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Blunt and brutal. But UN reform is possible. Blair, Brown and Benn can make it happen

Friday, November 10, 2006 1:22 PM by Simon Maxwell

I welcome the release of ‘Delivering as One’, the Report of the High Level Panel on UN Reform.   The Report is blunt and brutal.  That’s what happens when you commission a report from three serving Prime Ministers and have Gordon Brown on the team.

The Report criticises the incoherence, fragmentation and unpredictability of UN work on international development.  Quite right too, we can’t have 20 UN agencies in every country, all fighting for the Minister’s ear.  Nor can we expect the UN to do its job, when donors withhold funding and cherry-pick their favourite projects.

The Panel’s ideas are right.  One UN at country level, one management board internationally, one fund to provide the money.  This isn’t going to happen overnight, but the milestones in the Report are realistic.  There will be 40 countries doing this by 2010 and a complete roll-out by 2012.

What has to happen next?  The UK can provide an immediate lead:

Tony Blair should endorse the Report and announce that the Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn, will immediately take charge of all UK government policy and funding for all UN agencies.  As the Report says, “Without coherent policy and leadership within national governments, disparate policies and fragmented implementation will undermine the effectiveness of multilateral organisations”.

Gordon Brown is a signatory of the Report.  He should endorse the recommendations and carry them through to the next comprehensive spending review, including in DFID’s Public Service Agreement.

Hilary Benn has the biggest contribution to make.  He should immediately announce financial support for the pilot country programmes and the longer-term roll-out, including the proposed central funding mechanism.  At the same time, he should deny funding outside this framework.  A White Paper should be published in 2007 on how the UK will reorganise support to the UN’s development, humanitarian and environment work.

The UK is recognised and respected for its leadership on international development.  An effective multilateral system is essential if we are to reach the Millennium Development Goals.  Putting UK leadership at the service of the United Nations is what we must do next.

Comments

# One UN ! … to be a fact or fiction? « Global Nomad101 @ Monday, November 13, 2006 12:42 PM

PingBack from globalnomad101.wordpress.com/2006/11/13/one-un-to-be-a-fact-or-fiction/

One UN ! … to be a fact or fiction? « Global Nomad101

# re: Blunt and brutal. But UN reform is possible. Blair, Brown and Benn can make it happen @ Monday, November 13, 2006 3:50 PM

The report on system-wide coherence of the UN is an interesting report that will trigger many different types of comments. One comment is that the report seems optimistic assuming the creation of a new body at the top in each country where the UN will do field operations would solve the effectiveness of currently fragmented UN activities. Is this more planning and coherence for coherence sake? Isn’t one implication that there will be less competition for results amongst agencies, with more emphasis on what donors collectively like to see happening and less emphasis on the substance of which activities are really needed? And with less emphasis on whether the current set-up of UN agencies at the global level is the most appropriate? Perhaps some mergers and exits might follow, but this report alone does not appear to suggest that; on the contrary it argues for more funds, organisations and upgrading of existing organisations.

The report is also relevant for the debate on possible Aid for Trade architectures. For instance, an MDG fund for 'One UN' operations might achieve the opposite of the Aid for Trade objectives in that such a fund might deal more with single issues that are not aimed at increasing attention for growth and trade (and responsible ministries), and productive capacities, which trade ministers from developing countries say are so desperately needed to take advantage of new trade opportunities (see ODI resources on Aid for Trade, including submissions to the Aid for Trade Task Force). It is not only about numbers of funds and agencies, but also about what gaps the organisations and funds would be filling. As an example, a current gap identified in the Aid for Trade debate relates to regional soft and hard infrastructure; could a national MDG fund deal with this?

Isn’t an important point about the existence of different UN agencies that they would have expertise in certain issues, rather than in certain countries? UN agencies have a comparative advantage in co-ordinating and delivering the provision of international public goods and other activities with international spillovers. Doing a system-wide review of multilateral agencies from scratch, I would not start at the country level, but start by thinking about what possible gaps UN agencies could be filling, based on what developing countries say. To take one example, if a gap were the generation of appropriate knowledge in the area of industrial development, then there would be a need to provide options to suggest the best possible architecture to generate such knowledge and that might involve UN agencies, bilateral donors and the private sector. Such thinking might be followed up by suggestions for how such knowledge could best be transferred and used by those that need it.  Further information can be found in the 2005 UNIDO
report 'Supporting industrialisation: Improving market failures and providing public goods' pp80-84.

Dirk Willem te Velde

# re: Blunt and brutal. But UN reform is possible. Blair, Brown and Benn can make it happen @ Wednesday, November 15, 2006 5:23 PM

I am inclined to agree generally with Dirk. In my view the key problem facing the UN is not one of unity but of management. Creating global coherence might help improve management, but it might be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As Dirk says, greater system-wide coherence might tip the balance toward donors rather than the countries themselves. An exclusive focus on the country level change might detract from the UN's advantage, which is to take a global view. Further, there is nothing wrong with partial duplication of UN activities; different organisations have different assets, and one agency can act as a counterbalance to the excesses of another.

Management improvements can be addressed more directly. For a start, technical leadership is lacking. The UN and its agencies have no equivalent of Chief Operating Officers. They should.

Human resources management could be improved. Labour is inflexible and productivity low.

The culture is generally one of high politics and meetings, rather than technical output. This should change.

In-house knowledge management should likewise improve – currently too much information and expertise is scattered across various organisations, and in some cases within them.

Greater UN integration is to be applauded; but not if it avoids tackling management issues.

Daniel Gay

# re: Blunt and brutal. But UN reform is possible. Blair, Brown and Benn can make it happen @ Wednesday, November 15, 2006 6:45 PM

Dear Friends

Stakeholder Forum, UN NGLS and   FBOMS (Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements for the Environment and the Development) have sent out a call for civil society views on the recent published Report of the UN Panel on System-wide Coherence in the fields of humanitarian affairs environment and development.Should you be interested in making comment then the relevent document can be downloaded from    www.stakeholderforum.org/call%20for%20panel%20input.pdf

We have also this week had an article on the Panel report on the BBC web site at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6134690.stm which may be of interest to you. We mostly focus on the issues of the environment and sustainable development

warm regards

felix

Felix Dodds

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