The Wellspring

The United Nations High-level Panel on System-wide Coherence has today in its final report called for a ‘radical streamlining of UN efforts to fight poverty, provide humanitarian aid and protect the environment, saying competition among up to 20 or more different UN programs often duplicates efforts and fails in the end’, reports the Associated Press.

The panel, convened by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is composed of 15 high-level politicians from around the world, including the Prime Ministers of Pakistan, Mozambique and Norway, former Presidents of Chile and Tanzania, and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

They report, six months in the making, includes recommendations to:

• put all UN operations in countries under a single coordinating body (’One UN’) with overall responsibility for delivery and engagement with government and civil society
• enhance environmental protection under a strengthened and expanded UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
• provide better funding and coordination of humanitarian aid
• fully fund the Central Emergency Response Fund
• for donors to commit more aid through UN programmes and less to their own ‘pet projects’
• reform business practices under the Secretary-General’s direction
• secure long-term funding for agencies which meet reform goals.

The most obvious cost-cutting measure – to simply disolve entire agencies or programmes – was considered politically untenable. (The closest this report comes to making that suggestion is in recommending that the three bodies on gender merge. In this area, they also recommend that a new Under-Secretary General position be established to pursue gender equity and women’s empowerment across the UN system).

For further information, see the BBC’s news article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6129624.stm, editorial from the International Herald Tribune at http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/08/opinion/edaziz.php, and the High-level Panel’s own website at http://www.un.org/events/panel/index.html.