DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SEEKS SHARPER FOCUS, IDENTIFICATION OF PRIORITIES IN DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS FOR AFRICA

Press Release
DSG/SM/65
ECOSOC/5855

DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SEEKS SHARPER FOCUS, IDENTIFICATION OF PRIORITIES IN DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS FOR AFRICA

Address to Economic and Social Council Stresses Need for Proper Coordination, Primacy of National Goals To Be Achieved at Country

Level

This is the text of a statement today by Deputy Secretary- General Louise Fréchette, delivered from New York by video- conference, to the coordination segment of the Economic and Social Council in Geneva:

Let me first say how pleased I am to join you through video-conference. This technology is a new tool for the United Nations that is proving to be most useful, and I am grateful to Ambassador Valdivieso (a Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council) for suggesting we use it today.

The General Assembly has invited African countries and their partners, meeting at the present session of the Economic and Social Council, to identify and rank development priorities, to define respective responsibilities and to agree on realistic and measurable targets. In other words, the task is to agree on who should do what, and to determine how we will know when we have done it.

The task is not a simple one. There is an abundance of special initiatives, strategies and plans of actions, originating from both within and outside the United Nations, aimed at achieving various development goals in Africa. We can nevertheless take comfort from the fact that there is a large degree of convergence between the initiatives launched by the United Nations and those emanating from various African regional and subregional bodies. Indeed, the vision of the United Nations system's work in Africa today is to effectively and efficiently support Africa in realizing its vision of poverty reduction, peace and stability. As many of you have rightly stressed, the issue is not to design new initiatives, but to ensure that we follow through and ensure implementation of what has been agreed.

Achieving a sharper definition of priorities should not mean a narrowing of focus. Peace is a prerequisite for development, so is good governance. And development and the eradication of poverty are themselves prerequisites for lasting peace. This was the message of the Secretary-General's wide- ranging Africa Report last year. The political and the humanitarian, as well as the developmental, aspects are all relevant to a proper consideration of priorities for Africa.

The idea of establishing measurable targets is, in my view, very important. The United Nations has accumulated a rich body of experience and mobilized considerable resources for Africa. Yet, the perception is one of little effectiveness. To some extent, this is due to our weakness in establishing realistic targets and in monitoring progress against them. Monitoring against measurable targets is one sure way of improving the effectiveness of assistance to Africa.

It goes without saying that the effective implementation of priorities requires proper coordination. The Secretary-General's reform programme attaches great importance to the coordination and harmonization of the United Nations effort in Africa and elsewhere. The Report before you today describes in some detail the various coordination mechanisms in place, and I will not go over the same ground. I would like, however, to share with you some of the conclusions that emerged from the meeting I chaired in Nairobi in March of this year and which involved the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), as well as all the agencies, funds and programmes of the United Nations system. As you know, I held similar meetings with all the other regional commissions as you mandated me to do last year.

The first conclusion, which was echoed in all the other regions, is that the most important coordination is that which takes place at the country level. Goals set for the African region will be achieved in most cases essentially through action taken in individual countries. The Common Country Assessment and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) are now the key instruments within the United Nations to coordinate our activities at the country level, and are proving their value in the pilot countries where they have been applied.

But the United Nations is only one of many partners on the ground. The World Bank's proposed Comprehensive Development Framework approach also seeks to achieve greater coherence among all the development partners. I do not see any incompatibility between that framework and UNDAF, if there is agreement on the goals pursued. These goals must be national goals, defined and subscribed to by the recipient country. That is why, at the end of the day, the leadership for coordination must rest with the countries themselves.

As regards coordination at the regional level, the Nairobi meeting led to two essential findings: first, that the follow-up to various United Nations African plans should be brought together under the umbrella of the Special Initiative for Africa; second, that concrete goals should be established or clarified and performance towards the achievements of set targets should be monitored systematically. This is already happening in certain sectors, such as basic education, but should be expanded to other fields, as well.

Since the Nairobi meeting, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and ECA have developed, in consultation with the other United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, a more detailed approach for enhanced coordination which I hope the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) will endorse. In my experience, however, it is not so much the tools and mechanisms that count, but the willingness to use them. One of the most encouraging developments in the United Nations system is the emergence of a true team spirit both at Headquarters and in the field. The willingness to sit round a table, to consider problems jointly, and to design solutions in a cooperative fashion will, I am sure, significantly enhance our effectiveness and, therefore, the value of our service to our Member states.

Africa has been and continues to be a major priority for the United Nations. Among the funds and programmes, assistance to Africa typically accounts for 50 per cent of overall expenditure. Unfortunately, a large proportion of this is directed to humanitarian operations, postponing critical investments in development.

The situation is made more difficult by the strict line of demarcation drawn by donors between emergency and development expenditures. Emergencies are still perceived, it seems, as temporary, short-term interruptions in a country's development process, whereas they are proving to be protracted, recurrent events. Basic needs cannot be postponed during a protracted crisis. Reproductive health measures or primary education, for instance, must continue in the worst situations. It is no longer a question of development starting in the emergency phase. It must not stop during the crisis.

Finally, one cannot speak of development in Africa without calling attention to the critical need for increased resources. This means finding ways to increase the growth rate of African economies through trade and investment, but also increasing the flow of official development assistance (ODA) and accelerating debt-relief operations. As the Secretary-General has said repeatedly, the decline in ODA must be reversed, since it remains for many countries, particularly in Africa, an essential complement to domestic efforts.

In conclusion, let me express the hope that this session of the Economic and Social Council will bring greater clarity and focus to the work of the United Nations in Africa.

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