Economic and Social Council: 19th plenary meeting - 2026 Operational Activities for Development Segment

Good morning, Excellencies, dear colleagues.
May I kindly ask you to your seat.
The 19th meeting of the Economic and Social Council is called to order.
I now invite the council to begin its consideration of sub Item B of agenda Item seven, reports of the Executive Boards of the United Nations entity for Gender Equality and the empowerment of women, the World Food Program, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Population Fund, and the United Nations Office for Project Services and the United Nations Children's Fund to hold dialogue with the UN Development System executive heads on system wide accountability and delivery of the UN development system reforms, including in the context of the UN 80 initiative.
This session brings together executive heads of the United Nations Development System entities to discuss how the system is developing to deliver more coherent, effective, and country responsive support for national development priorities.
With poverty eradication and leaving no one behind at the center, the discussion will focus on how entities are responding to resource pressures and structural change, including through the UN 80 initiative, while at the same time preserving the policy expertise, country presence, and system wide collaboration needed to accelerate progress towards the sustainable development goals.
The council will now hold a dialogue with UNDS executive heads system wide accountability and delivery of the UN development system reform Including in the context of the UN 80 Initiative.
I'm pleased to welcome our distinguished panelists, Mr.
Alexander DeCre, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, UNDP, and miss Katherine Russell, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF.
I also welcome our lead discussants in our dialogue today, His Excellency Asim Ifthar Ahmad, permanent representative of Pakistan, And Mr.
Hirvoye Tchvych char d affair of the permanent mission of Croatia to the United Nations.
I first give the floor to Mr.
Alexander De Crux, administrator of the United Nations Development Program UNDP.
You have the floor, sir.
Thank you, Mr.
President, Excellencies, colleagues.
It's a privilege to join you here for me for the first time as UNDP administrator.
It's not a secret if I would say that these are difficult times for development.
We are ten years in the 2030 agenda, and today only one third of the SDGs are on track.
That is not because of a lack of ambition, but it is because we are encountering complex challenges such as conflict, climate shocks, and debt distress.
Yet we can still deliver on real breakthroughs.
We have the means to have people make escape from poverty, to create new pathways, to have better livelihoods and to create jobs.
To restore hope in communities where unfortunately, crisis has become the norm.
UNDP is doing this.
Over the last strategic plan, we delivered $19.6 billion.
We reached 1.1 billion people in 2025 alone.
We have five years left and we have a responsibility to use those remaining five years in the best possible way.
But geopolitical instability, the sharp increase in crisis, and not the least the financing picture makes that incredibly hard.
Over the last two years, we know that official development assistance fell by almost a third.
This is the steepest drop that we have ever seen.
Core funding to the UN fell by more than a quarter with support to the LDCs to the least developed countries in Sub Saharan Africa down by a similar margin.
The situation is the following.
We are asked to deliver more than ever for the people who are the furthest behind with far less resources than we have ever had.
And so UN is a real world test to that contradiction to which we are confronted.
I think there was a clear message from the member states and the Secretary-General and it says that UN is a delivery agenda.
It is not a mere restructuring exercise.
The success of UNA will not be measured by changing structures or by moving posts, but it will be measured by whether this will improve the UN's capacity to deliver.
Reform only matters when it strengthens the delivery to where people experience the UN the most directly, and that is at the country level.
Those reforms are not new.
Those reforms have been set in motion in 2018 to Resolution 72279 and it already has changed the way we work every day.
Today, the programming of UN country teams is more coherent, more strategically aligned through, for example, the cooperation frameworks.
Operations are more efficient and we have more shared services and shared premises than ever.
UNA is now moving from ambition to action, laying the foundations for a leaner, more effective system.
Take, for example, expertise on demand, which UNDP is leading together with ITU.
Today, we have one online catalog.
27 entities make part of that.
More than 2000 service offerings are in that catalog and today we already have six pilots underway.
A shared team cuts transaction times from months to days and leads to less duplication, faster access for countries, and more relevant support.
Country configuration follows the same logic.
Not every entity needs its own office in every country to add value.
Larger entities and UNDP is one amongst them, can host others.
Specialized expertise reaches governments without the cost of a separate footprint and shared services complete that picture.
Coming back offices and premises that free resources for the frontline.
This is UNAT working.
UN AT is today not something which is just on paper.
It is already in our working and we are happy with it.
But further reforms will only succeed if we preserve what makes the system worth reforming.
The Secretary-General Progress report anchors country configuration in the impartial coordination mandate of the resident coordinators.
Coordination should connect countries to partner, never stand between them.
Access must remain direct access to expertise, access to financing, being sure that national ownership is preserved.
Mandates and approved country programs must be respected.
The system must be made more accessible, not more bureaucratic.
Where proximity matters the most, that is in fragile settings, and in the last mile, country presence is not a luxury.
It is a difference between a promise and a result.
UNDP delivers on that as being an end to end development platform.
In those reforms, we must be pragmatic.
Every reform should be costed, should be sure that it is feasible and should be matched with dedicated resources.
Operational agencies cannot absorb the cost of structural reform without it would impact their ability to deliver on the ground.
I think in these times, we cannot be diverted from programmatic or core funding.
If reform needs investment, Please, let's not divert funds that today we really use for our core work and for our programmatic work.
That means that we need a healthier finance mix.
Core funding is not an overhead.
Core funding is the catalytic capital that lets the system act early, coherently and strategically.
It helps us to de risk the policy environment to strengthen institutions, and to crowd in investments.
It preserves countries development impact.
When debt collapses, the poorest pay.
Protecting it is a precondition for everything else.
Through all of this, our compass must not move.
It is poverty eradication, leaving no one behind.
With the University of Oxford, UNDP produces the global multidimensional poverty Index, which measures poverty as people experience it in daily lives, poor health, limited education, and a lack of clean water electricity.
UNDP treats leaving no one behind as a system wide principle, prioritizing the most marginalized and tackling it through economic inclusion, social protection, and effective governance.
Hundreds of millions of people have moved out of this multidimensional poverty in little over a decade.
In 2025, UNDP and our partners supported more than 500 million people on paths to prosperity in more than 120 countries.
And over the full cycle, 291 million gained access to financial services, including 149 million women.
Not theory, lives that have changed.
I mentioned those gains because we should be proud of it.
But we should also be worried.
Those gains are incredibly fragile.
Today, more than 1 billion people still live in acute poverty and nearly 900 million of the poorest ones already face climate shocks.
If you pull support away now, The line that we moved forward will begin to slide back.
And so we need to be very clear.
Every reform must pass one test, whether it serves the furs behind first.
And we owe the member states a leaner system, and we owe the people we serve a stronger one.
Excellencies, UN AT can give us both, but only if we keep delivery at the center and if we keep the funding behind it.
The UNDP is ready to play its role.
Let us use this moment of pressure into a decade of delivery.
Thank you very much, Administrator of the UNDP.
I now give the floor to miss Katherine Russell, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF Mr.
President, I appreciate it.
Excellency, distinguished delegates.
Good morning.
At a time when development gains are under pressure, humanitarian needs are rising and public resources are increasingly constrained.
The question before us is not whether the United Nations should reform.
The question is how we reform in ways that strengthen our ability to deliver for the people we serve.
For UNICEF, that means reforming to help us reach children faster, more effectively, and at greater scale.
UNICEF fully supports the Secretary-General UN AD initiative and remains committed to building more coherent and more effective United Nations development system.
Our organization has reduced costs by 20%.
We've established centers of excellence and modernized our operating model.
We have also adapted our in country presence to better reflect the different realities children face all around the world.
Today, UNICEF is leading on the integrated Humanitarian supply chain with WFP and other partners, shared services across the system and joint leadership of the UN System Data Commons.
These efforts show that greater coherence and efficiency are possible while protecting what matters most delivery for children.
As discussions on UN AD move forward, accountability must remain central.
Each UN entity has a distinct mandate, governance structure, and responsibility to member states.
Better alignment should strengthen those accountabilities.
Country presence must be determined by need, national priorities, and comparative advantage.
One size does not fit all.
The needs of children living in a middle income country facing climate shocks are different from those of children elsewhere who may be affected by conflict, displacement or chronic poverty.
A strong resident coordinator system is essential to this effort.
Resident coordinators play a critical role in convening partners, fostering coherence and helping countries access the full breadth of expertise across the whole UN system.
In addition, country program documents should remain vital instruments for service delivery.
They translate cooperation framework priorities into concrete government endorsed and executive board approved commitments.
Strong alignment between cooperation frameworks and country program documents is important.
But they must not be overly rigid.
We must preserve the flexibility needed to respond to changing realities while maintaining clear governance responsibilities.
A healthy development system requires, as Alexander said, a balanced funding mix.
Our objective should be to improve the quality, predictability, and flexibility of funding.
While at the same time, maintaining the mandate specific accountability that gives member states confidence that resources are achieving results.
In a period of declining resources, every dollar redirected from program to administration is $1 no longer reaching children.
The cost of implementing reform should be transparently assessed, properly planned, and supported through dedicated resources.
Excellency, children today remain disproportionately affected by poverty, conflict, displacement, disability, climate shocks, and economic instability.
UNICEF is working with governments and partners to expand social protection, strengthen education systems, improve access to health and nutrition systems, and ensure that children with disabilities are fully included in society.
We are helping countries protect investments in children even as fiscal pressures and debt burdens increase, and we are strengthening the humanitarian development nexus, ensuring that children affected by conflict, displacement, and climate shocks are not forgotten.
Because if our reforms do not reach the child excluded from school, the child displaced by conflict, the child living with a disability, or the child growing up in poverty, then we have not truly succeeded.
As we move forward with UN AD, UNICEF stands ready to work with member states and partners across the system.
We support reforms that make the United Nations more coherent, more accountable, and more effective.
For UNICEF, that means ensuring that every reform ultimately delivers for children.
Thank you very much.
Maria.
Hi, thank Executive Director of UNICEF.
I now give the floor to our first lead discussant and invite His Excellency, Asim Ifahar Armored, permanent representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, to make a statement.
Thank you.
Thank you, Vice President and a very good morning.
I would like to thank the UNDP administrator and the Executive Director of UNICEF for their interventions.
We deeply value the contribution of the UN development system to Pakistan's national development efforts.
And I think I must pick up some of the points that have been made in these interventions.
Particularly, we share the concern regarding the reduction in ODA and core funding and the point that the reforms focus should be primarily on delivery and implementation.
That is the results on ground.
Lastly, that coordination, which is important, it should translate into enhancing and strengthening the partnership with the countries concerned and the national ownership.
Vice President colleagues, Pakistan hosts over 20 UN entities in country.
And like many others, we are not immune to the funding pressures that is affecting the broader UN development system, as evident in the drawdown of humanitarian coordination capacity on ground, including in Pakistan.
At the same time, we appreciate that some entities, including UNDP, have maintained their country presence despite significant financial headwinds.
I would like to highlight a few queries with regards to the reform agenda under UN 80 for our deliberations today.
First, on coherence and alignment.
The UN SDG chairs report finds that cooperation frameworks are shaped around entity timelines.
Rather than national planning processes.
Moreover, it is stated that country program documents are not substantively derived from them, despite RC certification of alignment.
This reflects a collective gap in incentive structures and oversight.
We therefore would like to ask the executive heads Would the sequencing proposal in the QCPR report, that is, cooperation frameworks to be finalized before work begins on country program documents? Will it resolve this issue? Or are there deeper structural obstacles? Second, on national priorities, there remains room to improve alignment of entity operations with genuine national priorities.
For example, in Pakistan, programming towards core development priorities.
I think this is something that the administrator also mentioned.
The core development priorities such as poverty eradication, employment, and economic growth could be scaled up in our view rather than focus on some other areas.
We have seen that often entities move into areas not based on comparative advantage, but on funding availability.
Addressing this requires better visibility.
Host governments need to know what the entities are planning and resourcing in real time.
We note the proposal on entities maintaining live work plans and visible resources pipelines throughout implementation in the QCPR report and would like to ask the executive heads whether this is feasible to implement.
Thirdly, on knowledge hubs and expertise on demand.
These are promising mechanisms, but their value depends on whether demand is genuinely country defined, whether expertise fills real gaps, and whether the model is more cost effective than the in country presence it is replacing.
We would appreciate further insight from the administrator on how these mechanisms are being practically implemented.
Fourth, on country configuration, Pakistan is open to a more focused UN presence.
But reconfiguration must be a genuine dialogue led or co led by host governments.
Equally important, program countries must retain flexibility in their points of access to the UNDS.
Lastly, on efficiencies and an example from Pakistan where work is ongoing on common premises and with some entities relocating to more cost effective locations.
Progress on common back offices has however been uneven.
We do believe that frank conversation about why efficiency initiatives falter in some contexts is essential.
I would like to emphasize in closing that no amount of efficiency gains can replace adequate funding because we think that without predictable and core resources, even the leanest of systems won't be able to deliver.
So Vice President, these were some of the queries that I thought we should contribute to this discussion.
Pakistan remains committed partner of the UN development system, including UNDP and UNICEF, whose presence and leadership we deeply value.
I thank you.
I thank the permanent representative of Pakistan for those very constructive inputs.
I'd like to invite delegations that wish to participate in the interactive discussion to go ahead and press the microphone button to indicate their request.
Also, we would like to highlight that in order to give the opportunity to as many speakers as possible, the limited time alloted will be 3 minutes for statements on behalf of groups and 2 minutes for national statements.
I now would like to invite Mr.
Hervey Krik Herbtinik Charge Affairs of Croatia, to make a statement.
You have the floor.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President and for the pronunciation.
I know it's a difficult task and I know that if someone does it correctly.
Thank you so much.
I also thank you for this opportunity.
I would like to thank the UNDPDP administrator and UNICEF Executive Director for their interventions.
The operational activities segment matters.
It is where we assess how the UN development system affects real people.
We value the presence of executive heads obviously for this reason even more so because it allows a genuine dialogue.
And we have listened with interest to discussion here on where we are in the reform, especially in the context of the UN 80, as it is our chance to strengthen the resident coordinator system and the UN country teams.
The 2018 reform delivered real structural improvements, but more is needed.
The UN 80 initiative gives us the momentum to move forward further for sure.
But let me elaborate a few points I deem important for this reform to accelerate in the right direction.
The accountability infrastructure now is in place, but the system wide evaluation Office provides independent evidence based assessments of collective performance and annual RC reports at transparency at country level.
Yet we still lack system wide performance metrics that measure collective outcomes, not agency specific activities.
We need mandates and resources and capacities aligned behind a one country strategy.
We also need a single interoperable result system.
A common data standards, shared analytics, real time dashboards linking resources to results in global, regional, and country levels.
This reduces obviously duplication, but also lowers reporting burdens and strengthens evidence based oversight.
Finally, the UN country teams need greater flexibility.
They must be able to deploy the right skills to design and deliver cooperation frameworks in an integrated way, and the regional collaborative platforms are a positive step in that direction.
They also pool expertise and support country teams more effectively.
But we need to empower resident coordinators and their authority to decide what is needed to implement the country's priorities.
Our focus should be clear in our opinion.
We should review and rationalize mandates so the UN CTs work with fewer clearer priorities.
We should strengthen system wide oversight by aligning the Secretariat, the funds, the programs, and specialized agencies under shared accountability frameworks.
Also, we should establish a unified results system to track performance across mandates, budgets, and outcomes, streamline regional structures and expand common administrative platforms, and reinforce the funding compact and incentivize pooled flexible financing aligned with cooperation frameworks.
I believe we believe these steps will help the UN development system deliver coherently, efficiently and with greater impact, especially in this very demanding moment.
This is also exactly what member states expect as we approach the UN 80.
I would like to stop anyway.
Thank you so much.
I thank the S' affair of Croatia and I now give the floor.
As we enter the interactive section, I give the floor to the distinguished representative of Uruguay on behalf of the G 77 in China.
Racis.
Thank you very much, Ambassador.
We thank the representatives of the UNDP, as well as the Executive Director of Userf Statement on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.
The group appreciates this dialogue on the progress in the implementation of UN development system reforms, including the structural reforms set out in General Assembly Resolution 72 slash 279 and implications of the UN AT proposals for the delivery of development mandates.
At the outset, the group of 20 C and China wishes to emphasize that the eradication of poverty in all its forms and dimensions and the implementation of development commitments, including the 2030 agenda and its goal of leaving no one behind must remain the key focus of the UN development system agenda while taking into account national priorities and circumstances.
The group also considers it essential that the views, needs and priorities of program countries be placed at the center of any potential reform and that any decision is directed to strengthen rather than to weaken the development mandates.
With less than five years remaining until the 2030 deadline, the group of 77 and China shares the Secretary's general concern regarding what he has described as a development emergency.
In this regard, the group deeply regrets that despite two iterations of the funding compact, the anticipated shift to our core pool and flexible financing has not materialized in any meaningful way.
The UN development system, including the resident coordinator system, should be adequately funded to operate and to do so in full conformity with national development priorities and relevant intergovernmental mandates.
The group of 77 and China remains firmly committed to engaging actively and constructively in the discussion of the UN 80 initiative and recognizes progress made to strengthen coordination and efficiencies between development entities to maximize impact, including by sharing services, platforms, technology, and data.
The group acknowledges that some of the proposals included in the Workstream three could build on the repositioning reform approved by member states so far, while also providing an opportunity to mobilize urgently needed financial resources.
While the group considers these efforts to be extremely important, it believes that adequate time is needed to understand the exact challenges we face.
Assess the implications of any structural reforms, analyze alternatives, and conduct inclusive and transparent intergovernmental negotiations on all actions for which intergovernmental consideration is envisaged.
Ensuring respect of the diverse operational realities of field presences and avoiding disruptions to field based support and service delivery is also key.
The group also wishes to remind the central role of the General Assembly in setting broad policy orientations for operational activities for development and approving any structural reform.
Regarding specific UNIA proposals, the group would like to ask whether you could elaborate on the Secretariat vision behind Work package five on UN country teams reconfiguration and Work package six pertaining to the regional reset, including by Green, you need more time? Can we allocate more time for that? One more.
One more minute.
Please give us a second.
There you go.
Thank you so much, ambassadors to finish the question that I was putting on package five and six, including by providing concrete examples of the practical impacts on the UN system country level presence and on the regional offices, including regional economic commissions.
The group would also welcome further information on the concrete differences between the regional collaborative platforms, RCPs established as part of the 2018 repositioning and the UNIT proposal to replace them with regional platforms of integration or RPIs.
To finish, let me reassure you that the group of 77 and Chinese aligned with the vision and ambition of the UNT initiative to deliver better on the ground.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for the flexibility.
I thank the distinguished representative of Uruguay.
I'll now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Brazil.
You have the floor.
Thank you, Chair, Mr.
Administrator, Madam Executive Director, Brazil associates itself with a statement delivered by G 77 and China and we welcome this opportunity to engage with the leadership of the UN development system.
We recognize the significant progress achieved since the repositioning of the UN development system.
The resident coordinator system is stronger and cooperition frameworks have become the main reference for UN support at country level.
There have also been important gains in transparency, independent evaluation, operational efficiency, and interagency coordination.
At the same time, we must address a fundamental question that remains unanswered.
How can the resident coordinator herself or himself ensure effective coordination, national ownership, and alignment with national priorities when funding and governance mechanisms of UN entities are not within the RC purview? Part of the answer must necessarily be that the entities themselves work closely with the ERC and that their programs comply with such principles.
It is also critical that earmarking be reduced to a minimum.
The UN initiative offers a critical opportunity to address fragmentation, reduce duplication, and improve the way the UN development system delivers.
Its success should be measured by its contribution to the optimal delivery of development mandates.
Reconfiguration of country teams, regional platforms, expertise on demand mechanisms, and knowledge hubs are good.
They should strengthen the capacity of the UN to respond to national priorities, but they must not create new layers of complexity.
The ultimate test of reform must be impact on people's lives.
Real poverty eradication in all its forms and dimensions must remain the overriding priority of the UN development system.
Leaving no one behind must guide policy advice, resource allocation, programming choices, and evaluation of results.
This is particularly important at a time when many developing countries face debt pressures, fiscal constraints, climate shocks, and persistent inequalities.
I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Brazil.
I'll now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Netherlands to be followed by the United Kingdom and then Germany.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President.
We sincerely thank all UN entity executive heads for your commitment under increasingly difficult circumstances.
Declining funding has forced painful choices, staff layoffs, skilled back programs, and an inability to reach the most vulnerable.
We do not take that lightly.
Much has been achieved since the UNDS repositioning, but significant gaps remain as heard yesterday and not for the first time.
Member States, DCO, and the RC system have a role, so do UN entities in this.
We welcomed the DSGs call yesterday to address compliance in the relevant governing bodies.
While repeating our own call from yesterday, transparency on entity compliance must be systematically made available to enable those bodies to act accordingly.
On the corporation framework.
The corporation framework must be the genuine central strategic document with joint budgeting and a costed results framework.
Entity country program must not only be derived from and aligned with the corporation framework, they must be sequenced after it.
A pro forma copy paste is not alignment, where this is not happening, governing bodies can and should act.
On efficiency and consolidation.
The data is stark, only four common back offices against the target of 50 and just 33% of premises consolidated.
We call for maximum efforts on common back offices, shared premises and services.
The case for every entity maintaining separate back offices can no longer be justified.
On the reform checklist, only 68% of USDG members have completed and shared the reform checklist with their governing bodies.
We call on all entities to do so without further delay.
On engagement.
The OAS is the principal moment for intergovernmental guidance to the UNDS.
We encourage all entities to ensure consistent participation at the appropriate senior level throughout as a signal of importance stay attached to system wide accountability.
In closing, I have one question to the entities represented on the panel.
What concrete steps are you taking to contribute to UN functioning as a truly coherent, effective and efficient system, thereby echoing the questions highlighted by His Excellency, the permanent representative of Pakistan.
Thank you.
I think the distinguished representative of the Netherlands will now give the floor to the representative of the UK.
Thank you, Chair.
The UK welcomes the commitment to UNAC reform from the panelists.
Without strong leadership from agency heads, we risk missing this vital opportunity to make the UN development system fit for the future.
There has been heightened attention on the proposed structural mergers, which has detracted from the delivery of other important and ambitious work packages.
We continue to support the implementation of these practical reforms, which we view as falling within the remit and authority of the Secretary-General, Deputy Secretary-General, and agency heads to implement.
Examples of these include reconfiguring UN country teams to achieve a leaner, context specific, and more efficient, yet impactful footprint, enhancing regional support for streamlined UN country teams through the regional reset and strengthened expertise on demand offer, expanding the use of shared services in common back offices, and refocusing UN country level work on norms, technical, and policy expertise, and convening power with other development actors.
I will make three key points.
First, while much focus rightly lands on the power with the SG to enact positive changes that will reform the UN development system, responsibility also lies with agency heads to ensure that reforms are fully implemented and truly transformative.
Actions must match warm words, including ensuring all agency country based and regional leaders understand the need for collective efforts to drive forward reforms.
Engagement with reforms cannot be tokenistic or half hearted and this includes fully delivering against the 2018 reforms.
This leads to my second point.
The QCPR reaffirmed the RC central role in ensuring coherence and supporting national development goals.
The RC system is a shared investment and the cost sharing arrangement is a critical pillar of the funding model.
We welcome the commitment from UN agencies to fund the RC system through the cost sharing arrangement and must continue to see all relevant entities contribute to the RC system.
Agencies should fully back the RC system on the ground and ensure that none of their activities, appointments, or strategies undermine the RC, the in country leader of the UN.
Third, agencies must ensure genuine alignment between cooperation frameworks and agency specific programmatic priorities, including on key outcomes that reflect the UN charter, including human rights and gender equality.
The SG report stated 84% of cooperation frameworks processes have been adjusted to accommodate entity program document timelines rather than driving them.
In the interest of time, we'll publish the full I thank the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom and now give the floor to representative of Germany.
President Administrator Deco, Madam Executive Director Russell, distinguished delegates.
We thank you for this important dialogue on the future of the UN development system.
We commend the efforts undertaken by UN entities to advance reform implementation under increasingly difficult financial and political circumstances.
We recognize that the decisions required in this context have not been easy.
Germany remains deeply committed to the UN development system, and we welcome UN organizations such as UNDP, to the City of Bonn to strengthen our cooperation further.
We would like to raise two points.
First, we welcome increasing efficiency gains through shared practices.
Common services and shared back offices are important, but efficiency is not an end in itself.
It must strengthen delivery program countries.
Our question is, how are entities tracking whether reported efficiency gains translate into better support program countries? Second, we continue to see a gap between formal integration and integrated delivery.
Compliance with corporation frameworks and business operation strategy matters.
But the real test is whether these instruments lead to more joint programming, less duplication, and stronger collective results, as Katherine Russell also alluded to in her insightful introduction.
Our question is, what concrete steps are organizations putting in place to move from parallel implementation towards joint delivery and shared results? Finally, let me reassure you Germany stands ready to engage constructively in the UN AT reform with one objective a UN development system that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
Thank you.
Alemania.
I thank the distinguished representative of Germany.
I now give the floor to Sweden.
Mr.
Vice President, Excellencies, we appreciate the presence of the UNDP administrator and the Executive Director of UNICEF here today, illustrating your commitment to UN coherence.
Sweden has consistently called on all UN entities to fully implement resolutions 70 9226 and 70 2279, focusing on efficient and effective collective delivery at country level through joint efforts.
We have done so in the executive boards as well as in our bilateral dialogues with individual entities.
Furthermore, we have sent instructions to all of our embassies to engage with the UN AD process through RCs and UN country teams.
All of this with one aim to and promote coherence across all boards and levels.
We have highlighted the centrality of the cooperation frameworks as the key engine to drive these reforms, not least the UN country team configuration.
The SG report, however, notes that the cooperation frameworks continue to be regarded as secondary to individual entities programming tools and timelines.
We would welcome your candid reflections on how we could make the cooperation framework the strategic tool it was meant to and has to be.
We also note that incentive structures continue to reward individual mandate implementation and resource mobilization.
How can we move towards an approach where collective engagement and delivery is valued higher than accomplishments that are organization specific? UNDP has many areas of expertise, but including sustainable development and economics.
UNICEF, in addition to child protection expertise, has one of the most successful communications teams in the UN systems.
UN Women, for example, is a bear of expertise in one of the key mandates, gender equality.
We would welcome your reflections on how we could facilitate the unleashing of your respective organizations expertise for the benefit of the full UN team, including through the RCs.
As principals of some of the most norm setting and operational organizations, we value your input at this stage, and we expect your organizations to be at the forefront of a process leading to increased I thank the distinguished representative of Sweden and I now give the floor to N on behalf of the LDCs followed by the EU.
Mr.
President, Excellencies, I have the honor to speak on behalf of the group of least developed countries.
We thank the Secretary-General and the United Nations system for their continued support to the LDCs and the implementation of the Doha Program of action, a blueprint for enabling LDCs to achieve sustainable development, build resilience, and advance towards graduation.
Mr.
President, LDCs remain the furthest behind, accounting for 14% of the global population, but only 1.3% of global GDP and less than 1% of global merchandise exports.
Nearly one third of people in LDCs continue to live in extreme poverty and the gains achieved over previous decades have been reversed by successive global crises.
These realities demand stronger and more coordinated action by the United Nations system.
We welcome progress made on the implementation of A resolution on QCPR.
However, we note with concern that ODA is declining globally, as highlighted in the Secretary-General report on QCPR and UN revenues are projected to fall by 21% in nominal terms by 2027.
Yeah.
Recognize the progress made in the RC system and the overall positive assessment of the effectiveness of United Nations country teams in LDCs.
We also commend the effective leadership of RCs in ensuring that UN country teams provide strategic support aligned with national plans and priorities.
With fewer than five years left to achieve the SDGs and the upcoming midterm review, implementation of the DPA must be accelerated through increased resources and a stronger partnership.
We therefore call for the UN system to enhance coordination, accountability, and monitoring of the implementation efforts.
The LDC group encouraged the UN system to intensify support for implementing the six priority areas of the Dhafgam axon to accelerate progress towards the sustainable development goals.
Mr.
President, to maximize impact, DPA priorities should be systematically integrated into sustainable development cooperation frameworks with the strengthened coordination, monitoring, and accountability across the UN system while ensuring whereas RLS is well resourced to advance coherent and effective delivery for LDCs.
We further underscore the important role of the United Nations system.
In supporting the implementation ofDOA program for Axon, to deliver on the ambition of the DPA, UN development system must be adequately resourced and equipped to provide coordinated, integrated, and tailored support to LDCs at country, regional and global levels.
We encourage member states and development partners to support the strengthening of UN operational and analytical capacities for LDCs, including through predictable and sustainable financing for programs that advance productive capacity development, human capacity development, climate resilience, digital transformation, and sustainable graduation.
In closing, Mr.
President, a well resourced and effective LDC focused support mechanism is vital to ensure To.
I think Nepal and I get the floor to the EU.
Thank you, Vice President, Excellenc's colleagues.
I have the honor to deliver the statement on behalf of the EU and its member states.
Thank you to the executive director and the administrator.
As you know, we are strong supporters politically and financially of both UNDP and UNICEF and we meet at a moment of unprecedented pressure and opportunity.
The UNAD initiative is not merely a reform, it is a test of our collective ability to deliver on the promise of the SDGs amid converging crisis.
It is clear we need faster, smarter, bolder action on the ground, and that implies a buy in by all actors of the UN system, including the agencies and the membership.
As the reports shared in advance of the OAS demonstrates, we need to finish the unfinished business of the reform of the UN development system of 2018 and adapt it to the current context.
We see three priorities that need to be pursued.
First, strengthening the authority of the resident coordinator.
The RC system is the gateway to the UN development system, but we need to strengthen the system's ability to deliver as one, and here the agencies have a role to play.
Second, the UN country team reconfiguration needs to be implemented while ensuring this is supported by the regional reset and expertise on demand.
The UNA 80 initiatives regional reset builds on 2018 reforms and focuses on sub regional collaboration, cross border solutions, and regional financing, all while fostering synergies across UN entities and regional coordination mechanisms.
In essence, we need to preposition expertise, simplify access to regional knowledge hubs, and ensure no countries is left to navigate crisis alone.
Third, equipping UN country teams for the future.
The UN AD is our chance to future proof the UN with predictive analytics, AI driven solutions, and real time monitoring so that we are not just reacting to crisis, but anticipating and preventing them.
The EU and its member states are ready to support the UNAD ambitions of the Secretary-General, and we need all actors to commit to those changes, engage in their implementation in the next year and report back on progress.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of the European Union.
I'll now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Guatemala to be followed by Indonesia and then Mexico.
Thank you very much, Vice President, Guatemala considers that accountability for the development system should be measured on its ability to deliver coherent concrete results that are centered around national priorities.
Reform has revealed major progress in coordination coherence and coordinating presence on the ground.
This progress should be maintained and deepened in this context, the UN 80 initiative should be understood as an opportunity for reducing duplication, simplifying processes, and strengthening the efficiency of the system without weakening the development mandate or its operational efficacy in our countries in Guatemala, the key goal remains the same.
All reform should contribute to eradicating poverty and leaving no one behind.
This means that we must maintain a focus on the most vulnerable populations, strengthen territorial action and ensure that efficiency measures strengthen the capacity of the system to support sustainable transformational and inclusive change.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Guatemala and I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Indonesia.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President, Excellency's Distinguished delegates.
We thank the UNDP Administrator and UNICEF Executive Director for their briefings and aligns itself with the statement delivered by Uruguay on behalf of the group of 77 in China.
As the UN AD process moves forward, reforms must preserve mandates and should remain focused on accelerating the implementation of the 2030 agenda, particularly for poverty eradication.
There are four key issues that we would like to highlight.
First, UN City reconfiguration must be driven by host governments needs, national development plans and cooperation frameworks.
Strengthening coordination should enhance rather than complicate the delivery of development support.
We also see value in shared platforms for data, digital solutions, technology, and expertise that can help countries access integrated and practical support while avoiding duplication and unnecessary complexity.
Second, the regional reset must reflect regional realities and priorities.
Regional platforms should strengthen access to regional expertise, including through the regional commissions while supporting cross border challenges.
Third, recalibration should strengthen country level impact.
Tailored RCO capacities, data, digital tools, SDG financing, and expertise on demand should help deliver integrated practical and measurable support while avoiding duplication.
Finally, sustainable financing remains essential.
Strengthening cooperation between RCs and UN entities supported by more predictable and flexible funding, including reduced earmarking would enhance coherence and collective results at the country level.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Indonesia.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Mexico.
Thank you very much, Vice President.
In the context of the UNA initiative and the preparations ahead of the QCPR of operational activities for development, we consider that it is essential for any reform effort to be underpinned by evidence and concrete results in this regard, We encourage the entities of the system to clearly identify where real duplications currently exist and what steps they will take to correct them without weakening specialized mandates that continue to be essential for countries.
Realignment decisions should respond to the impact on the ground and not solely to budgetary considerations.
Mexico also supports a more efficient United Nations.
However, efficiency must serve sustainable development, poverty eradication, and reducing inequalities.
At a time of historic contraction in development cooperation, reform of the system must preserve the redistributive function of multilateralism, avoiding adjustments from disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations in countries with less fiscal space.
Likewise, We consider that excessively earmarked financing is generated incentives that favor competition between actors.
A system that competes internally for resources cannot offer integrated responses to complex challenges.
This is why the UN AT reform Initiative must contribute to correcting these incentives, promoting greater financial flexibility and accountability that is based on collective results.
In the environmental sphere, Mexico believes that reforms should prioritize the use and strengthening of existing capacities.
In this connection, we stress the importance of strengthening Nairobi's role as a strategic center for multilateral environmental governance.
The search for efficiencies should not translate into an erosion of capabilities that have proven their value in supporting implementation of international environmental commitments.
Similarly, the discussion on strengthening the development system cannot be disassociated from the broader debate on financing for development.
It's essential that we consider issues such as debt sustainability, fiscal space, domestic resource mobilization, and the systemic risks of the international financial architecture.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Mexico.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Zambia.
Thank you very much, Chair, and I thank the heads of the institutions for making time to be with us.
This platform is very important as it gives us the opportunity to have dialogue and learning between agencies and member states, so we really appreciate that.
Also, I think it's important to point out that we're living really in a world of increasing uncertainty.
And the issue of alignments becomes extremely important.
We do want to highlight that in all this, the issue around maintaining development as the key pillar of the UN remains essential.
Also want to point out the issue around poverty reduction is a key issue as well.
But of course, the country frameworks have to remain flexible enough to respond to shocks.
Um, the important characteristic that must be there.
I concur with many of the views that have been put forward regarding the concerns regarding declining ODA and the importance of strengthening co financing, especially for delivery on the ground.
Also, we concur with many of the issues that have been put forward regarding the alignment between the cooperation framework and the development plans.
The key intervention we have today relates to preserving what the UN actually is known for its comparative advantages, and we think that sometimes this gets lost in the discussion.
Um, that we want to reform the UN, but we must preserve those issues that the UN is known for.
As we're going through the reform, we must ensure that we protect that.
The key issue here, I want to stand on the issue of knowledge, and preserving the knowledge remains an important issue.
We all know that with the fragmentation comes with fragmented knowledge, and the UN has vast knowledge over the decades.
The question that we have for the heads of the agency relates to how are we curating the knowledge that we have so that we can package it and put it forward.
We do acknowledge that the issue of the regional reset and the knowledge hubs presents a great opportunity.
But the question is within your respective institutions, how are we preserving this important comparative advantage in the context of declining ADA, I think it's important that partnerships and the issue of knowledge become much more important, especially for countries that are going through transition.
Thank you very much.
Cora.
I thank the distinguished representative of Zambia.
We have been asked to ensure that statements are delivered at a normal speaking speed to facilitate the work of the interpreters.
I'll now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Switzerland to be followed by Mozambique and then Canada.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President, Excellencies, we thank administrator, the crew and Executive Director Russell for their interventions.
Switzerland attaches great importance to coherence of the UN development system delivering at country level and strong RC leadership and we expect UN country teams and we expect UN entities to support RC leadership in practice.
Let me allow to make two remarks in that regard.
First, as we already heard by other delegations, the cooperation framework should be the single costed system wide strategy at country level.
Entity specific country program documents must be sequenced after and genuinely derived from cooperation frameworks.
However, the SG report on the QCPR implementation shows that 84% of cooperation frameworks processes are adjusted to accommodate timelines of agency country program timelines, resulting in only partial alignment and continued parallel planning processes.
In your view, what are the challenges in ensuring that the entity specific country program documents are sequenced after and fully derived from the cooperation frameworks? How could we as member states help support you in that regard? Second, we support a stronger role for RCs in performance assessments of agency's representatives.
We call on all agencies to more systematically request and integrate RC feedback into their performance assessments of agency representatives with a specific focus on their contribution to collective results and delivery of the cooperation framework.
In the performance assessments of your representatives, do you have an indicator for joint resource mobilization and or collaboration and joint work more broadly? Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Switzerland.
I'll now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Mozambique.
We will welcome this opportunity to engage with the UN development system executive heads and particularly with Executive Director of UNICEF and the administrator of UNDP.
I This is particularly important given the role of your agencies, which we consider primos interps amongst the development entities in our particular country context, given your operational footprint, programmatic reach, and strategic contribution to the cooperation framework, implementation in our countries, and obviously the important dialogue you have with our national entities.
We also recognize that the realities here in New York, even in our national capitals can differ from the realities on the ground.
It is often easier to agree on alignment at the level of global guidance or national planning than to translate it into day to day operational practice across sectors, provinces, districts, and implementation sites.
That is why alignment is for us a serious issue.
Olamia seen progress.
We have seen joint strategic validations by U agencies presented in a harmonized manner.
This is a practical example of the kind of alignment we wish to see more often.
As UN AT advances, we see opportunities for agency incentives to evolve.
Executives heads have a key role in ensuring the country representatives are assessed not only by agency specific resource mobilization, but also by their contribution to collective outcomes.
Thank you.
I thank Dish Representative of Mozambique.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Canada.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President and Excellency's colleagues.
We thank the UNDP administrator and the UNICEF Executive Director for being here with us today.
Candida, here's your statements on financing of reforms not coming at the expense of COR and also on ensuring that country presence reflects needs, priorities, and comparative advantage.
On that, we have two points and questions really for you both.
On expertise on demand, we're interested to hear from your entity vantage points what opportunities this mechanism would allow for stronger programming within cooperation frameworks, but also your ability to implement individual entity strategic plans, where you would recommend identifying this expertise or how I should say, and what concerns you see with this model and how you would recommend it be financed.
Secondly, we note with concern in the reports that entities are reportedly deprioritizing the cost sharing and the payment of the coordination levy for the RC system.
We ask, how are you ensuring compliance in the levy payment and would the suggestion to apply the levy to non humanitarian core funding simplify payment? Finally, what challenges are you experiencing and how can member states help? Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Canada.
We have heard from the last speaker in our list.
That leaves us about 15 minutes.
I will now give the floor to Executive Director Russell to respond to some of the questions and Well, thank you very much and I want to really thank all of you for the active participation.
You've asked many questions.
I can't pretend that I can answer all of those here, but I would like to go through a couple of the points and see if we can give you some sense of where we stand on these.
First, I do very much appreciate the many comments that were made about effective reform.
I have to say again, and I said it in my comments, how critical that is for UNICEF.
For us, UNICEF has a very important mission, we believe, a noble mission, honestly, to take care of children around the world, and we are doing our best to do that.
There's certainly space for us to do better in terms of how we cooperate with our colleagues across the UN system, but at the end of the day, we we take that responsibility seriously and everything that we talked about Kent has to be not in the sense of reform for the sake of reform, but reform that really makes it better for us to respond to the needs of children and to serve children around the world.
There are just a couple of points I'd like to make.
First, UNICEF is fully committed to UN 80 reform and I think we participate across every one of these sectors and are doing our best to try to add value to all of the work that is being done here.
We think it's important to try to build a leaner, more coherent system that delivers better results on the ground.
I have to stress that the decisions that you all will make here in the next several weeks are absolutely critical to whether we will as a UN system, be able to deliver or not for children.
This is not an abstraction.
This is the real measure of success for us is whether we reach every child faster, more effectively, and at greater scale, particularly in crises and fragile contexts.
On the humanitarian reform, let me just say We are trying to contribute practical solutions to the reform agenda.
Many of you have heard about the work we're doing with WFP on the integrated Humanitarian supply chain, which is already generating some operational efficiencies in complex emergencies.
On country presence, UNICEF supports a differentiated and context specific country typologies.
I have to say, I I cutoff? Excellent.
That'd be good, no.
I think that we have a very important principle here that we bring to bear, which is that this is not a one size fits all response.
We really need to look at the country and understand what the needs are of the country and figure out what the presence should be.
I can't stress enough that I know that it's harder to do, it takes a lot more time, but it's not that simple.
We spent a lot of time thinking about our country typologies in more general sense of middle income countries versus conflict countries or whatever.
But even with that, I think you need to go deeper and really think about what each country needs.
On funding, I appreciate the comments that have been made on the importance of a balanced funding mix and core funding, I say this constantly, Alexander mentioned it, absolutely critical to our ability to move fast and flexibly in settings.
Just as an example, the recent challenges we're facing in the DRC in Uganda on Ebola, our ability to bring core resources to bear made a huge Did I say angle? No, Uganda.
Did I say Uganda? Anyway, to really bring resources to bear quickly, which we have been able to do.
I just want to stress how important the core resources are for us.
Earmarked and pooled funding obviously have an important role to play too, but I think the key for donors and governments is to understand excuse me, that we need to have the blend of those different efforts.
On data, I just want to stress how important that is to us and that goes along with the discussions today on information sharing.
We obviously believe that if governments don't know what's happening with children in their countries, we're not going to be able to respond efficiently.
We invest a lot in data.
We are leading the data effort UNAD reform.
I think the key is that we've got to build up national systems so that they're able to do this as well.
But it's an important issue, I think, to really have the best data and the best sharing of resources, which I think resources around information, knowledge, experience, and I think that we again, take that seriously.
We have, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, set up what we're calling centers of excellence that are focused on different issues that relate to children.
Sharing that information is critical.
Our view is that the governments ultimately are the ones who are doing the work to support children in their countries.
They need the best data and information and research that we have in order to do that and we take that responsibility seriously.
I would say just to sum up, we have our board meeting coming up.
We will continue to address some of these challenges there and engaging in our executive board where we have dedicated sessions on both UN AD and UN development system reform.
Also happy to provide, to the extent that you all have specific questions which several of you have raised today, happy to respond to you in writing if that's useful and we did track the questions, so we'll follow up.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Executive Director.
Administrator of the Cro you have the floor.
Yes.
Thank you.
I think this is very useful discussion or it's a discussion now that you answer that we're having here and it's quite interesting to see which elements are being brought forward and where the commonality is.
I'm trying to find commonality because that's how we need to move forward.
I think we're at the point now where we should start connecting the dots.
Of what is feasible between us.
I know in certain elements, there's different point of views, but in many elements, there is actually quite some coherence and that I think is important to move it forward.
I think first of all, almost every one of you talked about delivery, about impact in the country, about how the UN NATO reform should be a reform that helps us in being better on the operational side.
Many of you talked about the fact that it should make things less complicated, less administrative, faster, more direct and we agree 100% with that.
A lot of questions on country program documents, cooperation frameworks and others.
Look, today, the country program documents before they go to the executive board, They are signed off by the national country and they are signed off by the resident coordinator.
Which to me is the best guarantee that if we make a CPD, it fits in the country framework.
And the content of those country frameworks, I think it's quite clear.
It defines the national development priorities.
It defines the theory of change.
It defines what is the role of everyone.
The CPDs, of course, are made by the different entities.
But today, it is impossible to make a CPD which is not aligned with the country frameworks.
It's impossible to do that today.
And sometimes I have the feeling that the existence of those country frameworks is maybe not known enough on how it really defines what the framework in which we work.
Of course, then the CPDs are costed, then they're approved by our executive boards.
So it is for us, a very limiting document in which we work, but by definition, it is within a country framework.
Now, it's important that there is no interruption of operations.
Because all of the operational entities that make CPDs, we do that in the process together with national governments and with our executive board.
Continuously, it is being tested on whether this fits with the cooperation framework or not.
But if we would now say, no, we first have to stop everything, make a cooperation framework and then restart everything, you will have operational consequences, and I think is honestly the last thing that we want.
I think here, really, let's look at what functions and let's fix what is not functioning.
But really, let's go for different countries and look where you would have CPDs which are not coordinated in the country in the country frameworks, and the RC is the master of it because the RC signs off every CPD before it goes to the executive boards.
Second element was on expertise on demand.
I think to me expertise on demand, there's two main things that come out of it.
First of all, is that it guarantees that you always get access to the best expertise that is available.
That means that expertise on demands guarantees that if a organization, certain entity is doing the implementation or doing the programming of a certain type of work, that in a mandatory way, it will always call on other agencies that are the expert agencies.
Today, before expertise on the mount, that was not always the case.
I think we have to be clear on that.
Before expertise on demand, well, often the entity doing the project was the one that had the best political contacts or maybe was best in fighting with elbows.
It was not always calling on other entities to have the best expertise which is available.
Expertise on the mod guarantees that.
That's the first thing is guaranteeing you that you get access to the best that the UN has to deliver.
The second element is that it changes the dynamic of country presence.
I think some of you talked about how many different entities are present in your country.
Sometimes it's 20-25, sometimes even 30 agencies that are present.
Many of these do work, but not all of them.
Some of them are present because they want to make sure that if new projects are being put on the table that they're present and that they would get access to it.
That is a dynamic that we need to break.
I think the logic in which we need to go is that you have a few organizations with a broad operational network that are present, but that guarantee that if a certain topic comes on the table, you will call onto the other entity that is not present in the country, but that can use the platforms typically of UNICEF, ours and others.
And so we are really a big believer of expertise on demand.
I think it is quite a low cost way of working and one of the biggest careabouts that I hear often is that there is such a broad country presence.
I think it is the ideal segue of breaking that cycle of having to be present to get financing, but leading to a high degree of an efficiency.
And There were some interventions on the need of flexibility.
We agree with that.
I think that the presence that you need to have needs to be adapted to the size of what we are confronted with, but also to the priorities which are being set by the national government.
It needs to be demand driven, not offer driven.
Trying to make sure that everything has been covered.
Yes, maybe worth to mention is that, as I said, I think that especially on country team configuration, we are at the element of moving forward.
But let's make sure that the operational capacity that the operational entities have that these are uninterrupted.
Let's fix what needs to be fixed, but let's keep what functions for the moment.
Five organizations have made a letter where we specifically address certain things which we think still need to be addressed.
These are trying to make sure that I mentioned all five of them, UNICEF WFP UNDP, and WHO.
It's a coordinated document that those five organizations have made in trying to specify certain elements where we want to make sure that our operational capacities are still maintained.
In broad lines, there are four big elements that we push forward.
First of all, if you do Um, if we move forward, you need to make sure that you remain in the GA resolution.
The GA resolution is very, very clear, the one of 2018.
It's very, very clear of the coordinating role.
Some of you have mentioned the need for more authority in coordination.
We agree with that.
I think if you want that coordinating role to be successful, from time to time, the RC needs to have the capacity to say, well, I'm going to use my authority to make sure that the coordination actually does happen.
I think the majority of the cases today that actually is already the case.
We work extremely well together with the RC system.
Can you further improve it? Yes.
But I would say that today it is already something where we see definitely benefit.
Second element is that there's the interaction between the country frameworks and the CPDs.
I think we talked about it.
Third element is that if there is need for financing to the reforms, please don't come take our core funding of our program funding to do it.
We really need that for our operational side and we need to make sure that the direct access is something that is still maintained.
Thank you.
Very well.
Thank you very much.
Well, let me thank our panelists, both Executive Director Russell and Administrator Decro as well as to all the delegations that have made statements today.
We have done very well with the time and time management, so thank you for that as well.
I now briefly pause the meeting to allow the podium to be rearranged for the next panel discussion.
Please remain seated.
Thank you.
We are.
It's done.
It's still in progress, we can begin.
Should we begin? Colleagues, I now invite the Council to resume its consideration on agenda item seven, operational activities of the United Nations for International Development Cooperation and to hold a dialogue on UN development system funding.
Funding remains one of the defining challenges facing the United Nations development system at the time of rising global needs and growing fiscal pressures.
Recent funding trends point not only to reduced overall resources, but also to persistent structural issues in how the system is funding.
As you member states continue to call for a more coherent, a more integrated and effective development system.
This session provides an opportunity to reflect on whether current funding arrangements and institutional incentives are aligned with those ambitions.
This discussion will examine how the funding compact can be further operationalized at country level and how funding approaches and system wide collaboration can help strengthen collective delivery in an increasing constrained global financing environment.
The EcoSc will now hold a panel discussion on and I quote, Dialogue on UN development system funding.
I'm pleased to welcome our distinguished panelists.
First, Mr.
James Wendell.
The Secretary-General Special Adviser on reform.
Second, Mr.
Oscar Fernandez Tarano, Assistant Secretary-General for Development coordination at the DCU and miss Elena Panova, United Nations resident coordinator in Egypt, and Mr.
Pahod Bukhanov, resident coordinator in Lao People Democratic Republic, as well as our lead discussion.
Her Excellency, Metld permanent representative of Norway.
I first give the floor to Mr.
James Wendell.
You have the floor, sir.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Distinguished delegates.
Many figures have been discussed yesterday and also this morning.
I'll just leave you with a few.
In 2024, the United Nations system has $68 billion.
We estimate for 2027 that the United Nations systems will have nominally around $50 billion.
But if you control for inflation, the real figure is probably $48 billion.
That's a drop of 29%, but it's still a significant amount of money.
If we do manage those money better and build on them, maybe we can get somewhere.
Enough for the figures.
From where I sit, to reverse this trend for both core funding and pool financing, we need to frame that discussion in a broader discussion on how United Nations can reposition its grant finance business model in a way that helps reverse the widening implementation gap in the sustainable development.
Only if we frame it this way, we can reverse the trend.
Here, the funding review that we're working on in UNAC can contribute in that position, but it cannot do so alone.
It sits along other UNH initiatives, including the country configuration, the regional reset, expertise on demand, and several structural reform proposals on the table.
Our strategy to reverse the situation should be brought into UN based both goals and development strategies going forward.
However, In short term, even if we are unable to attract significantly more resources, we can still reduce fragmentation, institutional fragmentation, funding fragmentation, and mandate fragmentation.
By doing so, we can devote a greater share of available resources to results rather than managing complexity.
With this broader setting in mind, let me now turn to funding.
One of the clearest conclusions emerging for the work is that we as the United Nations must accept that we operate within a mixed funding model, and we need to optimize our work within that model.
That model is overwhelmingly dominated by earmark funding.
Again, I will go out on a limp and say a good figure for 2027 is probably 10% core, 3% pool financing, and the rest earmarked, 87%.
At the same time, earmark funding comes from a large and diverse group of contributors, whereas core and pooled funding are provided by a much smaller group of partners.
Many of these partners are in the room today.
So where do we go from there in this mix? If we want to reverse the decline in C and pool funding, I think we should highlight three priorities.
Priority number one relates to the fact that donors very legitimately seek visibility over how resources are used and what results they achieve.
For both CO and development pool financing, donors often wait a year or two to hear about how their money actually relates to results.
We should move towards a model where financial allocations, expenditures, and results can be viewed in near real time and linked directly to activities and outcomes on the ground.
This would allow donors and UN entities to engage in a more active dialogue, both on performance but also cost correction.
In short, we need to move from retrospective transparency to real time results transparency.
Second, our analysis suggests that while donors often use the word visibility, they do not all mean the same thing.
Some wants to see results at the country level, others prefer aggregated system wide results.
At best, the UN today produces one type of report for results, but the UN needs to accommodate those different needs and see how we will allow and that will allow donors to maybe give more to core and pool.
Thirdly, we are a fragmented system.
So for getting the donor visibility right, we need to build on achieved sound transparency standards that we were introducing 20 years ago and now undertake similar efforts to establish agreed standards for results and impact reporting so that performance becomes comparable across funding instruments and entities.
So mentioned today by the distinguished delegate from Croatia, who I do not believe is in the room.
Oh no, sorry, you are there.
Second priority, we have discussed quality of core and pool funding, and I think the quality discussion is, of course, important.
However, I think it's time we introduce a new quality, you can say category, and that is quality for earmarking.
If 80% of our funding, it stands to reason that all earmarking is not the same.
Some could probably be better than others.
Some forms of earmarking, which are multi year draw upon existing agency capacities, align with established pipelines of work and accept standard reportings, they are easier to manage and more impactful than funding that is short term that is customized, administratively intensive, and disconnected from broader programs.
What happens is if you accept that there's high quality earmarking and lower quality earmarking, it is important because the lower quality earmarking is more expensive to manage and probably also mentioned, it may not have the same development impact.
The difficulty we have today is that earmarking today is priced the same.
Low quality earmarking and high quality earmarking is priced the same.
That begs the question, who pays for the management of low quality earmarking? That in my view, is part of the conversation that undermines the case for COR because the implicit answer is that this is CR that pays for this.
If I am correct, this is very damaging for the case for COR.
For that reason, one of the ideas emerging from the revenue is that both donors and agencies should gradually move away from low quality earmarking arrangements and toward a funding mix that combines co funding, pool funding, and high quality earmarking.
The third and last priority is we need to strengthen and rationalize pool financing.
In particular on the development side, we believe adjustments are needed.
The first way to do this is we need to strengthen the overall architecture in the pool funding landscape, instruments such as SRF The peace building fund, they have clear institutional identities and recognized system wide roles.
We need a development pool funding anchor and that suggests a repositioning of the joint SGD fund.
It will be the third part of a transfer of system wide pool funding arrangements that would anchor the joint UN actions when needed and when needed.
Secondly, we need to address fragmentation.
Today, we probably have more than 150 pool funding instruments on the development site, and this has led to an unmanaged proliferation that lacks institutional anchoring.
We therefore need to examining options to scale, to close, or to merge development funds pool funds and see even if we can have some of these funds with joint secretariats.
The objective is not necessarily fewer funds.
The objective is that funds are strategically aligned, clearly differentiated and recognized as a system wide instrument rather than a standalone fundraising vehicle.
And finally, we should build stronger transparency.
Most of the development pool funding instruments, they are managed by the MPTFO office.
They have a very good platform for financial transparency.
However, they do not have a platform that allows us full cycle management so we can get financing and results onto the same platform.
I think this is going to be very important.
So with those concrete priorities as an input to the panel discussion, I'd like to hand over the floor.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President.
Thank you, Mr.
Jens Wendel.
Thank you, Mr.
Jens Wendell.
I now give the floor to Mr.
Oscar Fernandes Tano.
You have the floor, sir.
Mercy, President.
Thank you, Chair.
Colleagues.
The funding compact, as we all know, has helped actually establish the common framework for improving the quality, predictability, transparency, and effectiveness of the financing of the UN development system.
It has also stimulated dialogues at the country level, and we've had more than 90 recorded in the different reports that have been submitted for your attention, and they have also been complemented with dialogues that have been taking place in the executive in the governing bodies and in this EcoS OAS and QCPR process.
The discussions have actually helped establish the beginnings of a more monitoring of the mutual accountabilities, but certainly more transparency and better understanding of the funding trends of the sort that an just described, maintaining a certain attention to the importance of this balanced and sustainable funding base and mix.
As we do the review of the funding compact, I think it's also important to recognize where member states have been performing.
I know that there's quite been a lot of the underperformance on the side of the member states as compared to those undertaken by the UN system.
But again, based on the contributions that we've seen over the past two years, we have countries like Finland and Qatar who have not only met but also exceeded the targets of providing at least 30% of voluntary development contributions as core funding.
We also have countries that have exceeded the target of 30% contribution to pool funds.
These are Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and Finland.
We've also had countries that met or exceeded the targets of providing 15% to the thematic funding.
Countries like Denmark, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, and the UK are countries to prove that this can happen, that we can have movement among member states for this more concerted, transparent, accountable mechanisms of performing against a funding compact that is a voluntary construct, but that took quite a lot of negotiations within the UN and among the member state.
Looking ahead, the central question is not whether we need more reporting on the funding compact indicators.
It's more like how do we use all this reporting and all this data and all these dialogues that we have been having in order to address the challenges of the multilateral system funding.
Here, the analysis taken by the colleagues on the Work Stream 18 of the UNAT work packages suggests that the challenge is no longer more reporting and more data, it's more the quality of the dialogue.
It's how these issues are discussed in the governing boards, and how we have a global review process because currently all these mechanisms are very fragmented, do not lend themselves to learn any lessons across different processes and are not suit really for the purpose of identifying challenges and translating the findings into operational policy directives for our colleagues performing support at the country level.
So, in essence, the next phase of the funding compact should focus on strengthening the quality and the strategic intent of the dialogues to have more accountability and more follow up and transparency.
And here four key actions going forward.
First, the need to have within an annual, sorry, high level review of the funding compact, within the confines of this EcoSES session, today we're only according 90 minutes to something that is mission critical in terms of transparency, predictability, and understanding where the funding and what the impact of different funding sources has to align and to ensure coherence of the UN offer at the country level.
The second is the need for a political dialogue that needs to be complemented by stronger management follow up.
Here I'm referring more to the UN development system that we need within the UN development system, the principles, some of which were here just before in the previous session, but we have some 34 of them.
How we have these discussions within the UNSDG principles level, and then how we have at the ASG level, a formalized ASG group on the funding compact follow up.
We have this established in an informal base, but I think we need to formalize that.
The third action would be that we need to strengthen the linkages across all these different dialogues, the country, the governing board discussions, EcoSoc reviews, and again, have a clarity on what types of lessons we are taking and how they are being operationalized at the country level.
Then, of course, something that comes out very clear in the two reports of the SG and the DSG need much more emphasis on learning, transparency, recognition, and much clearer communication of results and further and more easy to understand data systems across the different entities that do work on this issue.
The last point here is that we have established a shared direction of travel within the UN and among member states.
What we need now, of course, is a much more strategic dialogue, a more predictable place to have these dialogues and to be able to translate this to the field.
The last point, Mr.
President, is that the Dak Hammersko Foundation has undertaken a review of the funding compact and the dialogues and what it has achieved.
This was part of the Funding compact agreement of 2024, and I understand that results are going to be shared with the member states in the coming weeks.
President.
Thank you, Mr.
Oscar Fernandes Tano.
Let's hear from people on the ground.
I give the floor to miss Elena Panova, resident coordinator.
In Egypt.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President.
Excellencies, distinguished representatives, dear colleagues, thank you very much for this opportunity and allow me to start by presenting the overall UN development funding picture in Egypt.
Our current cooperation framework amounts to approximately $1.2 billion over five years.
Yet, like many countries, we remain heavily dependent on earmarked funding.
Out of the 580 million that have been delivered over the last three years, only 9% was in core funding.
The rest is mainly earmarked, soft earmarked joint programs, and a little bit less than 4% in thematic pool funds.
What have we learned at country level? It is becoming very, very clear that when there is a strong government leadership, the UN country team is empowered to respond strategically, deliver better together, and the donors are encouraged to invest in integrated joint programming.
Let me illustrate this with two brief examples.
The first is Hier Karma, or the decent Life, the largest government rural development program on the African continent, aiming to improve the lives of around 60 million people through investments in infrastructure, social services, and livelihoods.
Given the strategic importance of this transformational government effort, as a resident coordinator, I mobilized the UN country team to support this initiative in a more coordinated and also coherent manner, reducing fragmentations and small projects here and there.
Currently, 15 UN agencies are working across more than 80% of the targeted villages under this program.
By bringing together UN contributions under one collective effort, the UN managed to build trust as a reliable partner to the government on this transformational effort and also demonstrated visible results on the ground.
This in turn has helped to mobilize more than $400 million in soft earmarked contributions from various donors.
The biggest one donor being in this 400 is the European Union with 55 million for a joint program where six UN agencies come together.
The lesson is very clear.
Joint funding works when it is anchored in national priorities and also backed by visible results.
Our next step is to expand the partnership base through using the grant funding that we have as a blended finance instrument to leverage private sector financing in the villages and also ensure sustainability and scale of this huge development investment.
Second example, this is our support to migrants, refugees, and host communities.
Egypt hosts more than 10 million migrants and refugees, making this one of the country's most important national priority.
As a resident coordinator, together with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we launched a joint program for migrants, refugees and host communities, factoring in the non camp policy of Egypt where migrants and refugees live together in the same host communities.
With the technical leadership of UNHCI and IOM, they came together to work together on this program, we managed to bring and to rally all the UN agencies that contribute to the domain of migrants and refugees in one.
With an initial contribution of around 20 million a soft earmarked funding from the EU, the joint program has already supported education for more than 300,000 migrants and refugee students, healthcare services to over 200,000 migrants and refugees and protection services for approximately 150,000 vulnerable migrants and refugees.
This joint effort has attracted further additional funding from Canada and Italy, which we are now negotiating.
So let me conclude the excellences with where I started.
The experience from Egypt is very straightforward.
First, the country is asking for scale, coherence, and alignment, and the donors are willing to follow when there is a national ownership and strong government capacity to lead.
Second, This leads to high expectation of the UN country team under the leadership of the resident coordinator to deliver transformational results at scale and also to work together.
And third, and very important, we must move beyond funding and look really into the financing.
As the ODA comes under increasing pressure, innovative approaches such as blended finance, debt swaps, government cost sharing, and other catalytic instruments will become increasingly important when they are firmly anchored into the national priorities and the country reality.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Now, I will give the floor to Mr.
Bahadir Burkhanov, resident coordinator in Lao, People's Democratic Republic.
You have the floor, sir.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I'm pleased to contribute to this session from my country of posting, Lao PDR, a low middle income country that is Southeast Asia's only landlocked state and one that is expected to graduate from LDC status this year.
Laos has been disproportionately affected by ODA funding cuts.
It is among most heavily impacted countries in Asia and the Pacific with near 30% reduction in country level funding to the UN system 2024-2026.
The most at risk areas affected by these cuts are health, nutrition, and food security, all crucial sectors where SDG financing gap has ironically been widest.
But volumes are only part of the picture.
Quality is just as important.
There are deeper structural changes at play, demanding changes in the UN entity business models, and necessary shift away from fragmented, narrowly defined project driven activities to a complimentary mix of funds that supports integrated SDG solutions and long term development outcomes.
Funding cuts sent shockwaves through the system in Lao PDR.
But rather than reinforcing divisions and competition, the challenge brought the UN country team together.
Impetus for joined up work has increased and the country team is finding new ways of working together through higher quality joint programs aligned with SDG transitions.
For our forthcoming cooperation framework, the new outputs are designed as strategic areas of collaboration and hubs of joint programming.
This would effectively place a premium on multidisciplinary program from the get go rather than an afterthought.
We're also making headway with pooled funding model.
Our first thematic pooled fund on green and climate finance helps government address policy gaps to unlock much needed sustainable finance.
Joint Program on reproductive, maternal and child health has been a service offering over the years and expanded to include subnational capacities and sustainability of investments.
The Minister of Health calls it the brain of the public health system.
Our newest joint program on food systems follows an SDG transition pathway to deliver financing for an integrated climate food systems action at scale, leveraging $43 million in the next two years.
These joint initiatives will enable a meaningful start to our new cooperation framework in 2027.
The role of host country governments in the Funding Compact is absolutely crucial.
The government of Lao PDR has encouraged UN and funding partners to achieve a more effective funding mix, one that recognizes the centrality of the cooperation framework, championing national priorities, the one that blends different sources of finance for sustained impact, and one that understands the pitfalls of fragmentations and benefits of integration.
Our first country dialogue on funding compact in Lao PDR was in fact called out by the government whose message was loud and clear.
We want a better quality funding for the UN Lao PDR cooperation framework.
While all of this sounds very positive, the funding compact would only deliver on its promise when funding decisions began to recognize the UN system working together in a more integrated and impactful manner.
In my country context, this remains work in progress.
In fact, most of the recent funding for joined up work came from global funding instruments while in country bilateral resources often remain fragmented.
This is a challenge.
While the country team is keen on a country pooled fund to accompany our next cooperation framework, we must still extensively assess the feasibility of its future capitalization.
Funding partners therefore have a huge role to play in making informed funding choices, discouraging competitive behaviors, and promoting collaboration.
The funding compact is called a compact for a reason because it takes two to tango.
While there has been good progress on transparency of bilateral funding decisions, sector specific projects remain a dominant programming method on the ground.
As the UN country team, we understand that the funding combat commitments can and should be more than the sum of individual parts.
We also recognize that no single funding modality can meet all needs.
Core pooled, thematic and earmarked funding fulfill different but complementary purposes.
Vertical and multi partner funds increasingly require convening role, coordination, and quality assurance of resident coordinators offices.
Country teams are increasingly expected to make a strong case for these global funding instruments and experiences and laws have shown that a more inclusive RC led design process not only increases the chances of securing funds in alignment with national priorities, but also creates a collaborative dynamic and ultimately reduces tension within the country team.
This is not an administrative overhead.
This is really a very important value addition that reform has created.
Finally, core funding is crucial to ensuring essential carrying capacity of UN entities at country level.
As resident coordinator, I have engaged with heads of agencies in the UN City to allocate their finite core resources to neglected priorities and to create a momentum for larger investments.
With shrinking core resource base, essential capacities diminish and so does the ability to innovate and importantly collaborate.
In that vein, our recent annual results report for Lao PDR highlighted the role of core contributions to UN results on the ground.
Beyond reporting results and funding trends, these annual reports increasingly showcase how UN country teams deliver on the funding compact commitments to transparency, efficiency, and value for money.
I thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Bohanov.
I now give the floor to our colleague, Her Excellency Med Hil Butters, permanent representative of Norway.
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you to the panel for sharing their very interesting interventions, including very concrete experience suggestions and proposals.
A perspective from Norway is that if we are serious about a more effective, coherent UN development system, then increased pooled and core funding is not a technical adjustment.
It is the central driver for reform.
Today, we face a paradox.
While we collectively recognize that fragmented earmarked funding undermines the UN's ability to deliver as one, the trend is unfortunately moving in the opposite direction.
It is therefore important to understand why earmarking continues to grow.
Earmarking is driven by the demand for visible attributable results, the need for flexibility to respond to shifting political priorities in donor countries and in host countries and perceptions of lower risk and lower administrative costs in the earmarked projects.
Norway is among the top donors in the UN, but we also have red marks in our scorecard when it comes to the quality of our funding.
And we are ready to change this path, but we need some tools to be able to do so.
Firstly, we need stronger incentives for quality funding.
This means clear evidence that core and pooled funding deliver better, more strategic results, and doing so in a way that meets donors and host countries legitimate expectations for transparency and accountability.
Secondly, and related, we must improve how we measure and report on core funding.
Common high quality reporting standard, as I think has also been discussed already, can help address one of the main drivers for earmarking, the perception that results are harder to document.
We must show credible comparable results to our parliament and to our taxpayers that provide the money.
Thirdly, we need to see reduced fragmentation at country level.
A true move toward one plan, one fund, one UN can make pooled funding more attractive as well.
Fourthly, we must make the cost of earmarking visible and you spoke Jens about the high and low quality in earmarking.
But earmarking carries coordination costs, reduces efficiency, and can dilute impact.
Quantifying these trade offs, I think is essential for informed decision making by donors.
Fifth, and finally, leadership and critical mass matters.
So when major contributors shift their funding patterns, others may follow.
Countries like Norway, where a significant share of our development cooperation is channeled through the UN, we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to help drive this change and we are ready to do so.
Give us the tools, and we are fully on board that financing is not just one part of UNAT reform, it is the key that unlocks all other aspirations.
Thank you and looking forward to other comments.
Thank you, Ambassador Blatsed.
I now open the floor to our colleagues to participate in an interactive discussion.
Participants are invited to press the microphone button to indicate their request to intervene.
I would like to remind our colleagues that to give all those wishing to speak the opportunity to take the floor 3 minutes will apply for statements on behalf of groups and only 2 minutes for national statements.
Wow.
45 minutes.
We have half an hour for member state and then maybe ten to 15 minutes for the answers from our leaders here.
Yeah.
Let's begin.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the European Union.
You have the floor, sir.
Next, Mozambique and Egypt.
Thank you, Vice president.
Excellencies, colleagues, I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the European Union and its member states.
Thank you to all panelists, to Mr.
Vandal and Mr.
Tarano and it was also very helpful to hear directly from the ground.
So thank you for the interventions.
We meet today at a defining moment for the United Nations development system.
The challenges before us demand urgent collective action, yet the UN's ability to deliver is under threat.
As we heard, funding is declining and the gap between ambition and available resources is widening.
The EU and its member states remain the largest donor to the UN development system.
In 2025 alone, the EU and its member states contributed over 10 billion euros to support the UN's work from humanitarian aid to long term development, from health to education, from climate action to peace building.
We do this because we believe in the UN and its development system, which is in the focus of our discussion today.
We believe that in order to respond to the competitive geopolitical context and the tightening funding environment that we have heard of, we need to rebuild trust and focus on coherence and results.
First, trust.
Donors must see that their contributions are used efficiently, transparently, and effectively.
The UN mus demonstrate that every contribution to the UN development system delivers tangible impact for the people who need it most.
That means reducing bureaucracy, cutting duplication, and ensuring accountability at every level.
Second, coherence.
We must shift the balance towards more predictable funding that allows the UN development system to act as one system, not a collection of competing agencies.
Third, and crucially, results.
The UN development system does not need more reports, more meetings, or more processes.
It needs action so that it can deliver with more impact on the ground for the people we serve.
The funding compact was a step in the right direction, yet its implementation remains uneven.
We must accelerate progress, ensuring that resident coordinators have the authority and resources to lead integrated responses and that UN country teams are held accountable for delivering on the sustainable development goals.
The EU will continue to invest in the UN development system, and we stand ready to support reforms coming from the UN AD process.
At the same time, we expect stepping up from the system functioning as one with strong resident coordinators at the forefront of a more coherent, efficient, and results oriented development architecture.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mozambique.
Thank you.
We welcome this dialogue on financing of the UN development system and we concur with the panelists that even in the context of diminishing resources, it is still possible to reduce fragmentation and devote a greater share of resources to results rather than managing complexity.
For us, the cooperation framework should become not only a planning instrument, but also financing framework.
One plan, one funding, and one UN, indeed, as aptly said by the representative of Norway.
We believe that the funding compact requires both political dialogue and strong management follow up.
This space provides a political platform, but it should be complemented by a follow up.
That's why we support the idea of an annual high level review of the funding compact within this segment and I'll give my remaining 1 minute to the next speaker.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Egypt.
I would like to thank the presenters and most notably, of course, miss Elena Panova, the resident coordinator in Egypt, for her very accurate, succinct and targeted intervention which actually, I would have not been able to say it better.
Thank you, miss Panova.
I would like also to highlight the very important intervention made by my colleague, Ambassador Mirett from Norway, because actually, this is the kind of input that this discussion really needs coming from one of the leading donors to the United Nations system such as Norway.
President, program countries often face a situation where available resources are concentrated in donor selected thematic areas while other nationally identified priorities remain underfunded.
Greater flexibility in funding is therefore essential to preserve national ownership and ensure that UN support remains responsive to country contexts.
This is exactly what we captured from miss Panova's intervention.
Scale, coherence, alignment.
Donors are willing to go along, especially with a strong government capacity to lead.
I think each of these components of that particular phrase need to be unpacked and discussed in order to reach scale coherence and alignment and how funding can drive those three elements together.
And how government capacity and government leadership and anchoring in national priorities could actually be a channel to reach that objective.
I would stop here, Mr.
President and refer to the dialogue that Egypt, together with DCO and other colleagues are currently engaged in.
We have our session three on demonstrating value impact and results, which will address a number of issues that were highlighted during the presentation.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you, Egypt.
Algeria, 2 minutes.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair and distinguished panelists.
The question before us today is not merely technical.
It is fundamentally a question of political will.
Without predictable, flexible, and high quality funding, the system cannot respond to national priorities or deliver lasting results where needs are greatest.
Algeria affirms that development financing is the backbone of an effective UN development system.
In this regard, Algeria would like to highlight the following points.
First, the challenge is not only the amount of funding, but also its impact.
Shifting toward less earmarking, longer term financing, and more coherent channels will strengthen planning and unlock the UN system potential to deliver integrated results.
Second, Algeria affirms its unwavering support of the Funding compact with commitments that are visible, measurable, and accountable at country level.
Third, dialogue is critical between governments, UN country teams, RCs, and partners to ensure that resources are genuly aligned with nationally on development priorities and cooperation framework results.
Fourth, Algeria also supports greater use of pooled funds and multi partner trust funds as these innovative instruments encourage coordination, efficiency, and collective action.
Fifth and finally, Algeria calls on UN members, especially donors, to fully honor their commitments to the UN system.
This is essential to meet national development priorities, preserve balance with the system, and uphold the UN's fundamental role in maintaining peace and security in a difficult and unpredictable world.
I thank you.
Thank you, Algeria, Nedtherland.
Thank you very much for these presentations.
I think it's an excellent example of some of the level of detail we sometimes need in better understanding these work packages.
Thank you very much for that.
I only have three questions.
First of all, could you say a little bit more about the timeline for a for the work that you're doing? Can we expect a report or what are some of the outcomes look like? Second, on the costing of earmarking, I think that's a very important element that we better understand what it actually costs also to make the case internally to our colleagues that sometimes makes these funding decisions on the actual costs associated with the level of earmarking? Will we eventually see some specific pricing of the different versions of earmarking so that we have a clearer understanding of the true costs? And then third and finally, regarding the proposals on mergers and consolidations of some of these pooled funds that you've mentioned, what role? Again, question about the timeline, but also the role for member states.
What would your concrete ask be to us in order to support this? Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair.
Excellencies, we would like to thank the distinguished speakers and panelists for their inputs to the central aspect of UNDS funding.
Switzerland remains committed to the funding compact and we welcome enhanced measures in support of the funding compact.
Communications is one.
The scorecard we received was a useful mirror.
And we took it as an encouragement to work harder towards complying and we hope to be mentioned by ASG Taranco Fernandes in the years to come too.
But more is needed to be done.
We support measures to make core and pooled funding more attractive.
For example, by designing a coherent pool funding architecture and by improved results and impact reporting.
We support strengthening oversight and accountability on funding, for example, by exploring options of a high level funding mechanism and strengthening the role of executive boards.
We also support ensuring tightly earmarked funding is priced adequately and by default strictly and transparently in alignment with UN SDCFs.
The latter should go without saying, however, in reality, it does not.
In your opinion, what is needed to ensure that funding is accepted exclusively if it is in line with the UN STCFs priorities? What needs to be changed in the system to achieve this and can digital real time tools play a role to support achieving this objective? Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm about to close the list of speakers, Guatemala, Ireland, Germany, United Kingdom, Mexico, Pakistan, and the last Canada.
Okay.
Now, the floor is to Guatemala.
Thank you very much, Vice President.
Guatemala thinks that the financing of the development system should not be measured only for its volume, but also for its quality, predictability and capacity to mobilize resources and support national priorities.
We are concerned by the fall in core funding and the persistence of highly earmarked funding because both trends reduce the flexibility of the system and weaken the coherence of responses on the ground.
For this reason, we reiterate the importance of advancing an implementation of the funding compact and strengthening mechanisms that facilitate integrated responses, multi stakeholder responses, and better coordination with international financial institutions.
In middle income countries such as Guatemala, the RC system is crucial to connect actors, support funding and support local actors.
I thank you.
I Ireland.
Thank you, Vice President and each of the briefers this morning.
Ireland aligns with the statement delivered by the EU and adds the following couple of comments.
In any conversation on funding, it's important to consider both quality and quantity.
This is a lens applied by the funding compact to which we all member states and UN system alike ascribed and which we should continue to base our behavior.
As donors, we have a responsibility to ensure that our funding supports focused action is aligned with country framework, documents and benefits those furthest behind rather than isolated pockets of excellence or our own national flags.
This means core funding and pool funding, as we've heard from others and these are modalities that Ireland is increasingly leaning into.
We know that flexible funding provides essential predictability and enables better prioritization.
It can also provide a stable foundation for a funding mix that allows leveraging of additional ideally lightly earmarked funding to achieve those targeted incomes outcomes where appropriate.
Um, we've heard a lot this morning about what more we can do, maybe to highlight a couple of things we've heard.
When making the case for re and pooled, we should rely on and invest in the data derived from evaluation offices and the system wide approach applied by the SWEO as well as the really valuable insights we get from partners like the Day Hammer Skol Foundation, which have been mentioned, but also Mopan and others.
Enhanced accountability and transparency has been focused on a lot and those are really vital also to tracking effectiveness, demonstrating those outcomes, and also fostering trust amongst donors, UN entities, and those host countries.
Finally, effective country level funding dialogues.
Which meaningfully involve the OC and also engage other relevant partners such as MDBs and IFIs as appropriate, are really critical to ensuring that common goals are backed by coherent efforts and fully in line with country priorities.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now, the floor is for Germany.
Germany, you have the floor.
Hear me? Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Germany aligns itself with the statement delivered on behalf of the European Union and we would like to add a few points in our national capacity.
The Secretary-General report on funding of the UN development system sets up the challenge clearly.
Funding is still too fragmented, too tightly earmarked, and too short term.
This limits strategic planning, reinforces competition between entities and makes coherent delivery at country level more difficult.
Germany is one of the largest voluntary contributors to the UN development system.
This reflects our strong confidence in the multilateral system and in the value of collective action.
We would welcome continued efforts by all member states to strengthen the funding base of the UN development system.
We would like to raise two points.
First, we need a more balanced funding mix.
A business as usual model based on tightly earmarked funding and small scale projects is not sufficient for the level of ambition we have collectively set.
We would be interested to hear what steps UN entities are taking to reduce incentives for fragmented fundraising.
Second, Pooled funding should be used more strategically.
Germany supports the increase of pooled funding.
This does not necessarily mean more pooled funds since the proliferation of funds and the fragmentation of the funding landscape can also be part of the problem.
The governance of pooled funds must be coherent, transparent, and fit for purpose.
We need a better understanding of which types of pooled funds works best in different development crisis and transition settings.
Could you elaborate on how the UN system intends to improve the coordination and governance of development related pooled funds? How can these funds be better aligned with corporation priorities and collective results? Thank you.
Thank you, United Kingdom.
Thank you, Chair.
The UK welcos the commitment to an AT reform from the panelists.
I'm so sorry.
This is the problem with reading out your previous statement.
Bear with me.
My apologies.
Thank you, Chair and to the panelists at this session for their valuable insight.
The UK is a proud champion of multilateralism and we ensure that our funding for development efforts reflects this.
Indeed, as a result of our most recent overseas development assistance allocations, we're increasing the share of program odor that will be spent through multilateral organizations including the UN.
And we really welcome discussing this important topic at this critical time.
The Secretary-General report illustrates the array of challenges facing the funding of the UN development system while making clear the urgency with which action must be taken to address these issues.
We support efforts to make the funding compact implementation more widespread and welcome the focus in this session on enhancing country level funding dialogues to make funding compact commitments more visible and actionable at country level.
From in depth discussions with our global network of posts, we know that level and quality of engagement on the funding compact and its commitments at the country level is varied and this has a direct implication on the funding decisions made by our teams in country.
To this end, we welcome the focus on funding mechanisms in UN AT work package 18.
Making core and pooled funding more attractive and effective is pivotal in turning the funding compact commitments into reality.
The suggestion within the SG's report on ensuring more structured discussions between UN country teams, governments, and donors on how cooperation framework priorities of finance is therefore much welcomed.
The link to the financing of cooperation frameworks is key.
We're also looking forward to seeing the work on a more strategic approach on development pooled funds moving forward.
The commitment by the SG for UN AT to address persistent perceptions of poured funding, carrying high support costs is another positive step.
We hope to see efforts to create a UN system wide cost recovery policy alongside improved data and communication delivered.
In closing, the UK remains committed to the UN funding compact and we're working hard to ensure our funding supports the work done by the UNDS in the most efficient, effective, and coherent way possible.
Thank you and thanks for bearing with me.
Cheers.
Thank you.
Now, Mexico.
Thank you very much, Vice President.
For Mexico, fiscal efficiency is a necessary condition for strengthening the system, but it is no substitute for the need for flexible, predictable financing that is aligned with national priorities.
Experience has shown that financial fragmentation is one of the main causes of operational fragmentation.
This is why efforts promoted under the framework of the UNAT Reform Initiative and the commitments made through the funding compact must advance in a coherent and mutually reinforcing manner.
Mexico also wishes to underscore that today the capacity of states in the United Nations to deliver transformative results is profoundly impacted by much broader factors such as debt sustainability, fiscal space, domestic and public resource mobilization, the engagement of the private sector, international trade, and systemic risks associated with the international financial architecture.
In this connection, we believe that it is relevant to strengthen links between the discussions in this segment and the broader financing for development processes, especially in light of the Seville commitment, the forthcoming financing for Sustainable Development Report 2026, and the recent exchanges held under the framework of the group of Friends of Monterey.
We'd also like to emphasize that financing must be evaluated not only by its volume, but also by its quality.
For Mexico, pooled funds and joint programs are not an end in and of themselves.
Their value lies in their ability to strengthen cooperation frameworks, reduce fragmentation, and support system coordination and effectively address country defined priorities.
We therefore believe it is appropriate to promote a gradual transition from rigidly earmarked financing schemes to more flexible and higher quality modalities including core resources, thematic funds, pooled funds, and small earmarking mechanisms that preserve transparency, visibility, and accountability.
I thank you.
Pakistan.
Mr.
Vice President, we appreciate the contribution by all the panelists today and would also express appreciation for the intervention by the distinguished permanent representative of Norway, which we think represents the frank dialogue needed.
We are equally concerned as are other speakers, with the decline in core funding and rise in earmarking.
We believe the system cannot effectively respond to national priorities if funds are simply unavailable or are tightly earmarked On core funding, we saw that one issue highlighted was that donors seek more visibility on how resources are used, as well as the proposal made that financial allocations results and resources should be viewed near real time.
We agree with that proposal.
In fact, we think even program countries would benefit from having this live visibility, which we often do not.
What challenges do the distinguished panelists see in the implementation of that proposal? Also note with interest the proposal of putting a cost to earmarked funding.
We also think we need better and more visible data on how much these earmarked funds are actually aligned with strategic priorities and needs identified in countries cooperation frameworks as also highlighted in the funding compact.
On the proposal to have a more strategic dialogue on progress and implementation of the funding Compact here in New York, we would appreciate further details on the thinking behind such a strategic dialogue.
We are also open to the use of pooled funds or their further consolidation, but we just want to ensure that the final modality is cost effective on the whole.
And could we also get more information on how proposals in this regard would proceed.
We also agree with the need to move away from a fragmented project model to projects more scale and more joint program, and we think that the funding streams need to reflect that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Canada.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President.
Thank you to all the panelists for their remarks today and in particular for the resident coordinators for joining us.
Candida will make a short intervention on strengthening and rationalizing of pooled funds.
We appreciate the comparison to the SRF and in particular, the specification of its clear roles and identities that we also note it has a more specific and narrow scope.
With regards to the wider development system, we're interested in hearing how lessons are being applied from humanitarian systems over to the development ones and the challenges that exist in particular, considering the development system has a much larger and increasing in some ways, size of the tent.
And then also linking to the panel earlier today and hearing the concerns of entities that reforms should not draw away funds from core funding and from programming resources.
We're curious to hear more on plans to support the financing of these reforms, including reforms to the funding mechanisms.
We wonder whether efficiency gains could be reinvested in supporting and advancing system wide reforms.
Finally, a thank you to ASG Fernandez Serrao for his points on what's needed to encourage more strategic dialogue and for the structured engagement on linking development system results, data, and action, and also the light update on the funding Compact review.
We wonder if more can be shared on next steps key timelines, pardon me, and what's needed from member states.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Last speaker, Argentina.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I thank the panelists and delegations for this very rich interactive dialogue.
It is important to understand the viewpoints of recipients and donors and the role that can be played by the UN system when it comes to financing.
I have a very precise question.
If I understood correctly in Mr.
Wendell's remarks, and I thank him for giving us such precise information.
If I understood correctly, there are more than 150 Common financing funds.
Could he give us some more details on the diagnosis as to the amount of funds and what vision or ideas he might have to improve efficiency and reduce fragmentation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Argentina.
You were the last speaker.
I'd like to thank all of the speakers who took part in this interactive dialogue, which was very rich.
As you were all very disciplined when it comes to time, I would like to take the floor now for 1 minute to ask a question to those from Egypt and Laos.
Because we have spoken a great deal about core funding and the financing pack, the pull system, earmarked funding.
So I would like to know what is happening on the ground.
And what kind of relationship do you have with representatives of the major agencies which have the capacity to manage these development funds? I'd like you to be honest with member states and for you to tell us about your difficulties, the difficulties you've had in managing the issue of funding on the ground.
Together with the major agencies, especially UNDP.
Thank you for responding to me frankly on this issue.
Let me now give the floor to our distinguished speakers.
You have the floor, sir.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President.
We haven't had time to coordinate among the panel how we will respond, so we hope we will add up correctly, but let me lead.
First of all, I think it's quite clear also to us that it is the dialogue at the political level, together with a more technical dialogue, even as the permanent representative for Norway said, give us some tools.
It is this dialogue between the political side and the tools that eventually will get us out of where we are.
And so when we address some of the issues also today, I think the political dialogue is this, but also I think Oscar will address this a little bit more.
So in the political dialogue, I think it's necessary that we broaden the dialogue to do two things, and that is we listen to what was also coming out of Egypt, and that is that funding this shift between this tension between funding and financing for development is a space we need to continue to work within, and I think it is covered very well since civilian in our dialogue, but we need to move that.
This requires that the United Nations grant based funding model needs to be adjusted.
Today, we really only have one model that give us money.
We create a project and we pass them on.
Sometimes we package them in programs, but this is it.
To get expertise on demand to work, especially in the normative area, we may need to complement the business model on a fee for service model.
So some agencies, they can provide policy services that is high quality against a fee without having all the paraphernalia of a project and all these things.
And that speaks to the distinguished delegates from Mexico's point.
It is the quality of the intervention, not the volume that sits behind it that may determine the true value of the United Nations.
In short, I predict we may need to start discussing something as concrete as an additional business model.
I cannot cover everything, but let us on pool financing.
The principle on pool financing is to Canada, to Germany, et cetera, we can learn something from how the humanitarian is doing it.
This is because humanitarian are doing a couple of things correctly.
Their pool financing landscape is more concentrated and more strategically aligned.
They have both country, they have SRF, and then they even have some regional.
But they have a clear institutional identity and they are de facto governed by OCHA and the Quint.
On the development side, we don't have anything equivalent and that gap is too big.
At the same time, you correctly pointed out, Canada mentioned that, of course, the waterfront is much broader on the development side, therefore, we need a much broader front.
But to distinguish still get from Argentina, 150 is pool funds and joint programs.
There's a huge tail.
If I gave you a list, I can show you 2030 pool funds that sits in the ten to $100 million bracket, maybe above, but I can show you probably 100 million interventions that disburse a few millions a year.
It's that tail we need to work with because that's where the inefficiency may sit And what I need from member states, what we need from member states is you have seen in other sense when we immediately we call the fragmentation institutionally, mandate wise of funding, we run into the political economy of fragmentation, and that is somebody who sits on a very important pool funds that is not very big, they will get hurt by my statement now and they will attack immediately that I am questioning the importance of their pool fund.
I am not questioning the importance of a particular fund, but it stands to reason that we take a look and it is that where I need member state support so we can have a dialogue around it.
At the end of the day, member states determine which pond should go forward and how they get financed.
It's not a technical matter.
It I think that the cost of earmarking predominantly distinguished delegate from Netherlands.
I think what we need to do at the governance level is to agree to the principles first.
But I have outlined the principles.
The farther away from the core competency of an agency, the more expensive, the shorter, the more expensive.
And the one off versus many times.
This is a lesson I learned because I was the acting executive director of UN OPS for 11 months at a time of real crisis.
UN OPS, as you know, has no co funding and still it turns over at my time $3.5 billion.
We need to cost your marking correctly and we heard also from the crew and others, we need to find a way of financing the transition in a time where we have no money.
There's an implicit tactic in this.
That is, we pricing what is not correct, we will try with the pool funding maybe to merge and create some synergies around this.
Then I made the point that if we can institutional defragment, if we can funding defragment and mandate via the resolution work done there, thank you very much to the work you've done here.
If we can defragment, we get more value out of coordination money than we have today.
So we can print money in a way if we can make some efforts here.
There's an element of tactics in what we're discussing.
Then to the distinguished delegate from Switzerland, yes, the issue around real time funding is something you need to take through the boards.
But it sits in a tradition that there has been, at least from my experience, there's been an emphasis on accountability and audited statements instead of saying we are ready to accept more real time less accurate.
Then also some agencies because of the funding crisis, what they do is within the same year, they move cash around.
So if you have too much transparency, they can see that they're moving cash around.
So there's some reluctance, but if we do it in a dialogue, we all agree what it is, then I think we can make significant progress in this and there we can learn something from the humanitarian again.
I think that should also answer your questions on the real time barriers.
The barriers are political, they are traditional, and they need to go through the boards, and there will be some concerns and they are legitimate.
But again, if we have this dialogue and technical at the same time, we can work through them.
Then I think I have answered the questions that I had on my list.
I'd like close by saying that in terms of timeline, the packages, funding review, expertise on demand, con cooperation framework, and regional reset, they are very closely integrated.
Our intent is, as the Secretary-General has announced, we will issue some papers.
Some of them will be background papers and some of them will be SG reports where we are seeking member states approval or member state consultations.
A has been outlined by the Secretary-General, we'll start publishing by the end of June, but I think they will come over the summer, et cetera Thank you very much.
Thank you.
President in the interest of time.
The tools.
I think this is a huge and important moment to clarify the tools.
As I was said, I think funding is the critical connector of everything we're discussing in UNA, but there are many additional workstreams that should kick in.
In particular, as how we do interoperable results reporting at the outcome level of what these funds and different streams result in, how aligned, how misaligned, how relevant they are to the corporation framework, when they come in, if they come in too late.
I mean, all these things require a system wide approach, which we don't have.
Today, you all donors have huge transaction costs because every entity you provide money to comes with a report and it's a report at the project level.
It's not even at the outcome level and it's linkage to national priorities and SDG acceleration.
One thing we absolutely need to come out with UN AT is a better communication, clear narrative, standardized approaches, better data, stronger system wide platforms.
They don't exist today and they are needed.
This is mission critical right now so that we can communicate among each other in the UN to begin with.
What are we learning from each other? But, like you said, to the taxpayers that pay the bills and want to know where the money is going.
Dialogue, I think Jean's covered it very well and increasing the dialogue with the IFIs that has been the missing part.
But extremely important is how your embassies at the local level and here speaking particularly to donors, because the message on the funding compact is very much still the headquarters issues here in New York.
This has to go from your capitals to your embassy so that we have at the country level an informed and strategic dialogue.
Rationalizing the concept of portfolio management.
This is something we are trying to learn from the humanitarian.
I mean, the way OCHA and the humanitarian country pooled funds are managed, have a clear brand, have a clear standard, have very interoperable mechanisms.
The humanitarian pooled fund looks very much the same instrument across all humanitarian response mechanisms, not so for the development pool funds.
They're very dispersed, different governance structures, different steering committees, different overheads being charged for different things.
We need to rationalize, we need to professionalize and we need to learn from the humanitarians on the portfolio management and clearly have clarity on what the role of the resident coordinator, member states, and especially the government.
Pooled funds to support the priorities of the cooperation framework.
This is an absolute must because what the pooled fund does is it complements what is also required.
It complements the core funding and the flexible funding, but it addresses the way that the UN needs to come together in an integrated, complementary way to deliver on the SDGs.
No one agency can do this.
Food systems, health systems, digital requires collaborative action that only a pooled fund can do.
Frankly, there is something to be said about how we will finance the expertise on demand.
This is the dialogue that needs to happen to align around national priority, but to have the member states and key donors in that dialogue to the question that the crew was raising this morning.
There are systems, but they need to be capitalized.
Finally, on country level pooled funds, we don't have that many.
There's only some 20 out there for the development and they're all under capitalized.
One huge exception aside from the conflict countries, Papua New Guinea, the most incredible example of what can go right in the UN member state relationship.
As a result of the funding compact dialogue, a pooled fund was established and two of the top donors to that particular country decided to put all the funding in a pooled funding mechanism and that has driven total alignment, total, I say here, of all the agencies presented to national priorities.
We have a very well functioning pooled fund that is the model.
It's the model we should be aspiring to, gives the visibility to donors, clarity on what's happening, and predictability, which is what drives fragmentation too, the lack of predictability and accountability.
And then last but not least, I mean, we need to learn how to communicate better.
I mean, OCHA does an amazing job at communicating.
We just need to really follow the leaders on this.
We used to say with UNIC, I think on pooled funds, we can give credit to OCHA.
Thank you, Monsieur President.
Now, you have the floor, Madam.
3 minutes.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair and thank you for your encouragement to be very frank in also reflecting on the entire discussion.
Three points.
As a development practitioner with more than 30 years of experience, one thing that is important for me is that funding usually follows the programming.
So you need to start with a very solid program that is anchored in the national priorities and I'm very serious about it.
The times, at least, I'm talking Egypt, when the UN agencies can try to solve a complex problem with a single mandate when they will go and discuss with the donors, agree on the program, and then go and present it to the government, something which the government wants gone.
That is what I tell my UN country team.
We need to start by working on a solid program and if indeed it is anchored at the government priorities, then the funding and the financing will follow.
The visibility for the donors will come, of course, from the UN, but most importantly, it will come from the host government.
Because this is where the visibility is needed, that their contributions are recognized as contributions that feed into the development of the respective country.
You asked me, Mr.
Chair, how do I work with the big agencies? In Egypt, I will be also frank.
It's not that difficult.
Why? It's not that difficult if as resident coordinator, you provide the space for the agencies to lead technically where their expertise is.
If I take migrants and refugees and I said it very clearly, it's UNHCR and IOM that lead together technically.
Then as resident coordinator, you bring the rest of the UN agencies that work in this domain under the technical leadership of the UNHCR and IOM.
Currently, we are working on social protection.
The government has asked us to do a social protection framework, which brings social assistance with social insurance.
Who leads here? The government reached the resident coordinator.
I identified the technical leads in this case, it was very clear, it's UNICEF, ILO, and the World Bank, and they're the ones that lead technically with the support of the resident coordinator, ensuring that the rest of the team also is pulled and sural under this huge development impact.
UNDP leads on financing for development very clearly.
It's the agency that has the capacity to bring the rest of the agencies with the support of the resident coordinator, connecting the dots, ensuring that they all come in a coherent manner.
This is how you work with them.
You give them the space to lead.
So you lead by giving them the space to lead.
And last thing, I just want to express gratitude to all the excellences and member states that took the floor.
It feels very encouraging, but as Oscar was saying, this discussion needs to land at country level.
It's very important.
If they are development partners that want to lead on that domain, how we can make it work at country level, as resident coordinators, I think we are the right partners to convene this type of dialogues under the leadership of the government.
Thank you, once again, Mr.
Chair.
Thank you.
Madam.
Thank you, miss Panova.
Mr.
Buhaov you have the floor.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
As someone who was in a partnership role some 18, 20 years ago when the original batch of joint programming pooled fund rules have been created, I see that some of the questions that existed at the inception of this modality.
Seem to continue to linger.
Principally, this notion of loss of control when a bilateral funding partner contributes to a pooled funding instrument.
I think the original concern was more on the legal side of the equation in terms of loss of the legal custody of the funds when eventually someone who implements activities on the ground may not be in a direct legal relationship with the funder.
Then this perception that reporting is inherently more complex and the development change is harder to document.
Thirdly, perception of loss of visibility when an individual member state contributes to a pooled fund.
Allow me to illustrate how we've addressed these issues through the experience of our first pooled fund in Lao PDR.
It's on green and climate finance.
It's not a country pool fund.
It's more of a thematic instrument that brought together the work of four agencies to unlock development finance for the country.
This particular initiative was RC Brooker and I think there was a reason for it.
It doesn't always have to be this way, but it was a frontier issue at the time, and we really wanted to bring together the knowledge of the four agencies who eventually became the participating UN organizations.
So that's FAO, UNDP, UNP, and UN Habitat.
The inclusive framework enabled more UN agencies to contribute to the implementation.
As resident coordinator, Um, I also curated the governance and implementation arrangements for this particular initiative to make sure that funding partners have a seat on the steering committee and that their reporting and visibility expectations are fully met.
We also engaged, obviously government at vice ministerial level is the co chair of the program steering committee, and very importantly, we engage multi partner Trust Fund Office.
That has brought, if I may say so, a level of sophistication, structure, and punctuality to the entire process.
I think they have marvelous product and the platform where all of the work can be showcased.
We've had two reporting cycles since the program went live.
I think the substantive and financial reporting was on time, duly acknowledged the contributions of all agencies and ultimately, I hope, benefited the funding partners.
I think the original partner was Luxembourg.
I really hope when we go back to member states and rally against a country pooled fund that is aligned to the three pillars of our new cooperation framework, Luxemburg will be one of the speakers to actually say, we actually have a much more cogent and streamlined process of engaging with the UN system rather than dealing with four individual agency reporting mechanisms that are not very well coordinated.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr.
Burhanov.
It's the end.
I would like to thank our panelists for sharing valuable insight.
Thank also to the delegation for their active participation.
We have thus concluded our program of work for this morning.
But there are two side events are taking place at 1:15 today.
The first side event entitled from Innovation to Impact Human Rights Based Approaches for transformative and equitable SDGs delivery.
It will take place in conference room 11 and is organized by the UN Interagency Network on Human Rights.
Leaving no one behind and sustainable development.
The second side event, don't leave yet.
The second side event entitled delivering solutions for internally displaced persons, a test case for UN development system coherence and reform.
It will take place in conference room seven and is organized by UNDP and the UN Global Solution Hub on internal displacement.
I encourage you all to attend this discussion.
The Esc will reconvene today this afternoon at 3:00 P.M.
In this chamber to continue with its program of work.
The meeting is adjourned.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
President.