PRESS BRIEFING BY UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

As the coordinator of the United Nations system at the country level, its arm for development and its main advocacy tool, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was going to play the largest role in the implementation of the Millennium Declaration, Associate Administrator Zephirin Diabre told correspondents this afternoon at a Headquarters press briefing.

Discussing today's ministerial meeting organized by UNDP on the theme "Rebuilding Support for United Nations Development Cooperation", Mr. Diabre added that when the Declaration was ready, UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown had sent messages to all the country offices to ready the troops to ensure that follow-up would be a reality at the country level. Mr. Diabre was joined by John Hendra, Director of UNDP's Division for Resources Mobilization.

He said all the proposed directions for UNDP had received widespread support from the ministers participating in the first such meeting held in UNDP's 40-year history. Also prominent in interventions was the universal presence of UNDP -- the visible face of the United Nations system among the world's poorest.

It was refreshing to hear, Mr. Diabre said, how much esteem speakers had for Mr. Brown [who was unable to leave the meeting to attend the press conference], under whose leadership, "UNDP is back" in the development field. They had expressed strong confidence that with all the reforms that were taking place under his leadership, UNDP would succeed in eradicating poverty at the country level.

Resources were a key concern for UNDP, he continued. Core resources, in particular, had declined for the last five or six years. If UNDP was to succeed in the field and play its intended role, it had to be provided with the necessary resources. Many countries, both from the North and the South, had expressed their commitment to ensuring that the organization's core resources increased in the coming years.

With regard to how much the decline in resources was linked to the strength of the United States dollar, Mr. Hendra said that the level of UNDP's core income -- the income which supports the infrastructure around the world -- was $1.2 billion in 1992. This year it was just under $700 million, which was a huge drop of almost 40 per cent in real terms. The focus of the meeting was how to rebuild UNDP’s core funding base.

In terms of the actual effect of the dollar, he said that in the last two years, several donors had increased their resources in local currency terms. Especially for the Euro-based currencies, that looked very good in local currency, but because of the strength of the United States dollar, UNDP had lost about $60 million in terms of this year's core contributions. Core contributions were of greatest concern, since it really allowed the organization to be universal, multilateral and focused on the poorest countries.

UNDP Press Briefing - 2 - 11 September 2000

Mr. Diabre explained that the core resources -- the financial basis of the organization -- were non-earmarked resources given on a voluntary basis by donors and used to fund programmes. The non-core resources were always earmarked for a specific purpose, either a specific country or programme that needed to be funded, and did not have the same level of flexibility as core resources.

Asked if any country had given an actual financial commitment at today's meeting, Mr. Diabre replied that many countries had touched on the issue of resources. Since last year, some countries had increased their support. Japan, France, Ireland and many others had expressed their willingness to increase resources.

Mr. Hendra added that the language of increases was quite strong in terms of a commitment and one country in particular -- Sweden -- had actually made an increase for the current year.

Concerning specific outcomes of the Millennium Summit that might be beneficial to UNDP, Mr. Diabre said that the Summit was successful in bringing today's key development issues to the forefront. For example, the issue of the digital divide, which was highlighted during the Summit, also featured prominently in today's ministerial discussion.

Asked what about its new role would make UNDP more effective than it had been in the past, Mr. Diabre said that UNDP had been created in the beginning as a multilateral grant organization providing technical assistance to countries to fight poverty. Forty years later, the way it did business had changed due to the changing challenges on the ground. Among the key elements that were emerging within the new direction the organization was taking was its advocacy role in the struggle against global poverty. Also, UNDP played the resident coordinator role for the whole United Nations system.

There were also emerging new challenges, such as peace-building, which were not present when the organization was created, he continued. There was also today a clear belief that a lot of what went wrong, in terms of development, was due to the lack of a set of institutions, rules and framework for adequate use of existing resources.

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