The Economic and Social Council this morning continued with its Operational Activities Segment and held a Dialogue with Executive Heads of UN funds and programmes on the UN development system’s contribution to national capacity building. The United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Food Programme were represented in the Dialogue.

Carmen Maria Gallardo Hernandez, Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, introducing the Dialogue, said this morning’s discussion was an important mechanism through which the Council exercised its role as the principal body to coordinate economic, social, humanitarian and related work of the United Nations system, including development cooperation and operational activities for development. Two topics to be addressed were about capacity development, specifically data for development, and technology innovation.

Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said the aid environment had changed. Official development assistance was at its highest level ever in 2008, reaching about
$ 120 billion. That increase followed exceptionally rapid global economic growth up to 2007. Now, donor countries had experienced sharp economic slowdowns. Moreover, aid targets were linked to gross national income, which itself had shrunk in many developed countries. Therefore, just keeping to gross national income targets would deliver less official development assistance. Developing countries faced a potential double blow of reduced external assistance and fewer opportunities to mobilize resources in one’s own country.

Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, said the United Nations system was working on a vulnerability alert system to collect information on the impact of the crisis - the system would provide real-time information to support Member States. Collecting data was important - it helped to understand broader social process, and for this purpose, attention should be paid not only to data particular to an issue, but to data that illuminated the broader context. Access to data should be viewed as a component of good governance, transparency and accountability, and building capacity in this area was essential for creating strong national institutions that promoted human rights and dignity.

Ann Veneman, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, said mobile phones had proven to be an extremely powerful development tool. Today, there were more cell phone subscribers in Africa than in the United States and Canada combined. In Nigeria, the Roll Back Malaria partnership was using Rapid SMS to monitor the distribution of insecticide treated mosquito nets. In Uganda, text messages provided public education and information services on prevention of HIV/AIDS. The involvement of private sector technology experts was key to ensuring that investments in technology for health were sustainable and brought to scale. The challenges in addressing humanitarian issues were many, but the opportunities that technologies provided in responding were endless.

Staffan De Mistura, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme, said Aquila G8 was a challenge to everyone, not just the United Nations system. This latter was the most crucial, as there were three pandemics at the time: the food crisis, the climate change crisis, and the possible flu pandemic. When there was a crisis, there was a need for a safety net, whether Governmental or personal. Food for work, cash for work, vouchers for work, and school feeding were all types of safety nets promoted by the World Food Programme. Safety nets were supposed to be concrete, and there was no one-size-fits-all. They should therefore be nationally owned, with a possibility of diversifying according to different circumstances. Safety nets were specially needed now, but they could only be used if nationally owned, and supported by donors.

During the general discussion, speakers raised a number of concerns and questions, among others, on the demands programme and donor countries placed on aid agencies for demonstrable development results, where now some countries were linking financial aid to agencies with results, and how were the organizations preparing to meet this new demand? The quality of the reports of the Resident Coordinator System could be improved. What extent was the proper involvement of specialized agencies of the United Nations that were not represented at the country level in the pilot projects of part of the Delivering as One possible? Was there a joint World Bank – United Nations response at the country level on the impact of the financial crisis? The importance of data and technology in development was highlighted; however one issue that developing countries raised was limited access to technology; what were the respective agencies doing to address this issue? What measures were planned to be taken to harmonize the information on the execution of agencies work in the field?

Speaking in the discussion were the United States, Sweden, Pakistan, Bolivia, Russian Federation, Belgium, Norway, Malaysia, Philippines, Netherlands, China and France.

This afternoon, the Council will meet at 3 p.m., to hold a dialogue session with Helen Clark, Administrator of UNDP as Chairperson of the UN Development group, and with Denis Aitken, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization as Vice-Chairperson of the High-Level committee on Management. Following this it will continue with its general debate under its Operational Activities Segment.

Dialogue with Executive Heads of UN Funds and Programmes

Opening Statement

CARMEN MARIA GALLARDO HERNANDEZ, Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, said yesterday the Council had had a very fruitful discussion on the very important subject of the triple crises that confronted the global community and how the United Nations system at country level was supporting national efforts to overcome their adverse impacts on development, and particularly, to protect the gains in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This morning, there was a dialogue with the Executive Heads of four United Nations funds and programmes. This dialogue was an important mechanism through which the Council exercised its role as the principal body to coordinate economic, social, humanitarian and related work of the United Nations system, including development cooperation and operational activities for development. The Heads would address a diverse set of topics related to specific aspects of development effectiveness, and contribution to national capacity building by the United Nations development system.

As the mandate of the United Nations was primarily to assist in the development of national capacities, rather than to provide financing, the General Assembly recognised that the new trend in aid modalities posed challenges to the system, but that it had a role to play in assisting developing countries to manage these new modalities. It called upon the United Nations Organization to further strengthen the capacity of developing countries in this regard. Two topics to be addressed by the Heads were about capacity development, specifically data for development, and technology innovation. The United Nations had an important role to play in ensuring that Member States, not only programme countries, paid particular attention to the most vulnerable, and provided them with social safety nets and protection. The challenge was not confined to responses within countries, but had global dimensions which could involve food aid and trade policies as well as protection for displaced migrant workers. As the leaders of the four major funds and programmes, the speakers were most authoritative sources of policy reflection and responses, and the Council should seek their insight as to how the inter-Governmental process, and the Council, could be most supportive of their work.


Statements by the Panellists

HELEN CLARK, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the aid environment had changed. Official development assistance was at its highest level ever in 2008, reaching about $ 120 billion. That was an increase in real terms of more than 10 per cent over the 2007 level. That increase followed exceptionally rapid global economic growth up to 2007. Now, donor countries had experienced sharp economic slowdowns. Moreover, aid targets were linked to gross national income, which itself had shrunk in many developed countries. Therefore, just keeping to gross national income targets would deliver less official development assistance. Analysis of previous economic crises affecting donor countries suggested that, once official development assistance was cut, it remained depressed, not only during the crisis, but also for some time after the immediate crisis had receded. Developing countries faced a potential double blow of reduced external assistance and fewer opportunities to mobilize resources in one’s own country. In this context, how could the international community best promote development effectiveness?

First, Ms. Clark said, they should seek to harness for development all the financial and other resources they could. Second, they needed to ensure that their development interventions were mutually reinforcing and geared towards reducing poverty, meeting the Millennium Development Goals, and promoting sustainable development. Third, they should make sure that the resources they had were utilized to maximum development effect. First, on the resource front there were policy decisions developing countries could make to help weather the storm and maintain traction towards their development goals. Second, the current aid environment also called for breaking down development silos. Third, it was critical that, whatever resources were available for development, they contributed effectively to the achievement of the best possible results. The United Nations development system could help make that happen. In conclusion, by working together closely within and beyond the United Nations system, and by focusing their interventions on development of those capacities, strategies and policies which would have a system-wide impact, and were aligned with national development strategies, the United Nations funds and programmes could help bring about transformational change. The financial resources and technical knowledge were available in the world to bring about improvements in the lives of billions of people. The poorest and most vulnerable deserved nothing less.

THORAYA AHMED OBAID, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said knowing a population was key to sound policy-making and development. Information about a country's population, growth, characteristics, living conditions, spatial distribution and physical resources was vital for policy formulation, planning and implementation. It was also vital for evidence-based advocacy and policy dialogue. The current economic downturn made the need for data all the more important: it was crucial to monitor continuously the impact of the crisis, especially on the poorest and the most vulnerable. In the context of the current economic downturn, the availability of regularly-updated data allowed for an adequate and timely response: data could also be used to redirect public resources to the sectors that needed it most. The United Nations system was working on a vulnerability alert system to collect information on the impact of the crisis - the system would provide real-time information to support Member States. Collecting data was important - it helped to understand broader social process, and for this purpose, attention should be paid not only to data particular to an issue, but to data that illuminated the broader context.

There was also a need to look at the capacity to collect and analyse, disseminate and use data at the sub-national and community levels, where capacity challenges were greater. Data had to adequately inform local development: the availability of data at places where action was needed and the involvement of existing community groups greatly enhanced the impact of interventions. Data was also crucial to advocacy. In countries that did not possess good administrative records, population and housing censuses provided information that was desperately needed, not only for advocacy but also for policy dialogue and programming, which was particularly important in post-conflict situations. There were concerns that international partners tended to focus too much on indicator development and reporting requirements, to the detriment of strengthening national statistical systems. All development partners should work together to ensure that no additional indicators were requested from programme countries, while ensuring the quality and measurability of development programmes. There was also an urgent need for greater coordination of statistical capacity-building within the development community, and a need to harmonise efforts and develop a common data architecture. Access to data should be viewed as a component of good governance, transparency, and accountability, and building capacity in this area was essential for creating strong national institutions that promoted human rights and dignity.

ANN VENEMAN, Executive Director of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said innovations increasingly supported development and humanitarian work. In February, the United Nations Children’s Fund hosted the Web 4 Development Conference on behalf of United Nations agencies, with broad participation from the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, academia and the private sector. The conference highlighted innovative uses of technology for development. Mobile phones had proven to be an extremely powerful development tool. Mobile phone technology was allowing developing countries to overcome the absence of expensive traditional communication infrastructures, and connected people with the information they needed at an affordable cost. Today, there were more cell phone subscribers in Africa than in the United States and Canada combined. It was estimated that by 2010, nearly one in three Africans would have access to mobile phones. Mobile technology could provide information on commodity prices to farmers, collect vital health data from remote areas, and help track supplies and logistics all around the world. They were helping combat malnutrition, an underlying cause in one third of under-five child deaths.

In East and West Africa, the World Food Programme was working to collect food price and market related information in drought-prone areas. In Nigeria, the Roll Back Malaria partnership was using Rapid SMS to monitor the distribution of insecticide treated mosquito nets. In Uganda, text messages provided public education and information services on prevention of HIV/AIDS. In Madagascar, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Children Fund were using SMS technology to facilitate youth participation in key issues. And in Malawi, through a partnership involving Columbia University in New York and the Malawi Ministry of Health, community health workers were using mobile phones to monitor the nutritional status of children, said Ms. Veneman. The programme in Malawi won USAID’s 2008 award for best mobile application and helped illustrate how collaboration with academia had added value to the investment in technology. Meanwhile, the involvement of private sector technology experts was key to ensuring that investments in technology for health were sustainable and could be brought to scale. Companies helped development programmes in numerous ways including by providing toll-free line; offering free text messages; building new cell towers in areas without connectivity; and offering valuable technical advice and support for innovative projects. The challenges in addressing humanitarian issues were many, but the opportunities that technologies provided in responding were endless.

STAFFAN DE MISTURA, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme, said the Aquila G8 was a challenge to everyone, not just the United Nations system. There was a series of crises, and these provided an opportunity, and now the international community needed to make sure it did something about it, and did not leave anyone behind. This latter was the most crucial, as there were three pandemics at the time: the food crisis, the climate change crisis, and the possible flu pandemic. The United Nations system needed to be creative and coordinated. When there was a crisis, there was a need for a safety net, whether Governmental or personal. Food for work, cash for work, vouchers for work, and school feeding were all types of safety nets promoted by the World Food Programme.

Safety nets were supposed to be concrete, and there was no one-size-fits-all. They should therefore be nationally owned, with a possibility of diversifying according to different circumstances. A safety net had to be ready before a crisis. Safety nets were specially needed now, but they could only be used if nationally owned, and supported by donors. They were best done when it was delivery as one throughout the United Nations system, including the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund and the World Food Programme.

Discussion

During the interactive discussion, speakers raised a number of concerns and questions, among others, on the demands programme and donor countries placed on aid agencies for demonstrable development results, where now some countries were linking financial aid to agencies with results; and how were the organizations preparing to meet this new demand? How were the four agencies presented in the panel today helping developing countries mitigate the effects of the global economic and financial crises? A census was planned to take place in Iraq, which would determine the demographics in the country, and thus the political structure of the country; were there mechanisms within the United Nations Population Fund that could contribute to making the process run smoothly? How could the United Nations help countries deal with financial constraints as a result of the crisis? The process and implementation of resolution 68/208 was going successfully, and the role of ECOSOC was increasing in the theme of operational activities. The quality of the reports of the resident coordinator system could be improved. What extent was the proper involvement of specialized agencies of the United Nations that were not represented at the country level in the pilot projects of part of the Delivering as One possible? How real was it that the Millennium Development Goals would not be reached by 2015; and what needed to be done to ensure that? Was there a joint World Bank – United Nations response at the country level on the impact of the financial crisis? Reporting requirements and indicators, how could they avoid the burden of duplication and see real results? The importance of data and technology in development was highlighted; however one issue that developing countries raised was limited access to technology; what were the respective agencies doing to address this issue? What measures were planned to be taken to harmonize the information on the execution of agencies’ work in the field?

Concluding Remarks

HELEN CLARK, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said with regards to technology transfer, UNDP supported transfer in a range of programmes, including solar energy technology and biofuel technology. It was important to see an agency like UNDP as an incredible knowledge resource to facilitate the transfer of best practices and ideas. With regards to some of the broad questions that had been raised, such as mitigating the impact of the crisis, UNDP and the World Bank had been charged with an initiative to bring their combined brains together in support of countries under pressure, and this required analysing the impact of the global recession on developing countries, and UNDP could bring a development lens to that. At the end of the day, official development assistance was a small part of budgets, and while it was critical to maintain the flow of aid assistance, at the same time, the onus was on all to reprioritise. In terms of where UNDP was going with regards to policy design and advice, it was clearly directed by its Executive Board and Strategic Plan to focus on, among other things, capacity strengthening.

The emphasis was moving from projects to programmes, stressing institutional strengthening. In terms of the crisis, UNDP could jointly analyse with the World Bank and country teams, but in the end, Ms. Clark felt that there would be a shortage of money in order to keep traction on the Millennium Development Goals, and this was why official development assistance was crucial. Donor countries were under pressure to demonstrate results from the developmental system, and getting results was dependent on many actors - the United Nations agencies were just some of these, national Governments and peoples were the main actors, and there were also external influences such as recession, food prices and pandemics, and thus getting results was not as easy as it may seem. The agencies saw that they had to improve at stating what the outcomes were that were being sought, and how the progress towards that was benchmarked, so they could be accountable for every dollar and cent donated - however, the progress was not entirely up to the agencies, Ms. Clark repeated.

THORAYA OBAID, Executive Director of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in response to questions and concerns raised during the discussion, said on results, it was important to remember that much of their work was based on long-term results. For example, maternal mortality did not change every year, it was an issue that was looked at over time. Each fund and programme had a four-year strategic plan, with goals, benchmarks and indicators, etc. This was an accountability framework, in both development and management, the tools were available. With regard to the issue of attribution, in the United Nations Population Fund, when they talked about decreasing maternal mortality, it was the Governments responsibility to do that, and agencies to support them in doing so. Results of programmes and funds would be focused on how much agencies supported Governments in doing this. In order to mitigate the effects of the financial crisis, finding priorities within priorities was necessary. For instance, the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund, and the United Nations Children’s Fund were scaling up efforts to decrease maternal mortality, and in doing so had identified 25 countries with the highest levels, which would be one priority, and one way in which they were working to mitigate the effects of the crisis. There was an approach being taken to go from vertical planning to horizontal planning. For example if girls stayed in school longer, skilled labour forces would increase, they would postpone marriage, and thus having children which would therefore slow down population growth. There was no real measure of what the financial status would be by 2010. With regard to Iraq, they were in fact working closely with the United Nations mission on the census, to build capacity with the latest knowledge and technology.

ANN VENEMAN, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said children were at the heart of the Millennium Development Goals, and there was a need for a sense of urgency with regards to their achievement - efforts to achieve them should be redoubled and focused. About 50 per cent of the global burden to achieve them was in Africa, with another large portion in Asia. The international community had to re-examine where the focus should be and where the burden was falling. The world needed to redouble its efforts. Child mortality had been coming down overall by significant amounts, and had decreased by 60 per cent since 1960. The majority of children still died of preventable causes. As the overall number came down, the focus should be on neo-natal mortality, as almost half of these deaths were neo-natal cases, dying in the first eight days of life. There had been significant progress in a number of countries in reducing these figures by at least 40 per cent. The results were due to a lot of partnership efforts to achieve higher immunisation rates between UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, the Red Cross and others. The tremendous progress made in malaria could also not be underestimated.

Progress on maternal mortality had been among the slowest made. With regards to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, however, a sense of urgency should remain, and the international community should not stray from its agenda as it looked past 2015, but stay focused on the task at hand. The Millennium Development Goals had to be viewed as goals that should be setting the results on which all should focus - giving everybody common goals to focus on. One of the problems with getting too focused on what money was spent on and achieved was that it took away from building systems to ensure sustainability. In the results area, the importance of data should be focused on, as it allowed to know where successes were, and where needs were. Countries needed knowledge and technical resources, and the system needed to change to be more of a culture of technical expertise. If the issue of nutrition was not addressed, particularly in the first two years of life, it would affect the cognitive development of the child, and ultimately of the adult. Nutrition was an issue which, if not addressed adequately, especially in early years, would have long-term impact, including on breaking the very cycle of poverty.

STAFFAN DE MISTURA, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), in response to questions and concerns raised during the discussion, said on results, this was the time to prove results, at the G8 countries showed an effort in this regard, despite the financial crisis, there was a major effort to see results. Some of the funds and programmes could not provide immediate results as some results were linked to time – for example, food security/ poverty as agricultural production required time. They were in a privileged position at the World Food Programme to help their own colleagues to get those results in terms of agriculture for the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The issue of some of the new initiatives should not forget those who were already going hungry. Some results did take place as there had not been riots in recent times, and 7 million more children had been fed today that were not fed last year. The food for work, school feeding vouchers, and the feeding assistance programmes all needed to be strengthened. On the question of the census in Iraq, there was an effective mission in Baghdad, this census would be crucial for Iraq and implications for the country such as the elections. Once the census was properly done then food security could become more effectively approached. Indeed the $ 20 billion announced at the Aquila G8 was a lot, but it was a result of negotiations and would be used over three years. While they were very keen that it was a brilliant decision to look at the future of agriculture, it was important to look at the people who needed food immediately and WFP believed that part of the $ 20 billion should be allocated in that regard.

Further Questions and Responses

Speakers, in follow-up questions, spoke of the difficulties agencies experienced with regards to reporting results. Technical difficulties in terms of attribution and gaining a sense of higher-level achievements were very difficult. How did agencies design and set up objectives and then evaluate these objectives and report these, whilst aggregating information to show a picture to the public of how the organization was doing, a speaker asked, noting that this sort of information would satisfy public demands to a certain extent.

HELEN CLARK, Administrator of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in response to a second round of questions, said donors needed to know what they did with the money and how they could best report that. Maybe they should consider taking the approach of reporting as one, and not just delivering as one. They reported in various capacities, to their boards, the General Assembly and ECOSOC. There were a lot of issues to sort out. They were all committed to being transparent to those who provided the money.

THORAYA OBAID, Executive Director of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said with regards to results, these were put to Governments, and Governments were asked what results they wished to have in their national plans. More and more there was a move to support Governments to achieve their national plans - Governments were thus very aware of the problems and what the agencies were implementing. With regards to business practices and how the agencies were doing in harmonising procedures, a proposal had been developed by the Higher Committee on Management, as one of the bottlenecks had been having common business practices. Proposals were submitted to donors and other countries just before the crisis on harmonising projects that required some investment at the beginning.

STAFFAN DE MISTURA, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), said with regard to a question raised by France, in a time of crisis this was the ideal time to review the way in which they programmed. In terms of crisis it was easier to speak in one voice, and often people starting speaking in the same language. In order to do this, resources were needed and they could help each other out and this was a reason to do this.


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