most efficient and affective use of resources given to it by the international community.
The core resources of the UNDP had continued to decline in recent years, and that situation was the single most critical issue facing the Programme, he said. Core resources declined by 9 per cent in both 1996 and 1997. Combined with other miscellaneous resources, the UNDP would have more than $800 million in core resources for 1997, but its Executive Board had set $1.1 billion as the goal for core resources for 1997. It was disappointing that the UNDP was unable to meet its objectives in certain countries.
He said the decline in core resources was hitting the poor the hardest, and would lead to the elimination of valuable initiatives, undermining the incentive element of programming arrangements, and sending the wrong signals regarding the importance of the United Nations as a development institution. Forty per cent of the decline in core resources was due to the strong United States dollar; 44 per cent was due to real funding cuts coming principally from major economy countries, members of the "Group of Seven" major industrialized countries; and 16 per cent was due to other factors.
CAROL BELLAMY, UNICEF Executive Director, said children must be at the centre of development as children were the most important resources for the future. The decline in ODA and the rising value of the United States dollar had reduced the resources available to UNICEF programmes, such as the elimination of child labour. Child labour was one of many issues that UNICEF had been addressing. The world looked to UNICEF as a moral force for children.
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Assuring Member States that the resources they had pledged or provided would be effectively and efficiently utilized, she said UNICEF would continue to ensure that its expenditures were appropriate to the priority needs of each country and that the impacts of its programmes were clearly monitored. The challenge was immense, millions of people were still living in poverty and over half of them were children. Absolute poverty continued to rise. UNICEF was more needed now than ever. The international community must redouble its efforts on behalf of children. Development assistance was more needed now than ever. The majority of developed countries should follow the examples of
Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands in earmarking at least 1 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) for development assistance.
HIROFUMI ANDO, Deputy Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) had produced a global consensus that placed reproductive health and reproductive rights at the centre of the issue of population and development. The strong momentum caused by the ICPD was being maintained by many developing countries that were translating the Programme of Action into many practical action programmes. Yet, at the same time, many industrial countries were reducing financial support for population. For the UNFPA, that reduction in income could not come at a worse time. The Fund had recently redesigned its programming process and taken concrete steps to improve programme delivery in the field. Every contribution was being invested to improve programmes and activities of the UNFPA.
In 1996, the UNFPA total income was about $309 million, he said. That total would have been higher without significant losses due to the strong performance of the United States dollar against European currencies. In 1997, there had been a 9 per cent decline in income, due to the continuing strength of the dollar and the reduction of the contributions of four major donor countries to the UNFPA. The Fund was deeply concerned about the 1997 resource picture, and it was grateful to its donor family of over 80 countries.
So far 42 countries had pledged a total of approximately $68 million dollars to the UNFPA for 1998, he said. He thanked the Netherlands for its leadership role in the field of reproductive health and population. The UNFPA was also grateful to the countries that had increased their contributions for 1997: Norway, Finland, Switzerland, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea. He also thanked the donor developing countries of Pakistan, India, Thailand and Indonesia.
ALIYE P. CELIK, Officer-in-Charge, United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), New York Office, said the contributions from developing countries underscored the importance which they attached to the human settlements sector and to the work Habitat was doing to assist them.
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She said the Centre saw the pledges not only as an indication of support for its work and follow-up to the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), but also as an invitation to Habitat to make even greater strides in its efforts to assist countries, especially developing countries, to improve the living conditions of their people. Habitat remained committed to its mandated objectives and the contributions pledged during the Conference would unquestionably strengthen its ability to continue doing so.
JACOB B. WILMOT (Ghana), President of the Conference, said the role played by the United Nations operational activities for development had become even more significant with the continued declining levels of ODA. Due note had been taken of the countries that had been unable to announce pledges due to incomplete budget processes. Regarding the declining levels of core resources, he called for efforts towards establishing a funding mechanism to ensure more reliable and predictable funding for operational activities. That was the only way to ensure that the operational activities achieved the objectives for which they had been established.
Pledges Made
Andorra
UNDP $ 10,000 UNICEF $ 12,000 UNFPA $ 6,000 UN Youth Fund $ 6,000 UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture $ 5,000 UNEP $ 6,000 WFP $ 6,000 UNAIDS $ 9,000
Côte d'Ivoire
UNICEF 3,000,000 CFA francs UNFPA $5,000
Jamaica
UNDP 600,000 Jamaican dollars UN Habitat $4,000 INSTRAW $1,000 UNEP 210,000 Jamaican dollars WFP $2,000
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Lao People's Democratic Republic
UNDP $21,168 UNICEF $ 5,000 UNFPA $ 1,000 UN Capital Development Fund $ 1,500 UN Drug Control Programme $ 1,000 UNEP $ 2,000
Malawi
UNDP 180,000 kwacha UNICEF 60,000 " UNFPA 98,625 " UN Capital Development Fund 60,000 "
Malaysia
UNDP $385,000 UNICEF $ 84,000 UN Drug Control Programme $ 20,000
Maldives
UNDP $ 5,000 UNICEF $ 5,000 UNFPA $ 2,000 UNIFEM $ 1,700 UN Capital Development Fund $ 2,000 INSTRAW $ 500 UNRWA $ 1,000
Mauritania
UNDP $ 7,000 " 1,000,000 ouguiyas UNICEF $ 3,500 UNFPA $ 3,500
Nigeria
UNFEM $ 5,000
Pakistan
UNDP 24,400,000 Pakistan rupees UNFPA $500,000 UN Drug Control Programme $ 1,000
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Pakistan (continued)
UN Fund for Science and Technology for Development 900,000 Pakistan rupees UNITAR $10,000 UN Habitat $ 6,005
Philippines
UNICEF $140,500 UNFPA 2,000,000 pesos UNEP $ 17,500 WFP $ 70,000
Romania
UNDP 412,631,250 lei UNICEF 14,723,625 " UNFPA 6,480,470 " UN Centre for Information and Documentation in Bucarest 275,981,250 "
Russian Federation
UNDP $450,000 UNICEF $500,000 UNFPA $150,000 UN Habitat $ 90,000
South Africa
UNICEF 200,000 rand UNFPA 50,000 " UNIFEM 100,000 " Account for Financing Plan of Action to Combat Desertification $ 5,000 UN Drug Control Programme $ 8,000 INSTRAW 100,000 rand
Sudan
UNDP $ 30,000
Tunisia
UNDP 257,000 dinars " local costs 150,000 " (in kind) UNICEF 36,000 " UNFPA 25,000 "
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Tunisia (continued)
UN Capital Development Fund 2,732 dinars UNITAR 1,960 " UN Volunteers 5,000 " UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture 1,500 " UN Trust Fund for Social Defence 1,500 " UN Habitat 976 " UN Drug Control Programme 1,000 " UNRWA 12,000 " UNHCR 5,000 " UN Sub-Account for the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People under the Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations 1,000 "
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