THERE SHOULD NOT BE COORDINATION FOR COORDINATION'S SAKE, BUT TO PRODUCE REAL RESULTS FOR DEVELOPMENT, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL PRESIDENT STATES

15 May 1998

Press Release
ECOSOC/5758

THERE SHOULD NOT BE COORDINATION FOR COORDINATION'S SAKE, BUT TO PRODUCE REAL RESULTS FOR DEVELOPMENT, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL PRESIDENT STATES

19980515 Council Concludes Three-Day Discussion On Coordinated Follow-up to United Nations Conferences and Summits

The Economic and Social Council should continue to discuss the development of social indicators and statistics in order to create effective means to measure progress achieved in the implementation of the outcome of United Nations conferences, the Council President said this afternoon as the Council concluded its session on the integrated and coordinated follow-up of major United Nations conferences and summits.

In a closing statement, Juan Somavia (Chile) said the Council must now consider ways to realize its potential in carrying out its coordination functions. There should not be coordination for coordination's sake; it should be undertaken to produce real results for development. The Council had to undertake the work of coordination because there was no other organization in the United Nations that could better perform such a task, he emphasized.

During the Council's concluding general debate, the representative of Indonesia said there still existed a need to improve communication among all actors in the follow-up process, particularly within the Council system. Speaking on behalf of the "Group of 77" developing countries and China, she said the Council should help to implement recommendations and not just "rubber-stamp" recommendations from its subsidiary bodies. A thematic coordination mechanism should be established, and the Council, at its session in July, should develop a more efficient organizational method.

While Governments played a leading role in conference follow up, it was important to foster an integrated and coordinated United Nations response, said the representative of the United Kingdom, speaking on behalf of the European Union. At present, the Council was a long way from realizing its potential in overseeing the system-wide implementation of conference follow- up. It required better inputs from subsidiary bodies and to make better use of them.

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Statements were also made by the representatives of Belarus, Japan, Russian Federation, Republic of Korea, Canada, Mexico and the United States. The Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Nitin Desai, also spoke.

Also this afternoon, the Council held a panel discussion with non- governmental organizations on their role in the follow-up process. NGO representatives challenged the Council to provide leadership to the United Nations and generate the political will to provide the new and additional financial resources that were urgently needed to make the conference process work. The Council's role should be to champion socio-economic causes, focused on human development, and to mobilize a stronger in-house team.

Speaking during the NGO panel were: Esmeralda Brown, of the NGO Steering Committee for the Commission on Sustainable Development; Roberto Bissio, Instituto del Tercer Mundo/Social Watch; Susan Davis, Chairperson of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO); and Sally Findley, International Union for Scientific Study of Population.

During the panel discussion, the Council President called for a moment of recognition in memory of the late Bella Abzug, former President of WEDO.

The Council will meet next at a date to be announced in the Journal.

Council Work Programme

The Economic and Social Council met this afternoon to conclude its session on the integrated and coordinated follow-up of major United Nations conferences and summits. It was scheduled to hold a panel discussion with non-governmental organizations on their role in that process, and hear a summary by the Council President on the three-day session.

Panel Discussion

JUAN SOMAVIA (Chile), President of the Economic and Social Council, introduced the panellists: Susan Davis, Chairperson of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO); Esmeralda Brown, Southern Co-Chairperson of the NGO Steering Committee for the Commission on Sustainable Development; Roberto Bissio, Instituto del Tercer Mundo/Social Watch; and Sally Findley, Center for Population and Family Health, School of Public Health, Columbia University.

ESMERALDA BROWN, Southern Co-Chairperson of the NGO Steering Committee for the Commission on Sustainable Development, said the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the Commission had made meaningful contributions to the deliberations and to the follow-up process. They had also shared and interpreted the good work done at the Commission to millions of peoples around the world.

Integration and coordination of NGO work at the Commission was facilitated by the NGO Steering Committee, which had been created to bring about cooperation between the Northern NGOs and Southern NGOs. For cooperation to be effective, issues of identity, equality of participation, recognition of input and transparency had to be answered. The consensus decisions by the majority of NGOs, both North and South, stated that the Southern NGOs should be afforded the opportunity to speak for themselves and should be independently consulted about their realities and interests.

NGOs were attempting to convert negotiations into reality at the national and regional level in the South, she said. On the regional level, consultations had been initiated to produce NGO regional action plans in support of regional government action plans. In the course of those initiatives, NGOs of the South would consider the cross-cutting issues and involve NGO participants from the other conferences. The NGOs of the South challenged the Council to provide leadership to the United Nations and to generate the political will to provide the new and additional resources that were urgently needed to make the outcome of conferences' process a reality.

ROBERTO BISSIO, Instituto del Tercer Mundo/Social Watch, said one of the constant concerns of the follow-up process was the need to create commitments that were measurable and quantifiable. One problem with the Beijing Platform for Action was that some commitments were not quantifiable or that often there were few efforts to monitor if nations were living up to the commitments. Social Watch was instituted to report each year on the commitments and to quantify

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follow-up to the conferences. It was made up of offices in 50 countries and its workers questioned governments and institutions and discussed with them conference objectives.

He added that Social Watch prepared reports and analyses based on quantifiable commitments. It used 13 indicators to measure development progress around the world. Its studies of 140 countries showed some progress and some failures. The studies also showed the impact of security crises, war, social crises and others such as the Asian financial crisis. Out of the 140 countries, 30 had made no progress in the 1990s and 10 were worse in the area of development. There were also a number of countries that had no available data for measuring the situation.

He said that the Council should commit to the production of social statistics as indicators for development. Measuring follow-up and commitments to conferences was impossible without adequate indicators. The Council should also ensure that resources accompanied recommendations and proposals to support development efforts.

SUSAN DAVIS, Chairperson of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), said WEDO was interested in integrated conference follow-up because of its deep belief in the importance of a holistic response in curing the systemic crisis facing the international community. Conference agreements should be remembered and honoured as normative social laws or precedents to build an agenda. The role of the Council was to champion socio-economic causes, focused on human development, and to mobilize a stronger in-house team.

The role of an individual that represented a government in the Council should be to find like-minded people and act together to mainstream a gender perspective, she said. Yet, it was difficult to achieve gender equality when there was no gender balance in the permanent missions to the United Nations. Many Governments talked of gender equality but were under-performing. WEDO proposed that the Council should suggest to missions that they should become models of gender balance. Also, the Council's subsidiary bodies should commit to having gender-balanced bureaus and to develop a gender balance in decision-making.

The NGO world had tried to turn the conferences into pledging sessions and conferences of commitment, she said. Instead of wasting money by making speeches to empty conference rooms, NGOs encouraged governments to make headlines by taking action. The intention of NGOs was to create accountability from conference to conference, to try to implement that strategy and to raise

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resources. The resource question was a public policy question, because resources came from tax payers and tax exemptions.

The Council should launch an initiative for a people's right to know campaign and a people's responsibility to know campaign, she said. It should publish a list of countries that had not complied and refused or neglected to submit their reports. The Council should let people have access to national action plans via the Internet. One way to bridge the confidence gap between citizens and governments was to make models of countries that had achieved ministerial cooperation, with the input of the United Nations system, so other governments and non-governmental organizations could learn by example.

SALLY FINDLEY, of the International Union for Scientific Study of Population, said her organization conducted demographic research around the world. It had about 2,000 members which had collaborated with the United Nations on population conferences and demographic issues. The International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo was inclusive and NGOs were given a chance to interact with country delegations and with other NGOs. The Cairo Conference reflected the issues related to broader population changes. It also gave greater attention to immigration and health issues than had been given before. Reproductive health was given centre stage over population control and, in that context, attention was given to the larger concept of women's health and reproductive rights.

She said that the Cairo Programme of Action called for linking such issues as women's health and reproductive health. However, members of her organization were dismayed by the lack of attention given to the role of family planning in the process of population stabilization. One challenge of Cairo was to improve understanding of reproductive health and that included family planning issues. Another challenge was to make a shift in quantitative studies to reflect a wide- range of changes in reproductive health. Her organization had expanded its research to reflect that broader agenda.

In response to a question about access granted to NGOs, Ms. BROWN said there was a process for access, that had been enhanced with the emergence of the Commission on Sustainable Development, which had opened many doors. NGOs, in particular from developing countries, had greater access to the Council and achieved greater recognition from civil society. In spite of greater access, there were still limits which should be opened, including NGO participation in various forums of the United Nations, such as the General Assembly and the Security Council. There was also a need to help NGOs so that they could have greater participation in the decision-making process. There was also a need to establish a mechanism that ensured the participation of NGOs from the South. The role of NGOs in developing countries was to work to establish a regional network to guarantee the participation of all members of civil society.

On questions about statistical indicators, Mr. BISSIO said the United

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Nations had a key role to play in defining standards for indicators. Social development indicators had not been gathered in some countries, and NGOs were not informed about anti-poverty plans in other countries.

Regarding access, he said there was a much more open legal framework for NGOs, but there should be access to the Assembly and to Council's commissions. Additional work on the rules for that participation needed to be performed. Southern NGOs had problems travelling to New York or Geneva. In order to intervene with some substance, NGOs required adequate information and background and capacity-building about how the system worked. The NGO Liaison Service in Geneva was helpful as an inter-agency service and it had a degree of independence. While the Service had a lot of credibility in the NGO community, it did not have predictable funding.

In response to how Member States could help NGOs, Ms. DAVIS said the United States, in particular, often let NGOs work in countries where there were no pressing issues to be addressed. The United States' position, through the Security Council and other bodies, often contradicted what was said in meeting rooms, but that was true for many countries. Often what Member States said at the United Nations was contradicted by policies at their capitals. Responding to a question on voluntary initiatives by businesses, she said the United Nations needed to start measuring corporate responsibility through indicators. The answer was not in voluntary commitments. One key indicator that should be developed was on measuring the percentage of people with access to freshwater. There were 80 countries that had not submitted data on that topic, which was the most basic and crucial for human life.

On questions regarding collaboration between the Council and NGOs, Ms. FINDLEY, said that access was a "two-way street" and both sides needed to talk more formally and informally to made collaborative efforts work. Responding to a question on social indicators, she said statistics varied tremendously in their reliability and what they encompassed. The United Nations should move beyond a standard set of statistics and allow countries the flexibility to propose and use statistics that suited them best.

General Concluding Debate

Mr. SOMAVIA (Chile), the Council President, said the Council had heard many interesting and excellent ideas during the three-day session. He said he had read the text prepared by the Secretariat summarizing the session. He would submit it to the Council in due course so it could have a document that would cover all the significant proposals. The document would be something that all representatives could support. He encouraged representatives to share their recommendations and evaluations about what had been achieved during the session. Suggestions for the organization of the discussion during the Council's high- level segment in July should also be submitted.

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PETER GOODENHAM (United Kingdom), speaking on behalf of the European Union, said the session had been a valuable opportunity to hear from representatives of many different areas of the United Nations system, as well as from non- governmental organizations. The format should be repeated in the future, but there should be more interactive debate and dialogue and more time for a genuine question-and-answer process. He acknowledged that it was a challenge for the bureau and the Secretariat to balance the involvement of as many actors as possible and to allow Member States to interact with those actors. Not enough information had been made available to Member States about the panellists and their interventions, and that was not conducive to an interactive dialogue. In addition, perhaps there had been too many panellists, and not all of them were exactly relevant to the issue at hand.

The Council's session had confirmed that while governments had a leading role in conference follow up, it was important to foster an integrated and coordinated United Nations response, he said. The output should be properly disseminated and acted upon by all entities in the United Nations system, and emphasis should be placed on implementation and measuring results. As poverty reduction was a major theme of many conferences, a single target for poverty eradication -- reduction of the world's poor by one-half by the year 2015 -- should be endorsed by the Council and the General Assembly. Coordination at field level was also crucial. The United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) offered a real prospect of closer cooperation, and ways must be found to involve the specialized agencies in that process. The Council had a key role to play in overseeing the system-wide implementation of conference follow-up. At present, the Council was a long way from realizing that potential. It needed better inputs from subsidiary bodies and to make better use of them.

The panel of chairs of the functional commissions recognized that it was time for them to modernize their working practices, he said. The Council was a better vehicle to examine cross-cutting issues than the functional commissions. The output of one functional commission should be made available to others as necessary. The Council should also consider holding an annual meeting between its bureaus and the bureaus of the functional commissions. In addition, the Council should monitor the output of the commissions in the form of a single, short and readable report.

The panel of inter-agency coordinators showed the need for greater interaction between the Council and the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC), he said. The Council should also engage with the specialized agencies more often. At the field level, there was a need for wider dissemination and better use of the output of the task forces. There also should be closer collaboration among the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions at the field level. Gender mainstreaming needed to be improved and monitored. Civil society, in particular the private sector, needed to be more closely involved in conference follow-up.

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Regarding the panel involving representatives from the funds and programmes, he said it was clear that more analytical reporting to the Council was needed. The Council should give them better guidance, and there should be a closer relationship between the normative and operative sides of the United Nations.

The criteria of regional specificity and the resources and mandates of regional commissions should guide the regional commissions in determining how they could contribute to conference follow up, he said. There was a lack of communication between the regional commissions, the Council, and its functional commissions. The Council needed to devote more attention to formulating guidance to ensure that the regional commissions could make a more integrated and coordinated contribution to conference follow up.

PRIANTI GAGARIN DJATMIKO-SINGGIH (Indonesia), speaking on behalf of the "Group of 77" developing countries and China, said the format of the meeting had enabled delegations to engage in an interactive mode of discussion. It allowed people who really knew the issues to share the benefits of their experience. Such forums should be continued in the future. In subsequent session measures should be taken to ensure effective participation of all States in the dialogue. There was a need for more balanced participation from developed and developing countries, especially in the NGO segment.

She added that, while positive efforts had been made for a coordinated follow-up, there was still a need to improve communication among actors, especially within the Council system. The Council should not be just "rubber- stamping" recommendations from its bodies but helping to implement recommendations as well. There was a need for a thematic coordination mechanism in the follow-up to conferences. The Council, at its session in July, should come up with a more efficient coordination method.

ALYAKSANDR SYCHOU (Belarus) said the Council's session had provided a useful dialogue with the main participants in the follow-up process. The major conferences introduced a number of important goals such as alleviating poverty and improving the status of women. To achieve those goals, there was a need for enormous financial resources. Member States had the primary responsibility for providing those resources.

He added that a greater role should be played by the resident coordinators. The United Nations should take steps to strengthen that position emphasizing activities at the country level. It was also necessary to improve the interaction between the heads of agencies and the resident coordinators.

HIDEKI ITO (Japan) said there should be efforts to consider the

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recommendations made at this session and implement them in the Council. There remained a need to further discus United Nations funds and programmes and the role of the ACC. Coordination and implementation at the field level should be increased as well as communication among various United Nations bodies. The role of civil society should be enhanced. The report of this session could be considered in the Council's session in July and a resolution be adopted based on that report.

VASSILI NEBENZIA (Russian Federation) said his Government agreed with the many assessments contained in the impressive statement of the representative of the European Union. The session had been a useful and successful initiative, providing an overall view of the situation and helping the Council in making recommendations. It also represented the best way for the Council to prepare for the discussion of the matter at its substantive session. The experience could by applied to other topics which were discussed by the Council. Hearing the views of representatives from the ACC was enriching for the Council, and hopefully discussion between the two bodies had been enriching for the ACC, as well. It allowed for an effective interactive machinery between members of the ACC and the Council which could be a basis for a realistic and equal relationship between the two bodies.

HYE RAN YOO (Republic of Korea) said the session had made it possible for the Council to engage in a rich exchange of views that should lead to better communication between the Council and its subsidiary bodies. The panel discussions were informative, and the scope was extraordinary. The interaction with the panellists was a highly useful exercise for the Council's coordinating and guiding role in ensuring integrated follow-up to the conferences. The session was also an excellent exercise in ensuring productive discussion during the Council's main segment, and it could lead to improved coordination and communication between the Council and the ACC. Panels pointed out the cost of a lack of coordination, which led to overlapping and duplication. There was also a lack of integrated funding arrangements for the inter-agency coordinating mechanisms.

ROSS HYNES (Canada) said the session had been a positive exercise that should be repeated and built upon. The success of the exercise was crucial to the future and credibility of the Council. It held promise for the Council in carving out a value-added role in the United Nations system. When the Council discussed coordination, it should be to ensure that the limited available resources were put to the most effective possible use and to advance the broad agenda set by the global conferences. The Council should focus on results, and, in that context, it should hear more presentations from resident coordinators.

The key to the success of the follow-up process was in improving communication between the parts of the system and in improving transparency, he said. Canada would like to see the ACC task forces establish successor

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arrangements within the ACC. The success of follow-up to conferences in the future would also require more serious work by governments. Governments had to behave consistently in different parts of the system, and they should engage the representatives of governing bodies of the various specialized agencies. The involvement of non-governmental organizations was positive. The results and implementation of the global conferences would not be as successful without the work of civil society, in particular of non-governmental organizations.

MAURICIO ESCANERO (Mexico) said the session was an innovative exercise that should be repeated, and the lively debate had allowed for a flow of spontaneous ideas. On the whole, the session had shown clearly the challenges facing the Council as it played a coordinating role in the follow-up to the conferences and summits. The Council President's statement should be a valuable corollary on the results of the session.

BETTY KING (United States) said improving the relationship between the Council and its subsidiary bodies was important and there needed to be more focus on that issue. One troubling aspect that emerged from the discussions was that there was not a common definition of coordination. Those who referred to it as integration were closer because it was a stronger verb, but the United Nations community should agree on what was meant by coordination. There was also too much focus on the costs of coordination processes. The long-term benefits that coordination would bring went beyond the cost consideration. There should be greater efforts in developing a range of social indicators that agencies could choose from. One broad set of social indicators should be sufficient for use by the various bodies.

On the forum for the discussion, she asked that such meetings should be held in the Council Chamber where participants could see each other when they spoke. Such an environment would lead to a genuine dialogue.

NITIN DESAI, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said a very clear message was the importance of greater interaction between the ACC and the Council. That was an issue that needed to be addressed and it was not covered by any of the reform processes. There was also a need to move beyond processes into substance and actions. It was clear that the Council should focus on cross-sectoral issues, but further proposals for actions were

needed. One possible action was the use of indicators to measure progress in conference follow-up. The Council may want to consider holding a session on the use indicators.

JUAN SOMAVIA (Chile), the Council President, said the interactive mode of discussion in the session had been very positive and there had been a very useful exchange of views. The absence of statements had been welcomed and had helped

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to avoid listening to written speeches. There had been a real debate and dialogue instead of passive listening to statements. Another room could be considered for subsequent discussions to provide a more conducive atmosphere for discussion, but space was limited in the Economic and Social Council Chamber.

He added that it was clear that the Council should pursue discussions on coordinated follow-up to conferences. The importance of social indicators and statistics emerged during the discussions. The Council should continue to discuss the development of social indicators and statistics with a view to creating effective means to measure progress achieved. Dialogues on follow-up should be continued even if they focused on highly technical points. Such technical discussions would have to be organized because they were essential in development actions.

The discussions had demonstrated the enormous potential of the Council, he said. It must now consider ways to make that potential a reality in carrying out important actions. Among those actions was coordination. There could not be coordination for coordination's sake, it should be undertaken to produce real results for development. The Council had to undertake the work of coordination because there was no other organization in the United Nations that could better perform such a task. The Council should also consider how its main session could function in a more interactive way to allow everyone to share their views freely.

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