SECOND COMMITTEE HEARS PANELLISTS ON CAPACITY-BUILDING, OTHER SPEAKERS APPRAISE ASPECTS OF OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT

15 October 1998

Press Release
GA/EF/2826

SECOND COMMITTEE HEARS PANELLISTS ON CAPACITY-BUILDING, OTHER SPEAKERS APPRAISE ASPECTS OF OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT

19981015 The emphasis on results needed to be modified to emphasize sustainable and long-term capacity-building said Peter Morgan, Senior Consultant on Capacity-Building, as the Second Committee this afternoon held a panel discussion on building national capacities. The panel was part of the Committee's consideration of operational activities for development.

Some incentive-based activities were biased against capacity development, Mr. Morgan said. While results-based management was popular with donor countries, measuring results was only one form of arriving at a judgement. Some positive results were not measurable.

On the evaluation of capacity-building programmes, Roger Maconick, Coordinator of Impact Evaluation of the Development Cooperation Policy Branch of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that impact evaluation provided encouragement for all United Nations agencies to gear their work towards results. In general, problems with evaluations included a lack of data, and a lack of authenticity or credibility of those doing the evaluation.

Eduardo Wiesner, former Minister of Finance of Colombia and former Executive Director of the World Bank, said that while institutions were supposed to have right policy objectives, good intentions were not enough to get things done. Severe political and institutional policy restrictions had a tendency to block development gains. Rajaona Andriamananjara, Director of IMATEP, Madagascar, said that much capacity work had been embodied in individuals and had not yet been institutionalized.

Alfred Haemmerli, Chief, Division of Development Cooperation of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that independent evaluation of capacity-building projects had produced important information on development programmes, not only on capacity-building, but on such other issues as the need for common definitions for a variety of instruments.

Also this afternoon, the Committee heard statements on operational activities for development. The representative of Japan said that operational activities for development were facing immense challenges. If they were to be effective, their flexibility and responsiveness to development requirements

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would have to be increased. At the same time, the overall coherence of policies to achieve optimal use of resources and greatest impact should be enhanced. That could be accomplished by identifying what had been achieved in the past three years and what remained to be done.

The representative of Jamaica said that developing countries could not wait for funding to be delivered to their doorstep, but must go out and actively raise complementary funds from all available sources. Those sources might include the private sector -- national, regional and international -- as well as local communities and other actors in civil society.

Statements were also made by the representatives of India, Algeria and Ukraine.

Representatives of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) also spoke.

The Second Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. on Friday, 16 October, to resume its consideration of operational activities for development.

Committee Work Programme

The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) met this afternoon to resume its consideration of operational activities for development. (For background information see Press Release GA/EF/2824 of 14 October.) It also planned to hold a panel discussion on "Building national capacities: Some lessons". Participating in the panel would be: Eduardo Wiesner, former Minister of Finance of Colombia and former Executive Director of the World Bank; Rajaona Andriamananjara, Director of IMATEP, Madagascar; Peter Morgan, senior consultant on capacity building; and Roger Maconick, Coordinator of Impact Evaluation of the Development Cooperation Policy Branch of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Statements

HASSAN BAHLOULI, Senior Adviser to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), said that Member States had called for steps to decentralize the activities of the organization and to strengthen its field representation through the delegation of authority. The UNIDO business plan, he noted, adopted at the 1997 General Conference, called for improvement of functional and programmatic coordination between UNIDO and field representatives and those of other United Nations bodies. Subsequently, UNIDO decided to integrate its country offices in a unified United Nations representation whenever feasible and cost-effective.

He added that, in January 1988, UNIDO Director-General Carlos Magarinos convened the first global meeting of UNIDO country directors to discuss interaction between UNIDO headquarters and the field, delegation of administrative and financial authority to the field, and cooperation with organizations in the United Nations system. Following the global meeting, the Director-General decided that UNIDO would fully interact with the United Nations system through joint programmes, full participation in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) process and would contribute to the development of common tools to strengthen operational activities at the country level.

DIGVIJAY SINGH (India) said it was India's impression that the use of technical cooperation among developing countries (TCDC) in the overall operational activities of the United Nations had been far from optimal. To some extent, under-use of the potential of TCDC could be attributed to lack of information about the exponential growth of capacities in the South. That needed to be corrected. Increased resources must be provided throughout the United Nations system for such mutually beneficial cooperation between and among developing countries. Furthermore, he added, in the context of diminishing resources for operational activities, the procurement of goods and services from within developing countries must be vigorously pursued.

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Continuing, he said greater emphasis must be placed on gender issues in the conduct of operational activities of the United Nations.

NORIKO SUZUKI (Japan) said that operational activities for development were facing immense challenges. If they were to be effective, their flexibility and responsiveness to diversified national development requirements would have to be increased. At the same time, the overall coherence of policies to achieve optimal use of resources and greatest impact, should be enhanced. That could be accomplished by identifying what had been achieved in the past three years, and what remained to be done.

She added that South-South cooperation should be mainstreamed in all the operational activities of the United Nations system. The funds and programmes should place South-South cooperation appropriately as one of the most competent modalities to formulate their operational activities for the sake of efficient and effective cooperation. Triangular South-South cooperation should be one of the themes for the discussion and deliberation at the eleventh session of the High-level Committee on the Review of Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries.

ZINEDDINE BIROUK (Algeria) said that, due to a lack of resources, the United Nations system might not be able to carry out its mandate in the development field. Far from being a pure act of generosity, development assistance was based on mutual interests. The dramatic changes in the world economy might have a negative impact on the situation of multilateral cooperation. Nevertheless, the role of the United Nations system in the development field remained as strong and as useful as ever.

On the role of the resident coordinator system, he said that ongoing or contemplated arrangements at the country level had given rise to doubt and reservations in many developing countries which feared risk of greater interference in their domestic affairs. While acknowledging the merit of the system, its implementation had resulted in practical difficulties, especially in the field of coordination. Reviewing thoroughly the functioning mechanism of the resident coordinator system might prove to be a useful exercise.

PATRICIA DURRANT (Jamaica), on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), said that development actors could not wait for funding to be delivered to their doorstep, but must go out and actively raise complementary funds from all available sources. Those sources might include the private sector -- national, regional and international, as well as local communities and other actors in civil society.

The involvement of civil society, she added, must be encouraged in order to generate a greater sense of local ownership and, therefore, provide an additional source of funding. Those factors had been recognized as being of key importance in determining the success or failure of assistance programmes.

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The members of CARICOM urged that the United Nations preserve its focus on the goal of harmonization exercises, to make programming more efficient, obtain more value for money and ultimately improve the lives of ordinary people.

She said that the CARICOM States would prefer to wait until there had been enough time for a thorough assessment of the entire pilot exercise before deciding on the full implementation of UNDAF. She emphasized that the primary focus of operational activities must continue to be at the country level and that national governments must have the central role in coordinating development assistance programming.

VOLODYMYR RESHETNYAK (Ukraine) said that since the last triennial policy review, considerable progress had been made in improving the coordination of United Nations operational activities, in strengthening the resident coordinator system, in fostering cooperation with the Bretton Woods institutions, in developing new dimensions such as humanitarian assistance, post-conflict peace-building and operations at the regional level. The most significant strides were associated with implementation of the Secretary- General's reform proposals, in particular with activities of the United Nations development group and UNDAF.

He said his country believed that UNDAF could help to concentrate development efforts of the whole United Nations system and to establish effective cooperation with the Bretton Woods institutions on the basis of partnership.

JIM CARMICHAEL, Representative of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in New York, said that his organization had been pioneering a new approach to multisectoral collaboration since 1996. Although with varying success, UNAIDS had achieved a substantive degree of operational collaboration between the United Nations, the specialized agencies and the Bretton Woods institutions, both globally and at the country level. With an epidemic which had already killed 11.7 million people, HIV/AIDS was a particularly important sector for broad-based agency collaboration. Other United Nations agencies had provided assistance in policy direction, strategy development, advocacy and technical and financial assistance. Without that collaboration, the international response to the epidemic would certainly have been a lesser effort.

Panel Discussion

ROGER MACONICK, Coordinator of Impact Evaluation of the Development Cooperation Policy Branch of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that, overall, United Nations operational activities had been good and worthwhile. The importance of resources was crucial, there was also a need for greater learning both by the societies concerned and by the United Nations system. Impact evaluation was possible and could provide support for system

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efforts. Evaluation provided encouragement for all United Nations agencies to gear their work towards results. In general, problems with evaluations included a lack of data, and a lack of authenticity or credibility of those doing the evaluation. On capacity building, it should be asked: what could be expected from operational activities now and 10 years from now?

PETER MORGAN, Senior Consultant on Capacity-Building, said he had recently completed a report on capacity-building in Pakistan. Activities there were more oriented towards experimentation and mediation and fostered learning so that others could build capacities. United Nations programmes over the last 10 years in Pakistan had been well managed and well designed. Issues that proved to be important were the search for sustainability and why an activity was sustained. His studies found that incentive-based activities were biased against capacity development. The emphasis on results needed to be modified to emphasize sustainable and long-term capacity-building. While results-based management was popular with donor countries, measuring results was only one form of arriving at a judgement. Some positive results were not measurable.

EDUARDO WIESNER, former Minister of Finance of Colombia and former Executive Director of the World Bank, said that while institutions were supposed to have the right policy objectives, good intentions were not enough to get things done. Severe political and institutional policy restrictions had a tendency to block development gains. In Latin America, and in Colombia in particular, future strategies should pay much more attention to the realities of the political and economic strength of such restrictions, because there were so-called "legitimate" interests that would fight even well-intended policies.

RAJAONA ANDRIAMANANJARA, Director of IMATEP, Madagascar, said that for many years the United Nations system had supported capacity-building in basic health and basic education. Much of that capacity, however, was embodied in individuals and had not yet been institutionalized. In both health and education some capacity reduction had occurred. There had been cases where government institutions and existing capacity had been bypassed, for donor purposes. Those actions were often accepted by recipient countries, when they resulted in more donor money or resources.

While such capacity-eroding practices had become common, he continued, the United Nations appeared to have been instrumental in development as a catalyst and in mobilizing other resources. Still, there was no proof that the typical person's health had improved much between 1980 and 1995, nor had school enrolments and literacy experienced major changes.

ALFRED HAEMMERLI, Chief, Division of Development Cooperation of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that it was encouraging that the question of capacity-building remained a huge concern, even though the United Nations had been doing it for 50 years. The independent evaluation of

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capacity-building was an innovation and had produced important information on development programmes, not only on capacity-building, but on such other issues as the need for common definitions for a variety of instruments.

Question and Answer Period

Responding to a question on his presentation on the topic of country- level work, Mr. MORGAN said that personnel were enormously busy in field work. In the Pakistan case, there needed to be some institutional mechanism in field offices to collect the best practice material and disseminate it. Organizations needed to be courageous enough to accept criticism and to learn from mistakes. On measurable indicators, it was important to be careful about particular techniques, in particular situations. Different organizations had preferred indicators, but the question was which indicators were best suited to measure a certain phenomenon.

On a question related to spending for development, Mr. WIESNER said that in the case of Colombia, spending had increased tremendously on health, education and the environment. However, very little had improved in those areas. What was needed was to examine what was really needed to improve conditions in a certain sector. Spending alone would not solve the problem.

Responding to questions on evaluating capacity-building efforts, Mr. ANDRIAMANANJARA noted that his group utilized the documentation of various agencies, and consulted all United Nations organizations to develop terms of reference with which to evaluate development work. Representatives of those agencies and of non-governmental organizations in the field provided valuable input, and the results were detailed in available reports.

Also on evaluations, Mr. MACONICK said that in situations where there was no clear objective measurement to determine the results of a given project, one must make a judgement based on operational activities, and whether a given process was beneficial or not. Mr. HAEMMERLI said that members of the United Nations Secretariat like himself operated on mandates, and many mandates took into account an impact evaluation. He also noted that the United Nations Development Group at the executive level discussed, in general terms, assessments of operational activities, including impact evaluation studies.

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