• by IPS Correspondents (united nations)
• Tuesday, July 17, 2012
• Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 (IPS) - Efforts to ensure the UN's continued relevance in global development took centre stage on Monday, as executive heads of UN funds and programmes, including UNDP, UNICEF, UN-Women, WFP, UNOPS, UNFPA and ESCAP assembled in the ECOSOC Chamber to reviewed successes and challenges in integrating development missions across a plethora of UN agencies.  

  UN-wide reform has been spearheaded since 1997 by the UN Development Group (UNDG), in an effort to cut duplication in the work of  the various UN agencies’ at the country level and create a system that’s able to respond to a rapidly changing international development landscape.

In addition to improving relevance of UN missions in host countries, horizontal coordination is one way the UN hopes to cut costs in an economic climate in which the organization as a whole is struggling to secure funds, having experienced a 167 billion shortfall in 2011 alone, according to a recent study by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). .

“If we reduce cost, we have to harmonise and simplify,” said Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),  who estimated that joint procurement by all agencies alone could save the UN 64 million dollar annually.

At the same time, agency heads agreed that “One size does not fit all,” as Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, put it, emphasizing that the UN ought to shape its collaborative interventions at the country level to the needs of host countries.

Lake likes to see future UN development collaboration take place within issue-specific groups of agencies, “like we currently do in humanitarian settings.”

Monday’s discussion  was part of the preparation for the 2012 Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review (QCPR), a regular assessment of UN development operations worldwide, and was informed by a survey of programme country governments on the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of UN activities in their country.

The majority of countries indicated strong alignment of UN country activities and the country’s development priorities, an endorsement that is “reassuring,” according to Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN Women, “But also challenging as it puts the onus back on the UN system to deliver and to demonstrate how it can build its assets to enhance overall effectiveness as we approach the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) countdown and the post-2015 discussion.“

The predominant majority of countries credited UN planning frameworks, like UNDAF, for the increase in alignment, while others highlighted continued fragmentation and the need for implementation through joint agency programmes.

Closer collaboration between UN and governments, simplification and harmonisation of procedures, and improvements to monitoring and evaluation were among a number of actions mentioned in the country survey that the UN can take to increase its effectiveness.

In the area of efficiency, there is “much room for improvement” with duplication continuing to be an issue and many countries wishing to see better use of national systems and capacities, and well as larger national ownership over development initiatives.

One model that has made significant progress in these areas is the Delivery as One (DaO) approach, which is widely seen as the future for UN development assistance at the country level.

Delivery as One was introduced in eight pilot countries in 2007 in an effort to increase the UN’s local impact through more coherent programmes and seizing comparative advantages of the different members of the UN family while cutting costs for governments and the UN alike.

DaO has further proven to be effective in giving greater prominence to cross cutting issues like gender, according to Bachelet.  DaO pilot countries stood out from other countries in the country survey in their positive view on the UN’s effectiveness and efficiency, while numerous non-pilot countries stated the UN’s relevance in their country would increase if DaO were to be extended to them.

“Time has come, is overdue actually, to expand delivery as one,” said Jan Mattsson, Executive Director of UNOPS, the United Nations Office for Project Services, who admitted to “a sense of impatience with the pace of necessary reforms”.

A larger emphasis on partnership also needs to translate in to a larger emphasis on regional collaboration and south-south relationships to tackle ever-growing number of transboundary issue, according to Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

What the UN’s efforts toward greater horizontal collaboration will look like in practice is likely be determined by the end of this year.

“The ECOSOC discussion informs the General Assembly discusison on the policy review.” Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Chair of the UN Development Group, told IPS following Monday’s dialogue. “So the Secretary General’s report on the review will be fine tuned for the next step, taking into account member states comments and ongoing comments by all the specialized agencies, UN funds and programmes.

The discussion on the QCPR resolution will start immediately after high-level meeting of the General assembly in September, she added, with an aim to have a resulution by the end of the year.   “It’s a four yearly review, so by the time we come back in four years we hope to have done a lot to it.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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