ECOSOC SPEAKERS NOTE RECENT PROGRESS IN EFFORTS TO COORDINATE OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM

ECOSOC SPEAKERS NOTE RECENT PROGRESS IN EFFORTS TO COORDINATE

OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM

World Body Said To Be ‘Indispensable Partner’ for Poor Countries

GENEVA, 5 July (UN Information Service) -- The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) this afternoon continued its discussion on the follow-up to policy recommendations of the General Assembly and the Council itself on the triennial comprehensive policy review of operational activities of the United Nations for development.

A number of speakers alluded to the progress made during the last three years in strengthening coordination in the United Nations system, both at Headquarters and in the field.  A United States representative said that strong political leadership in a country and a capable, unified, and well-led United Nations country team were essential ingredients for the creation of the right environment, one that demanded that all operational agencies saw poverty alleviation as the over-arching goal of their mandates.

The strengthening of the collaboration between the United Nations funds and programmes and the Bretton Woods institutions was encouraged by several speakers.

It was the view of Nepal that the majority of the world's population was caught up in a “time warp” from where people could see the affluence relished by others but had no access to it, as they lived in grinding poverty, illiteracy and disease and had no level playing-field on which to compete.

Several speakers said that reform of the United Nations system should respond to the actual needs and to strengthen the mandate of any United Nations institution and in a manner to achieve its goals.  They said the reforms should not be costly.  Many speakers said that the United Nations system was an indispensable partner to developing countries in their development process.

Statements were made by representatives of Norway, United States, Russian Federation, Belarus, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Nepal, Australia, Algeria and Nigeria, and of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Statements

STEFFEN KONGSTAD (Norway) said his country supported the United Nations reform process.  The Common Country Assessment (CCA) and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), as working mechanisms, had addressed the challenges for United Nations reform.  Further streamlining and harmonization of

programming procedures was welcome, and United Nations agencies should be encouraged to continue that process.  Norway supported joint efforts to improve the functioning of the resident coordinator system, and felt that in crisis and post-crisis situations it was of paramount importance that the field level had consultations with, and involved, the office of the Secretary-General and other relevant United Nations entities.

Strengthening collaboration with the Bretton Woods institutions was useful.  The United Nations system needed to achieve greater synergy and impact if it were to succeed in implementing global plans of action and the time-bound millennium goals.

BETTY KING (United States) said that much progress had been made since the last triennial review.  The UNDAF process continued to be refined, leading to simplification and harmonization of procedures.  Collaboration with the Bretton Woods institutions was becoming increasingly more focused on substantive issues.  While serious challenges remained, the benefits of working together at headquarters and in the field were becoming more pronounced.  The triennial report left no doubt that strong leadership and good governance were crucial elements in the alleviation of poverty along with good policies and accountable institutions, and intensive human and organizational capacity building.  Given the right environment, the United Nations system could be highly effective in helping recipient countries improve the lives of all their citizens by reducing poverty.  Strong political leadership in the country and a capable, unified, and well-led United Nations country team were essential ingredients for the creation of the right environment -- one that demanded that all operational agencies, no matter their specialization, saw poverty-alleviation as the over-arching goal of their mandates.

Until recently, the United Nations development system had remained aloof from immediate involvement in post-conflict situations to the detriment of conflict victims and rapid reconstruction.  That was now changing under pressure from executive boards, the United Nations itself, and programme countries. 

YURY FEDOTOV (Russian Federation) said progress had been made over the last three years.  The resident coordinator system had been strengthened.  Strategic instruments such as the Common Country Assessment and the UNDAF had been actively introduced; strategic planning had helped link resources with effective technical assistance to developing countries.  The voluntary nature of contributions had been preserved, and for the first time in eight years the negative trend in core contributions to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had been reversed.  Further, collaboration had been strengthened with the Bretton Woods institutions.

However, reform of United Nations operational activities was far from over.  The coordinating role of ECOSOC in guiding operational funds and programmes remained expedient.  The Russian Federation shared the concern expressed regarding the remaining difficulties in mobilization of core resources. 

BARBARA CANEDO PATINO (Bolivia) said the context of cooperation for development had been changing as a result of globalization.  There were benefits and risks to these changes, and countries that did not respond effectively could be marginalized.  The hope was that each nation and each people could be empowered to achieve the goals set out by United Nations summits.  However, these goals would be difficult to achieve, given the trend in recent years towards a fall-off of official development assistance (ODA), despite the fact that many donor countries had met and even exceeded the goal of giving 0.7 per cent of their GDPs to development aid.

The main responsibility for development fell on the shoulders of the countries concerned, but the necessary basic resources needed to be provided so that United Nations programmes could carry out their role with impartiality in keeping with national plans and policies, and with the priorities of recipient countries.  Better coordination and consistency in development programmes and effective and efficient guidance at the local level, together with national responsibility and accountability, were necessary for the whole process to work in practical terms.  Further attention needed to be paid to natural disaster relief and longer-term responses.

JANA SIMONOVA (Czech Republic) said the major challenge of today was to develop the different programming and analytical tools in a way which would make them complementary to each other, avoiding duplications and inspiring new partnerships.  The United Nations system should closely and vigorously collaborate with national governments in formulating the International Monetary Fund's poverty-reduction strategy in all developing countries.  In so doing, that strategy should reflect United Nations development goals at country level, while enabling implementation of sector-wide approaches.

The traditional United Nations pledging conference held annually in November had yielded modest results in recent years.  The pledging conference did not provide an opportunity for result-based considerations.  There was also room for improvement in reporting on pledges made, and payments provided.

F. ROHMER (Switzerland) said recent reforms could be termed positive, considering the context in which the system had had to operate.  The Millennium Declaration offered a new, broad frame of reference for operational activities.  It rationalized various objectives into a coherent scheme and document, and should incite all actors in development to focus their interventions along a common perspective.

Flexibility was needed for the framework of development programmes so that each country could shape projects best to meet prevailing needs and situations.  Competition was stimulating when it was a question of ideas and concepts, but rivalry could often lead to regrettable situations and undermine multinational institutions in their mobilization of financial resources.  The United Nations agencies involved in development had to guard against this danger.

MURARI RAJ SHARMA (Nepal) said the international community was living in a world spinning at two different speeds.  For a few well-off, it had been a time of tumultuous change, globalization and explosion in science and technology, bringing unprecedented progress and prosperity to them.  The majority, however, were caught up in a time warp from where people could see the affluence relished by others but had no access to it, as they lived in grinding poverty, illiteracy and disease and had no level playing-field on which to compete.  Democracy had swept through the developing world, giving the people their voice and freedom and raising their expectations.  Growing disparity, as one saw through the media, bred frustration and resentment among people, which unscrupulous elements might exploit to trigger violence and conflicts.

Development, peace and rule of law mutually reinforced each other and should be addressed in an integrated manner.  Developing countries, particularly the least developed ones, needed increased development assistance, easy access to world markets and stronger institutions.

JACQUI DELACEY (Australia) said his country would provide about AUS$ 79 million in core support for United Nations humanitarian and development agencies for the 2001-02 fiscal year.  Its first priority was to ensure that the country's finite development resources were directed where they achieved the best results.  The various reforms undertaken by the United Nations were a good beginning, but only a beginning.  While Australia recognized that there remained a need to have a sensible balance between core and targeted non-core funding, the onus was on the United Nations system to ensure that non-core funding complemented its core programmes and contributed directly to the goals and targets set out in various frameworks.

There was a clear need to reconsider the pledging conference held each November.  Abolishing this “duplicative and unproductive” conference would be a useful further step in improving the efficiency of the United Nations.  Australia for its part strongly supported ongoing efforts to simplify and harmonize procedures in the United Nations system.

KHEIREDDINE RAMOUL (Algeria) said the operational activities for development carried out by the funds and programmes of the specialized agencies of the United Nations system remained, more than ever, indispensable tools for the realization of the objectives of international cooperation.  The developing countries continued to enjoy the multilateral assistance, and the flexible responses of those organizations to their specific needs of developments.  Algeria estimated that the debate undertaken within the United Nations on its restructuring and revitalization in the economic, social and related areas should take into account the cardinal principles which had made the United Nations agencies partners in the field of development for many decades.

Any reform should be based on a real need for the good functioning and effectiveness of an institution, so as to enable the accomplishment of its mandate, and realization of the goals on which it was created.  Often the reform undertaken in the work of the funds and programmes did not meet such expectations.  For example, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) continued since 1994 to be the subject of costly reform.

A.P.E. OSIO (Nigeria) said the United Nations, over time, had been regarded as a valuable partner and major contributor to development and poverty eradication, but these activities posed a major challenge to United Nations agencies.  The importance of poverty eradication made it imperative that consensus and harmony be reached within the United Nations system on how to attack it, especially at the national level.  The UNDAF had made rapid progress and was either in effect or in development in many countries, and it was engendering greater understanding of the system's role in development and generating opportunities for addressing important development issues and meeting the goals set by major United Nations conferences.

More information-sharing and joint partnerships were needed to develop cooperation synergy.  Information and communications technology (ICT) should be harnessed to spur that process along.  ICT was a powerful force in itself for poverty eradication.  The gap between developed and developing countries, and between the world's rich and its poor, should not be allowed to widen further.  Further coordination, harmonization, and efficiency in programmes and programming cycles were vital.

A. ASAMOA-BAAH, of the World Health Organization (WHO), said it was important that development and planning frameworks be flexible and robust enough to accommodate as many partners as possible, and not only those within the United Nations system.  It was necessary for the United Nations and its partners to be more clever, and to make capacity-building and core-funding as attractive and interesting to the media as targeted programmes were.

Investment in health was increasingly being shown to be not only good in itself, but good for economic development.  For example there was ample evidence that if malaria had been controlled 40 years ago, the combined gross domestic product of sub-Saharan Africa would have been $100 billion higher.  There was a gulf between rhetoric and practice on the question of national ownership of development programmes.  As long as unachievable targets and deadlines continued to be pushed down the throats of national governments, national ownership would be undermined.

ELISABETH MERZ, of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), said that for globalization to work for poor countries and people, the benefits of technology, including information and communications techonology, had to be shared more widely and progress had to be made on environmental and energy issues.  She said UNIDO would give priority to African and least-developed countries to that end.  The organization shared the concerns expressed about the critical issue of resources, and like its sister-agencies, had seen its budget constantly decreased, putting a strain on its ability to maintain critical mass in various domains.

UNIDO was proud to have been a pioneering specialized agency supporting the development of the new United Nations Strategic Planning Framework.  As successful as that framework had been, it should be further improved by, among other things, strengthening economic and technological dimensions; fully engaging smaller and non-resident United Nations agencies; and focusing on continuous learning and best practices. 

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