Economic and Social Council: 21st plenary meeting - 2026 Operational Activities for Development Segment

Good morning, Excellencies, dear colleagues.
May I kindly ask you to your seat.
The 21st meeting of the Economic and Social Council is called to order.
I now invite the Council to continue its consideration of agenda item seven, operational activities of the United Nations for international development cooperation to hold a dialogue divided into two parts with host governments, regional commissions, and United Nations country teams on tailoring support for countries across the system and supporting delivery in the context of UN 80 recommendations.
The effectiveness of the United Nations development system depends on its ability to organize itself around national priorities, deliver coherent support across entities, and adapt its presence and capacities to evolving country needs.
This session provides an opportunity to reflect on how United Nations country teams and regional assets can be configured more flexibly and effectively, how cooperation frameworks can more fully become the strategic anchor for country level action, and how ongoing discussions under the UNA process can help strengthen coordination, reduce duplication, and improve the system's ability to deliver tailored and integrated support across diverse country contexts.
For our first interactive dialogue, I'm pleased to welcome our distinguished panelists.
Mr.
Jose Manuel Salazar Hirinak, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, who will join us virtually, Mr.
Jorge Moira De Silva, Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Project Services, miss sim Ok, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Moldova, and Mr.
Stephen Jackson, United Nations Resident Coordinator in China.
As well as our lead discussant.
His Excellency, my colleague Omar Hilae, permanent representative of Morocco.
I first give the floor to Jose Manuel Salazar Hiris, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ecc.
Good morning.
Dear Chair, Mr.
Wellington Bncozo, permanent Representative of the Dominican Republic of the United Nations.
I'm Vice President of the EcoSc.
Dear member states fellow panelists, Excellencies, It is an honor to address you.
The regional level occupies a unique and statey place within the United Nations system.
I would like to address three areas in which the regional architecture strengthens country policies and country delivery.
The first is that the regional level serves as a bridge to translate global priorities into coordinated support for resident coordinators and UN country teams.
It is especially well placed to generate regional public goods and to address transboundary development challenges from internal migration and climate change to sub regional issues such as the sargassan crisis affecting the Caribbean seas or infrastructure integration in South America.
Secondly, The regional architecture and platforms provide a very valuable space for intergovernmental dialogue, enabling countries to forge common agendas, exchange experiences, and mobilize technical cooperation around shared priorities.
For example, the third Ministerial Council meeting of the regional platform for tax cooperation for which the Economic Commission of Latin American and Caribbean Eclac serves as technical Secretariat was held last month during the regional fiscal Seminar.
The platform has become a key mechanism for addressing tax policy challenges, strengthening capacities, and articulating regional perspectives in international tax discussions.
The regional platforms convened by EAC and guided by its intellectual leadership and inputs are primary spaces for establishing regional positions and cooperation on key issues, such as development cooperation among middle income countries at the Regional Conference on South South cooperation.
Adré unique development needs of Caribbean seats at the Caribbean Development Cooperation Committee, conveying regional perspectives on beyond GDP initiative at the Statistical Conference of the Americas, promoting the Care Society paradigm at the Regional Conference on Women, just to name a few.
The regional level is equally critical for strengthening coherence across the UN development system.
Regional commissions are well positioned to support the Secretary-General UN AT reforms, including the regional reset, building on our role as vice chairs and co Secretariat of the regional collaborative platforms.
In Latin America, the Caribbean Regional Collaborative platform has enabled coordinated support to rest coordinators and UN Cities, for example, system wide responses to Caribbean countries affected by Hurricane Melissa.
E is also well placed to contribute to integrated regional knowledge and data ecosystems and to the UN data Commons proposed under UN 80.
The third area in which the regional architecture strengthens country policies and country delivery is the opportunity to directly request technical assistance from regional commissions.
In 2025 alone, APLAC attended 167 direct requests for technical assistance.
I areas as diverse as productive development, trade and integration, statistics, public finances, disaster prevention, and public governance, among others.
Over the case, this has resulted in strong institutional relationships with technical authorities across the region, building trust and generating capacities in member states, and this is highly valued by member states.
Excellencies.
Let me conclude by reaffirming that the regional level should not be seen as ancillary to delivery at the country level, but rather a dimension of support to member states.
The system was wisely designed to provide multi level support, and these have been crucial in generating regional agendas that translate into national policies, as we are seeing, for instance, with the To commitment and care systems, contributing to regional public goods and addressing transboundary development challenges.
We stand ready to continue to provide this crucial value, value added as we move forward in a reform development system.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Executive Secretary, I give the floor to Mr.
Jorge More, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Project Services.
Mr.
President, distinguished members, I'm very pleased to join you today with my colleagues in this panel on what I believe is one of the most critical sessions of Echosc operational activities for development segment, the dialogue with hosted government resident coordinators and UN country teams.
As you may be aware, I have had the great privilege during the last year of co facilitating the Work Package five on the UN AT process, UN country team reconfiguration, under the leadership of the Deputy Secretary-General.
Our objective was clear from the outset to adapt UN country team configurations to be more coherent, impactful, and efficient in support of national needs and priorities.
This effort was firmly anchored in the system wide evaluation on progress towards a new generation of UN country teams, providing us with a solid evidence based understanding of what is working and what requires correction.
As you know, we work based on five principles, four building blocks, and ten recommendations.
We entered this process with high ambition.
Extensive consultations were held across the UN system and resident coordinators, and member states were engaged in plenary, regional group, and bilateral settings.
We tested various options and the Sect General's UN 80 Initiative progress report issued last week shows where we have collectively landed.
Exploring how the system could practically reorganize itself to deliver more effectively and efficiently around national priorities, we were guided by a core principle, form follows function, which follows strategy.
To ensure an integrated response to national priorities and needs, primacy must be given to one shared country strategy from which decisions on functions, expertise, and organizational arrangements are informed.
Cooperation framework must serve as the strategic anchor for UN development system wide support informed by one common country analysis under the leadership of the resident coordinator.
To move from fragmented institutional footprints towards more strategically configured capacities aligned with the cooperation framework priorities, we must fix the sequencing.
Entity specific country program instruments should be derived from and submitted for governing board approval after the cooperation framework is finalized.
Furthermore, introducing a set of transparency standards can help ensure this alignment is continuous reality rather than a one off compliance exercise.
All entities should share draft country program instruments with the UN country team before they are finalized and maintain live work plans and resource pipelines that are visible to the resident coordinator throughout implementation.
Through the expertise on demand mechanism consisting on a common catalog of available expertise and services and search capacity from the regional level, we are breaking the correlation between residence, visibility, financial viability, and impact.
What matters is readiness to deliver at scale.
A permanent physical in country presence can be adjusted and delivered flexibly, facilitated by the resin coordinator, specialized regional and global expertise can be deployed rapidly and easily accessible to UN country teams and member states on demand.
All of these adjustments must be accompanied by alignment shifts in incentive structures.
This includes critical revisions of the management and accountability framework, updated cooperation framework guidance, and effective performance management systems that reward collaboration over institutional silos.
For more flexible UN country team configurations to work effectively, in practice, we must abandon one size fits all models.
Setups should be carefully tailored to each country's unique circumstances.
On the basis of national priorities and needs, as reflected in the cooperation framework, UN country teams should define their setup as modular, hub like configurations drawing on in country presence, non resident entity contributions, and multi country office arrangements.
Modular components can then be scaled and adapted over time as country contexts evolve.
I would like to conclude with one concrete example about NOPs.
We are non resident in Jamaica.
But we were the agent that was called when the milia hurricane affected the country due to our expertise.
In the few hours and few days, we managed to bring our engineers to do the assessment.
It shows that the method is not about presence, the matter is about readiness to deliver when needed.
This example, I think, proves a vital point for the future of the UN development system.
A permanent physical in country presence is no longer the determining factor of how or how well the United Nations can support countries and communities.
Thank you.
I thank the Executive Director of UNP.
I now invite miss sim Ok, the United Nations resident coordinator in Moldova to take the floor.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President, Excellencies, colleagues, partners.
Good morning to all.
Excellencies, our UN country team in Moldova modeled the resilience of the Republic of Moldova itself in adapting and responding to the external shocks of the past few years, an all out war in Ukraine, influx of refugees, a consequent cost of living, and then an energy crisis, all potentially throwing Moldova off track its SDG progress, especially the overarching goal to reduce poverty.
I'm proud to say that the UN country team adapted and responded effectively and flexibly.
There are three main factors why this adaptation and response was possible.
One, without doubt is remarkable national drive and leadership.
Despite all these challenges, the government of Moldova continued its progress on its national development strategy and with the SDGs anchored in it, driving our cooperation framework.
For that, I thank the government of Moldova The second big factor was funding.
Moldova has had generous partners.
Cooperation framework is actually fully funded.
An all hands on deck approach with funding at regional and country levels bolstered by a refugee response plan resulted in a tad bit of coordination fatigue, I admit, but also a lot more opportunities for collaboration and collaborative behavior within the UN country team.
Finally, and the third factor is the so called people incentives factor.
I've been absolutely blessed to work with a UN country team composed of some of the top leadership, top professionals of the agency funds and programs, and for that, I thank all the agencies funds and programs in Moldova.
Going forward, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, there are three issues I invite you to please keep in mind so that our UN country team in Moldova can continue to adapt and respond with the agility it has been able to.
First, on the cooperation framework and the configuration that follows from it.
The UN country team in Moldova has asked me, they've asked that I lead a meaningful sequencing of our joint analysis and our prioritization so that their specific planning instruments are genuinely derived and guided by our collective and mutually accountable decisions.
There are reasons why the UN CT wants this, of the UN resident coordinator.
It's because Moldova is on a path to EU accession.
There's crowding in of European member states of institutions all happening in an extremely geopolitically volatile region.
And that's why we've applied as the UN country team, a very innovative future insights exercise to our positioning within Moldova.
For that, I thank the brilliant team at UNDP on Foresight, who have ailed to us all their capacities through the entire UN CT.
But based on that experience, I wish to posit to you, Excellencies, that configuration is not something that we do only within the UN development system.
It's rather vis-à-vis the broader partnership context.
It's not a one time exercise.
It's a constant reiterative process between the government who requests UN assistance and support UN entity partners on one hand and myself on the other to ascertain whether we are indeed the correct actor to respond to the request and we have the adequate capacities to do so vis-à-vis other actors in the country.
I believe is a part of UN configuration, which was in the spirit of the GA resolution, but perhaps could even be further reinforced.
The second is funding.
I urge all of Moldova's partners to pool their resources towards national programs, many of which are supported by the CF.
One example is the refugee inclusion window in our NPTF and local trust fund in support of the National Program for integration of foreigners.
We need more of these to be able to ensure scale, adaptability, and responsiveness of our cooperation framework.
Finally, on interoperability.
Without prejudice, member states on how you will decide to take the scope of the cooperation framework further, its authority further, please allow us the team sitting on the ground to capture the depth and rigor of agency specific platforms in one interoperable digital platform.
Mr.
President, humor me one anecdote.
I worked as a national program officer in my home country for more than ten years.
Nothing beats the capacity of a UN agency colleague managing his or her own programs in reporting, capturing the results of those activities.
Allow the UN system collectively at the country level to capture that depth and rigor.
Excellencies, you've given us great resources for the resident coordinator system and coordination is working.
We hope to develop on those gains and for our cooperation framework going forward, which will reflect our government's ultimate UN partnership decisions.
It's their decisions, but anchor us further in the national strategies and programs for achieving the global goals with the overarching goal to reduce poverty at its core.
I thank you and I thank the government of Moldova for the remarkable partnership.
Thank you.
I thank the resident coordinator in Moldova.
I now invite Mr.
Steven Jackson, United Nations resident coordinator in China.
Chair, Excellencies, good morning.
The 2018 UNDS repositioning, as you know, mandated a new generation of UN country teams with needs based country presence and I'm leaning into that phrase needs based in order to facilitate joined up, scaled up support for the 2030 agenda.
From my experience as resident coordinator in Gabon at the start of the reforms and then for the last five years in Kenya and now for the last two months in China, I've seen real progress in Kenya, for example.
Over the first four years of our cooperation framework, we launched some 20 joint programs across the UNCT uniting diverse UN entities to deliver as one and catalyzed and supported by a growing country level pooled fund.
And already in those four years, half of our total program value year on year was being delivered jointly through joint programming joint programs under one cooperation framework.
Lots of good progress to report.
How can UN country teams continue to go further? I could save us all a lot of time by just saying what they said because there's profound agreement, particularly with what Georges and Jeim have just said.
But let me just underline some of the same points with a spin from my own perspective.
First, yes, cooperation frameworks must provide the overarching structure for all UN engagement at country level and I mean all converging us in joint work around a small set of tight shared strategic objectives.
George, I think you were very eloquent on this point.
The cooperation frameworks must sincerely reflect the top national priorities.
Again, the word top is really important there.
We all know how many priorities that there are in any country, but what are the top priorities and how can we gear our support towards those? The cooperation frameworks must capture the full range of UN country level activities, not in a way that is restrictive or restricting, but that is comprehensive so that synergies become obvious, opportunities for joint programming obvious, and duplication and waste can be eliminated.
And these cooperation frameworks must be collectively developed and owned across the UN family so that the inevitable trade offs and hard choices, including on what the country level configuration should look like, that those trade offs are collectively identified and collectively owned.
Second, yes, there must be mutual visibility and transparency across the activities of the as many as 25 26 agencies that we had in UN Kenya.
Each entity needs to understand everybody else's portfolio, and resident coordinators need to be enabled to coordinate across a unified results framework and a single joint work plan.
Yes, that does mean, as you've heard this morning, CPDs, country program documents or their equivalents, not everybody calls them CPDs, they must be genuinely derived from the cooperation framework, not just loosely aligning with it.
That does have implications for aligning planning cycles.
Cooperation frameworks need to go first and then the CPDs.
Again, George really agree with you on that.
We heard earlier in the week that there are some nervousnesses from some agencies funds and programs that changing planning cycles could risk interruption of service.
I think that there are very easy fixes for that.
We may need a transitional moment where we bring the planning cycles progressively into line, but we need to do it.
That's going to require firm messaging from you, the member states, who are members of those boards of the UN entities or the governing assemblies.
We need your leadership there and we need consistency in the language that you give us in this very valued EcoSox segment with what you're saying or your colleagues are saying in the boards.
Then country level configuration decisions should flow rigorously from that collective strategic decision making that is anchored in the cooperation framework.
Third, and again, we've heard this earlier, equal application of the cooperation framework to in country and non resident UN entities alike.
In fact, that distinction between resident and non resident has been pretty irrelevant or disappearing over the last decade, especially in the increasing portfolio of upper middle income and high income contexts where country teams are now working.
Those contexts in particular demand really punctual, highly specialized policy expertise that aren't that isn't readily found in the agency's funds and programs that are embedded, fixed on the ground with all of the impediment of accreditation, permanent representation, relatively fixed staffing and program and costs.
Increasingly, that type of specialist expertise needs to be met instead through much more lightweight, low cost, and yes, flexible models, embedding experts who borrow a desk and support within a resident coordinator's office or hosted within one of the larger agencies funds or programs on the ground.
Here I'm talking about deployment from the regional or indeed the global level.
It follows logically from there that what we need is a quick, simple, reliable expertise, a mechanism for tapping into regional or global pools of expertise, the expertise on demand model.
Fourth and finally, interoperable digital platforms and you put your finger on it.
UN info that we have at the moment is potentially very powerful, but it's limited by its inability to plug and play with agency systems.
Simply put, we have double entry.
Agencies funds and programs do their own reporting in their own systems, and then this has to be manually re entered either by RCO staff or those same agencies funds and program staff in UN info.
We need to invest in the interoperability.
The UN 80 workstream on technology and data promises a platform to streamline common results reporting for clarity and efficiency and you heard about this from Jens Fel just yesterday.
Host governments, most important, partners and UN entities, all of us, will benefit hugely from having this real time shared visibility of how programs are advancing or where they're faltering and understanding the financial data and the progress.
This common information point couldn't be more important, so please hold our feet to the fire about it collectively.
Conclude, empowered resident coordinators are central to all of these further reforms, but not as gatekeepers.
We don't intend to be gatekeepers, we want to be gateways.
We unite efforts, we reduce frictions and inefficiencies, and we help UN country teams tap into far greater quanta of development financing through new partnerships.
Excellencies, I know of no UN country team anywhere, nor of any resident coordinator who are not resolutely striving daily to accelerate their country's journey towards the SDGs.
With your support on these points, I believe we can go much further.
Thank you.
I thank the resident coordinator in China for his intervention.
Before moving on, I wish to invite delegation wishing to participate in the interactive discussion to go ahead and press the microphone button to indicate their request to intervene.
In the same note, I'd like to remind the speakers that in order to allow sufficient participation, there will be a three minute limit for statements on behalf of groups and 2 minutes for national statements.
I now have the distinct privilege to invite to the floor our lead discussin and invite His Excellency, my colleague Omar Hilai, permanent representative of Morocco, to make a statement.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Vice President.
I would like to also to thank you for inviting me and also to express our appreciation to our distinu panelists for their thoughtful and substantive presentations.
Your interventions have highlighted the key points.
Questions of configuration and regional architecture are not merely institutional discussions.
We go to the heart of whether the United Nations development system can respond effectively to the diverse reality and priorities of program countries.
We also welcome the presence and participation of different regional coordinators from different regions.
From Morocco's perspective, as we undertake this effort for enhancing coherence across the system, it is essential that we remain attentive to national contexts and avoid approaches that in practice could become standardized or one size fits all.
On cooperation framework, Morocco fully support that these frameworks are the center organizing instrument for United Nations support at the country level, and they are essential to strengthen alignment with the country programs of individual entities.
At the same time, such alignment must preserve national ownership, respect national planning cycles, and avoid unnecessary disruption to programs that are already delivering concrete results on the ground.
The cooperation framework should then serve as flexible enabling platform for more integrated action.
Allow me now to highlight two consideration in this regard.
First, host country priorities and national frameworks must remain at the center of any configuration or alignment exercise.
As we work toward greater and synchronization between cooperation frameworks and entity country programs, maintaining continuity in a long program or preserving trusted operational presence in the field may be more important than achieving immediate and complete alignment of documents or timelines.
Second, the pursuit of coherence should focus above all on how we work and deliver together.
I believe we can agree that the central challenge is not the existence of different programming documents, but rather the need for more integrated implementation, stronger joint monitoring, and clearer collective accountability for results.
Future alignment can and should be strengthened through better designated joint programs, pooled resources, and shared resource frameworks without repeatedly interrupting operations that are already performing effectively.
Mr.
Vice President, allow me now to turn briefly to the regional dimension.
This segment and today's panel has given the opportunity to share important edits regarding regional architectures and platforms in light of the proposals of SG's report.
Here too, we see significant potential provided that this regional arrangement remain clearly oriented towards supporting development priorities at the national level.
In this context, it is important to recall that the regional economic commissions possess a longstanding legacy of work that has produced tangible results in support of regional integration, data and analysis and peer learning.
The question therefore is not to re avance or duplicate what has already demonstrated its value, but rather to build upon this experience and connect it more systematically to the priorities identified in cooperation frameworks at the country level.
Allow me to rise three questions for the panelists consideration.
First, from your perspective, what will be the specific value added of the proposed regional platforms for integration in the context of regional country engagement.
Second, While we fully support the aspiration to work more seamlessly across development, humanitarian, peace, and human rights pillar, we must remain attentive to the risks of generalization, particularly where needs and political realities differ significantly from one country to another, even within the same region.
How do we ensure that integrated approaches remain sufficiently sensitive to these differences? Third, How will this regional arrangements remain firmly demand driven and responsive to program countries? From program countries perspective, the central question is whether engagement with regional mechanisms will facilitate more timely, relevant, and coherent support for national implementation or whether it might in intimationally create additional layers of process that may be difficult to navigate.
We would welcome the panel's reflection on how best to strike this balance.
Mr.
Vice President, in conclusion, Morocco support the broader objective of making cooperation frameworks the anchor of United Nations support and using configuration and regional architecture to strengthen collective impact.
As we move forward, However, we believe it's essential to preserve three safeguards.
First, avoiding one size fits all approaches.
Second, ensuring continuity and predictability of support on the ground, and third, and finally, ensuring that regional solutions built on existing arrangements and expertise is built at the level of each region.
I thank you very much.
Our appreciation to the permanent representative of Morocco.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Palau, on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, to be followed by Guyana, on behalf of the Caribbean community and Mozambique.
Mr.
Vice President, I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island states, and in the interest of time, I will deliver a shortened version.
USS welcomes this dialogue and we thank the panelists for their insightful presentations.
As discussions advance under the UN AT process, we must ensure that reform efforts strengthen rather than dilute the ability of the UNDS to respond to the realities of small island developing states.
For SIDS, tailoring support across the UN system is an operational necessity.
Our countries face a convergence of structural vulnerabilities where conventional development approaches simply cannot work.
In this regard, *** underscores that any discussion on tailored UN country team configurations and the regional architecture must begin first and foremost with country needs and national priorities and not on institutional convenience.
As such, effectiveness cannot be measured solely by efficiency metrics or consolidation objectives.
Effectiveness must instead be assessed by whether the system is delivering responsive and context specific support to program countries.
SIDS often require highly specialized expertise that is critically important for implementation of national development plans and strategies.
Therefore, the proposed expertise on demand can be a viable approach as long as it is genuinely responsive to national priorities and is agile and accessible in practice.
The challenge, however, is ensuring that the right expertise reaches the right countries at the right time.
At the same time, expertise on demand cannot become a substitute for sustained institutional presence.
Short term deployments alone cannot replace long term trusted partnerships, institutional memory, or sustained engagement.
In this regard, the configurations of UN country teams, especially those covering multi country office settings are of paramount importance.
Country teams operating in these settings require not only technical expertise, but also a deeper understanding of the structural constraints facing the program countries as well as the trust of host governments.
Mr.
Vice President, for states proximity matters, presence matters, trusted partnerships matter.
Therefore, the central question is not whether reform should occur, but whether the proposed reforms will result in a stronger and more responsive development system on the ground.
Before conclusions are reached, member states must have a clear understanding of what specific changes are being proposed, how they would operate in practice, what gaps they are intended to address, and how they would strengthen delivery for SIDS, especially those covered by multi country office settings.
EOSS will continue to engage constructively throughout this process with the objective of ensuring that reforms strengthen implementation of the QCPR and ultimately deliver a more effective and responsive development system for SIDS.
I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Palau.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Guyana on behalf of the Caribbean community.
Mr.
Vice President, it is my honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the 14 member states of the Caribbean community, Cacom.
We extend appreciation to the panelists for their presentation.
Arcm recognizes the importance of efforts to strengthen the effectiveness, coherence, and delivery of the UN development system, including through a reinvigorated resident coordinator system.
The 2026 UN SDG Chairs report affirms how central this system is to UN development support while identifying that rising demands are being met with declining resources.
The Caribbean hosts four of the nine UN multi country offices globally, in addition to dedicated offices in Haiti and Guyana.
Our highly vulnerable small island developing states depend heavily on responsive and coordinated UN country teams, particularly as climate related disasters intensify in frequency and severity.
Dedicated coordination capacities are crucial to facilitating coherent and integrated UN support at country level.
As such, a tailored approach to national development plans should include sustained access to strategic and specialized support on which program countries rely.
Arcm therefore is keenly interested in the implications of the UN 80 initiative, including proposals related to the regional reset on Workstream three.
While we support efforts to improve efficiency, reforms cannot be one size fits all.
Adjustments being made must not dilute in country expertise, reduce responsiveness or undermine priorities such as climate resilience and disaster preparedness.
We look forward to receiving timely information about proposed initiatives such as the joint Knowledge hubs.
Mr.
Vice President, at a time when SDG progress is alarmingly off track and official development assistance is declining, the RC system is more critical than ever.
Reductions should be balanced with sustainable corresponding arrangements that account for multidimensional vulnerability and resilience needs.
Carcom foreign ministers have emphasized that any recalibration of the UN development system must safeguard local presence, ensure predictable and sustainable financing, and prioritize delivery tailored to the unique vulnerabilities and capacity constraints of SITS.
Carom will engage constructively in these discussions with the goal of a strong and adequately resourced system to accelerate SDG implementation.
I thank you.
Thank the distinguished representative, the Umbassador of Guyana.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Mozambique.
Thank you, Vice Chair.
Thank you the panelists for their insights.
We were among the original delivering as one pilot countries, having volunteered at the end of 2006 and adopted the approach in 2007.
Today, with 25 agencies, funds, programs working with us under the cooperation framework, the question for us is how to equip, finance, and empower a coordinated UN country team to deliver transformation at scale.
To be frank, the results are mixed.
If the ultimate logic of development cooperation is to strengthen national systems to the point where external support becomes less necessary, then the continued scale of needs reminds us that we still have a long way to go.
Multi layered and evolving challenges are well known.
As far as we are concerned, those challenges cannot be solved project by project.
As my former boss used to say, sometimes one feels like a minister of projects, managing the administrative demands of projects rather than driving national transformation.
Our challenges require a UN country team configuration that it's not driven by agency footprint, historical presence or fundraising incentives, but by national priorities, cooperation framework outcomes, and the capacities needed to deliver them.
We are therefore in favor of a differentiated and modular approach to UN CT configuration, one that leverages search capacity and expertise on demand while preserving sustained country level presence, institutional memory, and trust with national counterparts.
This can be done.
We're looking forward to work with the UN system and form follows function indeed.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Mozambique.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Norway on behalf of the group of friends on disastrous risk reduction.
Vice President, Excellencies, I just said, I have the really great honor to deliver this statement on behalf of Australia, Indonesia, Peru, and Norway as co chairs of the group of Friends for disaster risk reduction, representing member states committed to strengthening resilience worldwide.
We really would like to thank you, Vice President, for convening this session, but not the least to the panelists and the speakers for really excellent contributions.
As we look toward a more impactful and equitable UN development system, we underscore that DLS to risk reduction must remain an integral part of how support is tailored to different country contexts.
Today's development gains are increasingly threatened by compounding risks from climate shocks to systemic vulnerabilities.
This underscores the importance of prevention oriented approaches across the work of UN country teams.
The UNA to reforms, including ongoing efforts to strengthen the UN development system, offers a critical opportunity to ensure that countries access relevant capacities.
For DRR, this is particularly relevant.
A large share of technical expertise seats at regional and global levels and can be more effectively leveraged through coordinated, demand driven approaches that respond to national priorities.
Several UN A work packages includes, as we know, a strong focus on risk reduction, early warning, and prevention.
This provides a strong foundation for enhancing support that brings together expertise and help address shared and transboundary risks.
We encourage building practices that support risk informed development, early warning systems, and resilience planning, leveraging the UN plan of action on the RRR for resilience adopted back in 2016.
At the same time, UN country team configurations should remain responsive to country specific contexts and risk profiles.
Countries facing climate vulnerability, structural vulnerability or disaster risks will benefit from more tailored support that integrates DRR across planning, financing, and implementation.
This includes strengthening capacities for risk understanding and more coherent policy approaches across the sectors.
In closing, investing in disaster risk reduction is an investment in sustainable development.
A UN development system that puts prevention, resilience, and risk informed approaches at its core will be better equipped to deliver lasting results for all of us.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Norway.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Netherlands, followed by Switzerland and United Kingdom.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands welcome this discussion.
Effective UN CT configuration is foundational to coherent impactful delivery at country level.
And in the presence of the resident coordinators, let me reiterate our strong support for your work.
Currently, UN CT composition continues to be driven by institutional presence and funding interests rather than national priorities and genuine value edit.
The CF must be the real driver of who's present in what capacity and with what resources and a resident coordinators must have a formal role in those decisions.
We welcome this update on UN CT reconfigurations.
Reports ahead of this session and this year, OAS so far have provided limited feasibility on concrete progress.
Given that reconfiguration touches on institutional presence, funding interests, and mandates, transparent stock taking is essential.
We express our strong support for the proposals presented, but we cannot ignore emerging friction.
Mr.
Jackson already referred to you in the piece remarks yesterday on the sequencing, and a letter of several agencies have flagged further reservations.
This illustrates how politically complex politically and institutionally complex this process is.
I have the following questions.
What concrete steps are you taking to implement what is proposed and what concrete steps we, including in the lead up to the executive board as members, need to take to unblock this process and provide political backing? Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of the Netherlands.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Switzerland.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you panelists.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank the resident coordinators here, but also in general for their important work often in very difficult situations.
A lot of what has been presented makes so much sense to us.
Sequencing of the strategic documents with the primacy of the UN cooperation frameworks is what is needed.
We will strongly support that also in the executive boards that are following the OS.
Country teams configuration, as you mentioned, should already be tailored according to the needs of the cooperation frameworks.
Let me just ask what is needed so that resident coordinators can better push for that.
Is the authority that you have and the instruments that you have, is it enough or what do you need from us to support you to deliver on this? Then could you elaborate a bit more on the expertise on demand? How concretely will that work and what will be the role of the resident coordinators with often limited resources also? How will you be able to respond and to ensure that expertise on demand is delivered in the right way.
Finally, let me just also mention our support for the digital delivering and showing of results and the impact.
It is what we need, and we strongly support that strive.
Thank you very much.
I thank the distinguished representative of Swiss.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom.
Thank you, Vice President and thank you to the panelists at this session for the valuable insights.
The UK welcomes this opportunity this session provides to engage with those with firsthand experience of where the UN development system is currently excelling and where there is clear need to improve.
With the SEGs off track and the uncertain global economic picture, a more coherent, agile, and tailored UN development system is essential.
I'll keep my input brief.
I wanted to pose three quick questions to the panel based on what we've discussed so far this morning.
First, as we've heard, ensuring the centrality and precedent of the cooperation frameworks in defining in country activities and presence of the UN country team will be vital in creating a one UN approach in country.
What discussions do you have with agency reps in country if you feel an agency's work is not aligned closely enough with the cooperation framework, and what response do you usually receive? Second, and relatedly, do you feel the prevailing trend among agencies is to align more closely with cooperation frameworks or is fragmentation remaining suddenly high in the view of RCs? Finally, we've heard concrete ideas from an ERCs at different stages of the UNAT process regarding potential changes that can be made at country level to make the UN development system work more effectively? If you were to select one primary reform that member states should get behind within or beyond current UNAT work packages, what would this be and what impact would it have on the ground? Can you please make clear what is needed from member states and what is in the hands of the UN itself? Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom.
I now give the floor to the distinguished Representative of Algeria to be followed by Sweden and Ireland.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair and distinguished panelists.
Algeria welcomes the discussion on improving how the United Nations supports countries in meeting their development goals.
Today's global challenges such as climate change and rising debt require more flexible and country focused solutions.
From Algeria perspective, we believe that cooperation frameworks should not only guide overall strategy, but also directly shape how UN country teams are organized and operate.
The team should be designed around each country's specific priorities with strong leadership from resident coordinators to ensure better coordination and avoid duplication.
It's important to balance a strong presence at the country level with access to regional and global expertise, ensuring that the UN development system remains both responsive to national priorities and capable of drawing on specialized knowledge when needed.
To make this flexibility effective, it must be supported by reliable funding and robust accountability mechanisms that ensure impactful, tangible, and measurable results.
To conclude, Algeria calls for a more adaptive and coordinated UN development system that puts national priorities first and is better equipped to respond to changing needs in order to achieve the goals of 2030 agenda.
I thank you.
I than the distinguished Representative of Algeria, also Vice President of Ecoso.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Sweden.
Thank you.
Mr.
Vice President, Excellencies, Sweden welcomes the participation of the resident coordinators here today, whose insights help ground our discussions in operational realities.
Over the past days, member states have called for a more tailored un presence, demand driven, context based, and agile.
At the same time, we must be realistic.
We do not foresee a significant increase in ODA or a broader donor base.
How do we strike the right balance between ambition and realism, between growing needs and constrained resources? In Sweden's view, the situation calls for a slimmer, more focused UN presence at country level supported by strong regional architecture and access to expertise on demand.
Resources must prioritize delivery and technical expertise over administrative overhead.
Needs continue to far exceed available resources.
This makes it critical for the UN to build on its comparative advantages and to focus where it can have the greatest impact.
If resources remain constrained, how can we organize the US presence to maximize impact, coherence, and results? The UN AD process provides an opportunity to accelerate agreed reforms, including a stronger RC system and a fit for purpose UN country presence.
Sweden, together with Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, and Ireland, a group of countries referred to as the Nordic Plus, have taken the initiative to support country level leadership to strengthen UN delivery.
By engaging coherently and proactively in countries where new cooperation frameworks are being developed, we're seeking to help advance the elements of the reform agenda from 2018 that have experienced lower level of implementation.
This initiative is practical and reform oriented.
While the UN is responsible for its effectiveness, member states and partners also shape the conditions under which it operates.
Our objective is clear to help create the incentives, partnerships, and ways of working needed for a more impactful U.
I thank the distinguished representative of Sweden.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Ireland.
Thank you, Vice President and to each of the panelists for sharing their insights this morning.
It's been really helpful.
The OC system and the fit for purpose UN country team are fundamental to the UN development system, delivering the important results that it does day in and day out for millions of people globally.
Advancements have been made since 2018, but in our view, the full potential of the OCE Center's approach is yet to be unlocked.
The recalibration of the system mandated by the QCPR together with the UNA process presents a real opportunity to evolve.
To enable that vision, Arlen believes in properly and consistently funded ORC system, and an OC that is empowered to mobilize those resources to ensure delivery of outcomes guided by coherent planning documents defined by national priorities.
To allow the ORC to play this envisioned central role, accountability, incentive structures at all levels of the UN development system must be better aligned towards country priorities and needs.
It's vital also that the ORC be equipped with the requisite skills, access to expertise, and top down management support to uphold system wide coherence across deeply interconnected spheres of peace and security, human rights, and development.
While applicable across the system, this is particularly acute in fragile and conflict affected settings as well as transition contexts.
Finally, question to the panelists.
We talk a lot about coherence of effort in the UN development system.
As member states, we have a responsibility to be consistent in our guidance to that system, whether that be here in EcoSoc or at the boards.
We're interested also in your views on how our embassies and representatives in country can support your work.
So the thoughts that you have on that would be interesting.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Ireland, Corp.
I give the floor to Mexico.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Vice President.
We're grateful for the organization of this exchange of views, and we acknowledge the efforts of the regional coordinators and UN country teams in countries.
We would like to highlight the value of appropriate regionalization to improve response times, access to specialists, and the relevance of solutions for regions with common challenges such as Latin America and the Caribbean.
In this context, we believe that it is fundamental to continue strengthening coordination of the development system and promote more integrated responses that make it possible to address simultaneously economic, social and environmental challenges.
As has been highlighted during the panel, we reiterate the value of cooperation frameworks to have work really focus on national priorities.
This implies that we have to acknowledge that development challenges are not homogeneous.
And that solutions must be adapted to the specific realities of each context.
We consider particularly valuable to work with an approach based on responding to specific national circumstances and structural challenges that various countries confront, including those related to fiscal restrictions, high levels of indebtedness, climate challenges, and other factors that limit their capacities to achieve implementation of SDGs.
I'd also like to highlight the value of South South and triangular cooperation as a complement to traditional modalities of cooperation And for countries with a dual status such as Mexico, these represent an opportunity to strengthen our institutional capacities and promote, unfortunately, the microphone switched off.
Mexico floor to the distinguished Representative of Pakistan to be followed by Nepal and Ukraine.
Mr.
Vice President, we thank the panelists for their interventions.
We will focus on the following four areas.
First, on the idea of entities sequencing CPDs after cooperation frameworks.
We would like to understand from those on the ground, how would this be implemented in practice.
One concern raised yesterday by the UNDP administrator and also mentioned by one of the panelists was interruption of delivery services on the ground.
So does sequencing mean that planning for CPD should not start until after cooperation frameworks are finalized and signed? Or does it mean we will stagger the corporation frameworks and CPDs in terms of the corporation frameworks ending, for example, in a year 2027 and the CPDs ending a year after so that there's no interruption in delivery of services on the ground? So it was mentioned that there are quick technical fixes to this issue.
So we would like to understand how the issue of interruption of delivery services on the ground will be handled.
Secondly, on UN CT configuration, we see merit in having a more focused configuration of UN presence on the ground, but we would like more deliberations on the criteria and procedure for configuration.
The process should be led or co led by host governments and recommendations emanating from that need to be endorsed by host governments.
This seems to be lacking in the QCPR report where it is proposed that the RC recommendations get directly elevated to the regional and global level.
Then on the regional reset, we are unconvinced on the proposal to replace RCPs with RPIs.
I will not repeat the concerns we've raised multiple times due to lack of time here today and on the expertise on demand mechanism as well, we need more clarity on who would trigger the request, who would pay for this mechanism, and would this expertise be an adequate substitute for sustained country level presence? Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Pakistan.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Nepal.
Mr.
Chair, Nepal's experience demonstrates that the cooperation frameworks work best when it serves as central strategic instrument guiding the entire UN country team and aligning support with national development priorities.
Now let me highlight a few points on these areas.
First, we see particular value in a strong and impart resident coordinator system.
They are the development experts and very interested to know more about this expertise on demand.
We want to know if this is an investment in effective coordination and development solutions for countries they are assigned to Um, the RC system in Nepal has been instrumental in steering UN engagement around seven key transitions from SDG for SDG exploration, from jobs and social protection to climate action, digital transformation, financing for systems, education and health.
Second, country needs should determine UN CT configuration.
As countries' needs evolve, the UN system should align with them.
Nepal's priorities are, as I stated above, so the UN CT should remain flexible and responsive to these national circumstances.
Third, regional expertise should complement country presence.
We want to have more clarity on this area as well.
Developing countries, especially the countries in special situations, must have predictable and timely access to these high quality UN expertise and technical support.
In closing, the measure of effectiveness is not a number of UN entities present in the country, but the extent to which the UN development system delivers tangible results, we need results on ground and Nepal stands ready to work closely with member states and partners for strengthening a more agile well resourced and impactful United Nations development system, including under the UN AT Initiative.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Nepal.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Ukraine.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Ukraine strongly supports efforts to ensure that UkraN country teams are configured and mobilized in line with national development priorities and country specific needs.
In our view, cooperation framework should be practical instruments that guide not only planning, but also the composition, capacities, and delivery of the UN system at the country level.
Ukraine's experience demonstrates the importance of a coordinated and flexible UN presence.
More than 20 UN entities are currently operating in Ukraine across humanitarian recovery, development, human rights, and resilience related areas.
In such a complex environment, effective coordination in the search is essential to ensure coherence, avoid duplication, and maximize impact.
The resident coordinator plays a central role in this process.
We have seen how strong coordination helps bring together the comparative advantages of different UN entities and align their efforts with national priorities.
We therefore support continued strengthening of the resident coordinator system and ensuring that resident coordinators have the authority and the resources necessary to perform their coordination functions effectively.
We would also like to highlight the value of flexible access to regional and global expertise, particularly in countries facing complex and evolving challenges.
Such support can strengthen UN delivery provided in complements a strong country level presence and remains guided by national priorities.
Ukraine remains grateful for the support of the UN system and values its contribution to strengthening the resilience of our institutions and communities in face of the Russia's ongoing full scale war aggression against Ukraine.
I thank you very much.
I thank the distinguished representative of Ukraine I give the floor to Colombia.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Vice President.
I would like to applaud your work today.
I also would like to welcome the resident coordinators here and applaud the work of all your colleagues around the world and the importance of the way you interpret the realities on the ground which we're discussing here today.
Mr.
Chairman, I'd like to convey to you that Colombia strongly believes that the effectiveness of the work of resident coordinators has to be It has to be more relevant in terms of appropriate financing, internal coherence and the use of South South and triangular cooperation and take advantage of the opportunities represented by the UNAD reform.
As far as financing, this should be based on genuine solidarity.
It must be inspired by universal values and must promote the action of the receiving state by strengthening its national capacities, as far as the internal coherence.
I think it's important to take into account the long history of Colombia in its relationship with the UN and its agencies on the ground and we'd like to reiterate historic appeal for greater internal coordination and better quality of support on sensitive topics.
As well as focus on national priorities.
As far as South South cooperation, we reiterate the importance of this instrument due to its horizontality and the respect that it grants to the worker countries.
Colombia is ready to share its experiences, to work with all of you and to promote the reform of UN Aid in favor of the work of resident coordinators.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ambassador Representative Colombia.
To the Distinguished Representative of Indonesia to be followed by China and Guatemala.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President.
We thank the panelists for their presentations.
Indonesia's experience shows that cooperation frameworks are most effective when firmly anchored in national development priorities.
For Indonesia, efficiency must mean stronger coordination, less bureaucracy, and better use of existing capacities.
The RC's role is essential in this regard, including true, regular, structured, and transparent dialogue with program countries.
Strengthening the RC system also requires due attention to balance regional representation so that its leadership reflects diverse development contexts and experiences.
On expertise on demand, this should not create additional costs or new layers of complexity.
It should make expertise more accessible, including through national and local experts, local governments and implementing partners.
Local expertise brings contextual knowledge, institutional memory, trust, and proximity to implementation realities.
It can also reduce costs, strengthen national capacity, and ensure long term development impact.
In Southeast Asia, mechanisms already exist, including between ECAP and Asean.
The task is therefore not to create parallel structures, but to better connect and operationalize what has already been built, including through South South and triangular cooperation.
Our question is, how can expertise on demand better use existing regional mechanisms while preserving national ownership, affordability, and meaningful capacity building for program countries.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Indonesia.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of China.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
China appreciates this very frank and pragmatic discussions with the panelists, shedding light further on the regional reconfiguration and the country team reset proposals of the SG.
The GA Resolution 72279 sets out the mandates and also the content for the repositioning of the UN development system has been achieving results according to the SG's latest report.
But at the same time, the international situation is rapidly changing and new challenges are coming, but the funding for development is declining over the past couple of years and various conflicts and crises are making the situation even more complex.
Therefore, flexibility and also coherence of the UN development system as a whole is more critical today than ever before.
China supports the Unity initiatives direction and ambition and also believes that a stronger UN country team and regional cooperation aligned very, very closely with the host country's priorities and needs and respecting country leadership and ownership is critical in order to ensure valuable capital variable funding can be used for programs in order to support the abilities and also development efforts of the host countries.
Along the line, we welcome the discussions like today, but we hope that in the future, the panelists can be from more diversified areas and more representative of the different countries in different situations in order to truly through case studies to reflect how RC and working together with members of the UN country team can enable a stronger UN response and I thank the distinguished representative of China, I give the floor to the representative of Guatemala.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President for giving me the floor for Guatemala.
An effective development system must also be relevant to The system should respond to the needs and specific realities of each country and not to uniform schemes.
We believe it's essential to have timely access to specialized expertise, including non resident capacities when they provide added value to national capacities and national capacities that are strengthened on the ground for countries that confront fiscal restructions, climate vulnerabilities, and other structural challenges.
This requires flexible multidisciplinary support geared towards results without enhancing fragmentation or administrative burden.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Vice President.
Thank you, Guatemala.
The floor to the distinguished representative of the European Union.
Thank you, Vice President, and thank you for all the interventions to the panelists.
Excellenc's colleagues, I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the EU and its member states.
We are very glad to see several resident coordinators in the room.
They are the backbone of the UN development system on the ground and OAS is fully meaningful only with their participation.
The question before us is simple.
How do we ensure the UN's presence on the ground is as agile, coherent, and impactful as the challenges we face? The answer lies in three shifts from fragmentation to unity, from rigidity to adaptability, and from global processes to country owned results.
First, for this to happen, cooperation frameworks must become the strategic anchor of the UN country teams.
We have seen how cooperation frameworks can align UN teams behind national priorities, but only when they are treated as mandatory, not optional.
Critically, entity country program documents must be derived from and aligned with the frameworks, not the other way around.
RCs need to be empowered to reconfigure teams on the basis of it and national priorities, ensuring the UN delivers as one coherent system in support of country own development goals.
Second, delivering better results requires better access to expertise as well as leaner operations.
The EU has backed models like the expertise on demand mechanism and regional roasters because they work.
For example, the climate advisor in the Caribbean.
But this only succeeds if RCs can access expertise without bureaucratic delays and if entities are rewarded for sharing capacity, not hoarding it.
Beyond expertise, operational efficiency must improve.
The EU strongly supports reducing duplication and streamlining operations through strengthened shared service delivery.
Third, and finally, the EU strongly supports a fundamental shift in how country teams configuration decisions are made.
They must be purpose built to respond to national priorities and tailored to national contexts.
This means that configuration decisions should be taken jointly by the UN entity, the host government, and the resident coordinator.
Executive boards will have an important role to play in the reconfiguration of the UN country teams, especially when moving from fragmentation to unity.
They will need to enforce country cooperation frameworks.
Alignment.
In conclusion, the EU supports the objective of a stronger, more focused UN with country teams reconfigured around national SDG priorities, drawing on the full system expertise available on demand.
In this regard, the EU strongly supports a clear roadmap that turns UN country teamwork configuration into concrete context specific action.
This brings me to our question this morning.
What would a realistic implementation plan look like? One that translates cooperation frameworks into tailored UN country team configurations, not just on paper, but in practice.
Thank you.
I think the distinguished representative of the European Union.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Australia to be followed by Armenia and Canada.
Thank you very much, Vice President, thank you to the presenters today.
I'll keep my comment just to one question only.
The UN SDG report flags that the management and accountability framework is in the process of being revised and would really welcome advice on this process and timelines.
What elements of the math are being prioritized for implementation and review.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much to the distinguished representative of Australia.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Armenia.
Thank you, Chair, and we thank the panelists for sharing their perspectives.
Armenia believes that the ultimate measure of success of any reform of the UN development system is whether it enhances the quality, effectiveness, and responsiveness of the support provided to program countries on the ground and results in strengthening national capacities.
Instead, we would like to share our perspectives on supporting delivery in the context of the ongoing reforms.
First, we recognize the important role of the UN resident coordinators in ensuring coherence across the UN country team in supporting national needs and priorities, bringing together normative and operative pillars of the UNDS drawing on the comparative advantages of any UN entity.
Second, we emphasize that reconfiguration of the UN country teams has to be tailored to host country needs with the cooperation framework position to serve as the national compact for system wide support.
However, such configuration needs to result in strengthening the UN country teams, their mandates and resources rather than concentrating expertise at the regional level.
Challenges in country team configurations and regional arrangements should be guided by the needs and priorities identified by program countries themselves.
Third, Armenia supports localized UN engagement rooted in proximity to project beneficiaries with the aim to reach the most vulnerable and operationalize the pledge of leaving no one behind.
This is particularly important for countries facing structural constraints, which requires sustained daily engagement, high quality policy advice, and integrated support tailored to national circumstances.
In conclusion, reforms should enhance rather than diminish the UN impact at the country level and access to specialized expertise in areas critical for sustainable development.
Recalibration of the UN president coordinator system needs to result in strengthening the UN presence on the ground as well as coherent system wide response to the development needs.
I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Armenia, Vice President of Ecosov.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Canada.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President, and thank you to the panelists today, especially the resident coordinators.
We really appreciate, as ever, your remarks on not just the benefits of the resident coordinator role, but also the complexities in advancing the reforms that we member states, ask you to carry forward.
With regards to the sequencing on sustainable development cooperation frameworks and the country programs, I think we all agree that this is an important process in terms of having a holistic planning and strategic framework for the UN and country.
Stephen, we particularly appreciate your remarks on how they focus on top priorities and the need for trade offs.
I Appreciating that there is a role for member states and executive boards and governing bodies in this, we would welcome your thoughts on ideas on how we can further strengthen these efforts and what we can do to support you in these processes, and somewhat related on the reconfiguration of country teams, even if they all are in alignment with the sustainable development cooperation frameworks, I think we can imagine that there might be challenges in reaching consensus or agreement on who remains resident and not and in what scope or capacity the country presence is maintained.
We'd be interested in your views on um, how to design these processes for success and the role you foresee resident coordinators having, but also what support you need from member states for that.
Finally, linked to both of these areas on the expertise for demand, Canada, and we've shared this already this week, but we're really pleased to support the peace and development advisors and deployment capacity of these two resident coordinators in complex settings.
In our experience, this has been a highly effective and functioning expertise on demand model.
However, it's one that we find to be significantly underfunded.
The demand far outpaces the availability of this expertise, and we imagine it would be similar in other areas of deployable advisors.
What role do you as resident coordinators foresee in these mechanisms being deployed and designed and implemented in your countries and specifically what challenges do you I thank the distinguished Representative of Canada.
In the interest of time, I will now invite the panelists to briefly respond to the comments and questions from delegations.
And if Mr.
Jose Manuel Szar still online, yes, please go ahead.
Thank you.
Thank you very much Chair.
I'd like to answer the three questions if possible, posed by the distinguished representative of Morocco because I think this is a very precise question, but also because they relate with several of the comments that were made in this excellent round of comments and insights.
The first question, what is the value added of the proposed regional platforms for integration? Okay, I would say that the regional cooperation platforms that we have been operating in the last few years have contributed significant value added through the IBC, the issue based coalitions, the working groups.
There have been significant forward steps to better coordination and delivery from the regional level to the country level.
So in that sense, the idea, the concept of building the RPIs, the new ones as an upgrade of the RCPs and the lessons learned is a very useful and powerful idea.
One aspect of the upgrade is more integrated work across pillars.
This is a challenge in Latin America, ELC and UDP as co chair, we have done recently an exercise of identifying how the three pillars may relate to each other, what similars might exist in around 13 areas of work.
We have discussed this with all the members of the RCP, so all the UN agencies, funds and programs.
This was a very valuable exercise, we have to do more work on it, but this is the kind of exercise that needs to be done in each region to identify opportunities for a more integrated approach between pillars.
Um, and I think this is partly also your second question, what advantage from closer work among pillars, how to advance towards integrated approaches? I think this is one way to advance towards more integrated approaches, identifying area by area, the possible synergies.
It is heterogeneous.
In some areas, the potential is very large, in some areas is less intense.
And finally, the third question would be, will the new models operandi proposed and the new engagement rules facilitate more effective implementation on a national level, or is this an additional layer of difficulty? I think this is a very important question.
It can even be seen as the acid test for the success of any reform.
Neither countries nor the UN system leaders want more layers of difficulty and bureaucracy.
This has been very much part of the conversation, how to have better coordination with new procedures that are light and facilitators rather than heavy that increase restrictions or transaction costs.
I'd like to refer briefly to two risks of adding additional layers of difficulty that we have been discussing and that indeed were mentioned in this round of comments.
One is the single entry point idea through the RCs or what is now called the gateway function.
As I said in my statement, ECA, for instance, received 167 requests directly for technical assistance last year from Latin American countries and Caribbean countries.
The direct access to regional economic commissions is something natural given that each Regional Economic Commission supports as Secretariat, more than ten interonmental bodies.
In the case of ELA is around 14 intergovernmental bodies to be precise.
Those are communities of practice that include ministers, vice ministers, heads of department, policymakers, experts.
So there's an enormous amount of trust and excellent relations that have been built over the years between those authorities and experts and the respective personnel of regional economic commissions and of course, all the regional UN agencies at the regional level.
This makes it very natural and explains why countries value tremendously possibility of requesting different types of support directly from Regional Economic commissions.
That is why the Regional Economic Commission have been arguing about the importance of maintaining this opportunity of direct access from governments to regs by not having a strict interpretation of single entry point.
Of course, we can improve coordination with dressing coordinators in making sure that the dressing coordinators as gateways of activities at the national level are well informed about the request and are not surprised and can take this into account in the planning.
But we have been arguing against this strict interpretation.
The second example, I will finish with this, is the idea of country cooperation frameworks as anchors for the work of the whole UN.
This is a very important, very powerful idea.
We have been insisting in the need to have flexibility and agility with this instrument.
The world is changing fast, mega trends are accelerating.
Also, even within the same national government, national priorities might change or be adjusted for good reasons along the way.
The fluidity of the world and national circumstances mean that it is impossible or even better say unadvisable to have frameworks that are fixed for four years.
Modern management ideas, advice a flexible and adaptive approach.
This is also one of the reasons why foresight and anticipatory governance that the UN itself is promoting is so important.
So this diagnosis should be translated into an approach that is flexible, adaptive, and dynamic in the use of the implementation and implementation of the cooperation frameworks as ans.
So idea is powerful, but there has to be this kind of flexibility and stability approach in the cooperation framework so that they don't become, you know, inflexible, which can have a series of issues.
So these are two examples of how to avoid additional layers of difficulty in the nuds of Randy.
And I hope these ideas are helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Many thanks, Mr.
Salzar Sinek.
I now give the floor to Mr.
More Dasil.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President, Distinguished members.
In the interest of time, I will focus in one topic because by the way, it was the topic more often mentioned, which was the role of the cooperation frameworks.
Why the cooperation framework is gaining all distraction in this conversation, it's precisely because what is at stake is not making the UN presence smaller.
It's by contrary to the idea of getting fit to deliver at scale, but not only delivering at scale, delivering in a more coherent manner with more collaboration across the system.
That's why the cooperation framework is really the document that enhances the capacity to deliver at scale, but also in a non fragmented and in a coherent manner.
For the sake of transparency, because I've been, as you know, facilitating this process, I want to say something about the process and about what was on the table and what is now on the table.
When we started this process, I heard from resident coordinators from member states that the fragmentation is an issue.
The proliferation of country program documents and its consistency or inconsistency with the cooperation framework was an issue.
So I proposed that let's go for one document, just one document, just the cooperation framework.
Then I heard from some agencies that no, that can't work because we need the CPDs.
I think that they are right.
They did the CPDs because the CPD is a document that is important for accountability, is a document that is important for implementation.
We ended with a with an alternative.
That is, well, if we need to maintain cooperation frameworks with the country procer documents, at least can we go further in making the cooperation frameworks more strategic and avoiding the fragmentation? That's why the idea is the sequencing.
Let's first approve the cooperation framework and then only after the CPDs.
Also, the derivation that the CPDs must be consistent, derived from the cooperation framework.
The CPDs must be a way to implement the cooperation framework, not to bring any other strategy that would create some confusion.
Second, and third, it's important to have a consultation.
Nobody works in isolation.
If an agency needs a CPD, well, the CPD should be consulted at the country team.
You can see why in my opinion, and apologies if I'm being so blunt in my opinion, we can't go below this.
I think that for someone that has worked for 12 months in this reform and consulting resident coordinators and member states, if we go below this, I think that we will end with a reform that is not consistent with your requests.
We need to find a way on implementation to fix the planning element.
It's true that it's important to avoid that there is no interruption on delivery, but it's a matter of the how, not a matter of the whether.
We'll find a way and the DSG establishing a working group to ensure precisely that this element of derivation sequencing is implemented in a way that has no impact on the implementation.
I'm quite optimistic about the way forward.
Thank you.
Many thanks, Mr.
Da Silva, Burk.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President.
Thank you, Excellencies, amazing questions.
I would be doing huge disservice if I tried to answer even one of them fully.
They require a lot more thought.
Let me engage starting with the intervention by the PR from Morocco with respect to national alignment and supremacy of national ownership.
I don't mean ownership as an OA, the government is happy that we're doing this.
The cooperation framework is a reflection of those national programs, identified national initiatives that allow us to expedite on SDG delivery.
Yesterday, my colleague from Egypt gave multiple very good examples of how when the UN system is able to galvanize behind a nationally driven national program, then neither funding nor configuration actually become an issue.
Things fall in place.
This is the trick of the cooperation framework, that instead of being a compilation in a listing of multiple global objectives and strategic plan summaries of UN entities, it needs to be a reflection of the national programs we have collectively identified as being expediters of sustainable development goals.
So going forward, as I said, I've started this process.
One member state inquired what kind of conversations we're having with our UN country team.
We talk about this all the time.
They have asked me to move ahead with a cooperation framework that takes into account that puts the national programs at the forefront, but also takes into account the dynamic situation that Moldova finds itself in, the multiple vulnerabilities it finds itself in and with respect to its EU accession and the crowding in of European partners coming in.
I promise to do that.
I think I'm just going to leave it at this.
There's a lot more going on on sequencing.
I believe that's something I'm very passionate about, but I think my colleague, Steven, can speak to that more at.
Thank you, Mr.
Steve.
Thank you, Chair and agree, im, I mean, what an incredible discussion, incredible rich range of views, but large consensus, I think, and time doesn't permit to come to all of the points raised, but I will also start with the intervention from His Excellency, the permanent representative of Morocco and I couldn't agree more on the need for integrated, flexible implementation under national ownership.
I also really agree with his Ecellcy from Mozambique, that we can't allow the existing footprint to drive the programming choice.
That is the cart driving the horse.
It has to be the other way around.
But then I want to join those observations to the question raised by Switzerland about whether we as resident coordinators have enough authority.
The first thing I want to say is we have very little authority in the formal sense and we don't necessarily seek that.
If I can put it this way, are four sets of stimuli, if you like, operating on any country team member, agency head on the ground in country.
The first and the most important is the national ownership.
But there is a caveat to that, which is that they, of course, are mostly dealing with the line ministry that is pertinent to their mandate.
That's what I meant when I said in my presentation that we need to be geared to the top national priorities.
I mean no disrespect if I say that in any given country, if an agency comes to me and says, for example, it's one of the three Rome based agencies and says, Well, the Ministry of Agriculture wants me to do X.
But if that isn't part of the top prioritization made by the country, then I need to be in a position to say, Well, yes, but we all agreed that actually we were going to work on these five things at the beginning.
So national ownership needs to be really understood as very strategic through the cooperation framework.
Then, of course, the other sets of stimuli, well, they're listening to me, but the line to me is dotted.
And remains dotted.
Their primary stimuli beyond the national are, number one, what is their headquarters telling them? Number two, what are the development partners on the ground? What are the signals they're sending through their funding decisions? That brings me to the question of funding.
Getting the funding mix right because frankly, it drives a lot of the fragmentation that you are complaining about and you're right to complain about it.
And so we really are, again, Mozambique, the minister of projects.
I understand exactly what you're saying, and I sometimes feel like the resident coordinator of projects.
So a big part of the configuration challenge and of solving it is rebalancing the funding mix so that there is more pooled funding and more core funding and less projectized and strongly earmarked funding.
I'm not saying do away with it altogether, but you need to get that mix right if you want to get the configuration right, so a healthier funding mix.
Um, in terms finally of what should we do and what should you do, which was, I think, how the UK asked the question.
Well, first of all, I think we need to work on criteria for country level configuration, and I think that that is part of what is underway through the UNAT process.
Sequencing.
George, you've spoken to that and I think that there is a proposal on the table within the UNAT workstream.
That UN entities individual entities should submit their CPDs in the first year of implementation of the cooperation framework.
So yes, indeed, as Pakistan said, stagger.
Start with the country cooperation framework and then stagger to the CPDs.
We can do both of those things.
From you, we need a healthier funding mix.
Ireland, you asked, what are our colleagues saying on the ground, Famously, when I asked in a dialogue on the funding compact, I said, you're all committed globally to providing more pooled funding and more core funding, and yet I'm not seeing that on the ground in Kenya.
Why not? One member state representative in Nairobi said to me, Well, it's these political folks that negotiate the funding compact, but they don't control the money, we do.
Unless that inconsistency can be changed, it's going to be very difficult to get this right.
Thank you.
On that note, let me thank the panelists for their insightful contributions today and to all of you for all your inputs.
Before proceeding to the next dialogue, I will briefly pause the meeting for a change of podium.
Please remain seated.
I Every day, millions of people are forced to make harder choices just to get by.
A farmer deciding when to plant as droughts and floods intensify, a mother having to choose what to give up as prices rise, a young person wondering if opportunity will ever reach them.
This is where development matters most.
Today, pressures are rising, climate shocks, conflict, the cost of living, and artificial intelligence is reshaping how we work and how we trust information and institutions.
But faced with decreasing resources, the real risk is not a lack of solutions, it's fragmentation.
When development efforts and funding scatter progress lows and trust erodes, collective action and impact become harder.
That's why coordination matters.
Across more than 160 countries and territories, resident coordinators ensure the UN works as one, turning national priorities into coordinated action, financing, and results.
UN agencies results are clear.
1.8 billion people are living healthier lives.
284 million more people gain access to electricity.
1.9 billion women and girls are benefiting from expanded rights and opportunities.
When the UN works as one, the return on coordination is clear.
Through the joint SDG fund, every $1 in catalytic funding unlocks up to $20 in investment, and nearly $600 million has been saved by working better together.
Five years to 2030, no time for fragmentation.
The question is simple.
Can we act together fast enough? We can.
When countries lead and the UN works together, we deliver results at scale.
Good morning, everyone.
Let's start the next session.
Delivering on the 2030 agenda requires a United Nations development system that can adapt its support to distinct realities, vulnerabilities, and priorities of different country contexts, countries in special situations as well as countries facing fragility crisis and internal displacement continue to confront mounting structural pressures, even as development funding becomes more constrained and humanitarian needs continue to grow.
This session provides an opportunity to reflect on how the UN development system can sustain integrated and context specific support in these increasingly complex environments and reinforce national capacities and resilience while ensuring that support remains aligned with country priorities and long term development objectives.
For our second interactive dialogue on delivering tailored support in countries in special situations and reinforcing development support, In complex settings, I'm pleased to welcome our distinguished panelists, Mr.
Bruno the Marquie, United Nations Resident Coordinator in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who will join us virtually.
Madam Urika Richardson, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Libya, Mr.
David McLaughlin Carr, Regional Director for Asia Pacific of the United Nations Development Coordination Office, and Mr.
Simon Springert, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Barbados and Eastern Caribbean, as well as Well, I first give the floor to Mr.
Bruno La Marquis, United Nations resident coordinator in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Can you hear me? Loud and clear.
Very good.
Mr.
Chair, Excellency, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to join you as I've just finished my term in the Democratic Republic of Congo and I'm on my way to Afghanistan and I'll be speaking about the DRC.
So the DRC continues to face complex political and security challenges, as well as one of the most severe and protracted humanitarian crisis globally.
There are currently close to 6 million internally displaced people in the DRC, as well as over 4 million returnees.
The humanitarian response is taking place against the backdrop of the unprecedented global humanitarian funding crisis starting in 2025, which has very severely affected the DRC.
This drastic reduction in assistance, in particular, humanitarian assistance, while they represent a real challenge in providing lifesaving assistance to the most affected communities, Also is also a real opportunity to move forward with urgency towards a paradigm shift to reduce humanitarian needs, to reduce dependency on humanitarian assistance, and to increase the impact of development assistance by working on several fronts.
How to reduce humanitarian needs, working on several fronts.
The first one is the primacy of political and diplomatic solution to end conflict.
The second one is tackling the underlying crisis, the underlying drivers of conflict and vulnerabilities, which I call the guardian knots, such as access to resources in the DRC, most conflict are related to land, access to land.
The issue of the exploitation of natural resources, the issue of illicit financial flows, and so on.
So by tackling underlying drivers of conflict, you can reduce humanitarian needs.
The third by enhancing efforts made in terms of prevention, in terms of anticipation, in terms of risk reduction, both for conflict and disasters.
But this focus on prevention cannot take it for granted in conflict affected countries because usually the approach is really to run after the crisis of the day.
And finally, through the implementation at scale of the humanitarian development piece Nexus.
Against this background as triple hated deputy SRG, resident coordinator, humanitarian coordinator and the DRC, I have promoted the following approach with the UN country team, government and national partners, and development partners.
First, a focus on impact and a more deliberate approach to providing policy advisory support with a focus on key transformation or public policies and focus on the underlying drivers of conflict.
But also on strengthening national systems.
The UN footprint in the DRC, as shown in a comprehensive capacity mapping we conducted when we developed our new cooperation framework two years ago, showed that it was essentially a humanitarian footprint and a project implementation footprint.
Through our new cooperation framework, we have the ambition to up our game in line with the UN comparative advantages by bringing specialized expertise, bringing specialized competencies, as well as global knowledge and comparative experiences in priority sectors upon request from government.
To help unlock the incredible potential of the DRC, to help unlock some of the blockages and to help unlock development funding.
Secondly, and as co chair of the Development Partners Coordination Forum, I have supported a better alignment between the UN and development partners and national priorities for greater impact.
In fragile and conflict affected countries, there can be a tendency by partners to bypass the state, which only reinforce its weaknesses.
So we have worked closely with the DRC government to rework and revitalize the aid management and coordination architecture and both government coordination mechanism and partners development mechanism are now largely aligned.
The government is also now setting up the political forum that was missing that will bring government and development partners.
The third topic we've been working on a lot is on the HDP nexus and durable solution.
We've pushed for two priorities.
First, to put government at the center and second to move at scale.
This had not been the case so far.
So under the leadership of provincial governors, we've supported the formulation of two provincial strategy in Italy and Tangania for durable solutions.
So this is provincial ownership.
And also, we assisted government to establish a national Nexus forum that has recently been launched that is being chaired by the Minister of Planning and the resident coordinator.
And this is bringing all relevant government ministries, provincial authorities, local actors, and all development peace and humanitarian actors, so government at the center to move at scale.
In this context, I want to say a word about the current Ebola outbreak in the DRC.
As RCHC, I have advocated for a nexus approach to the response to epidemics and outbreaks and to leave something behind like stronger national system and sustainable investment.
During the last Ebola outbreak of 2019, $1.2 billion were invested in the response and there is almost nothing to show for.
So it's very important to leave something behind through a development lens.
And finally, we have worked a lot on bringing closer together the UN and the international financial institution.
We went from good to great with a focus on policy alignment so that we can push reform, we can push policy change.
And by combining our respective comparative advantages with, for example, being able as UN to help the IFI unlock financing for prevention and resilience.
So these are some of the things we've been doing in the DRC over the past few years.
Thank you for your attention.
I thank the UN resident coordinator in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I now invite miss Ulri Richardson, UN resident coordinator in Libya to take the floor.
Mr.
Chair, Excellencies, dear colleagues, it's a pleasure to be here today and I look forward to the exchange following our interventions.
Allow me to provide a few reflections and three concrete examples from my role as double headed deputy SRG and resident coordinator in Libya.
First, tailoring support means starting from country realities, not institutional categories.
Libya, a remarkable country, is a country in protracted political transition, considerable fragmentation, and we divided institutions, an economy almost entirely dependent on oil, yet affected by persistent illicit flows.
Like many other countries, it does not fit any single category.
It is a development, humanitarian, peace building, economic governance, and migration challenge at once, often in the same place and at the same time and often addressed by the same national partners.
With the understanding of the interconnection between the challenges and with stronger anchoring in national and sub national realities, the UNCT in Libya, under my leadership is committed to developing integrated approaches that respond to immediate emergencies, while in parallel building medium to long term resilience and policy coherence.
Meaning being able to respond in the immediacy while not losing focus on the longer term.
At the heart of our efforts is our determination to ensure that UN support is configured around the specific combination of vulnerabilities, opportunities, and priorities the country face, aligned with its priorities.
Together with me and enabled by me as an RC, the UNCT is tailoring its support driven by national priorities rather than by institutional mandates or sectoral silus.
In complex settings, coordination is not an administrative function, but a development function, an enabling connecting function that drives delivery behind national priorities.
In a setting where challenges are interconnected, governments must engage humanitarian actors, development agencies, IFIs, and bilateral partners at once, often through the same overstretched institutions.
Our mission is to connect them.
How did we do this in Libya? I will give three concrete examples.
First, stronger cross pillar coherence and coordination, as well as coordination with international and national partners, obviously, integration between the UN country team and the UN, the political mission, and addressing drivers of instability, but at the same time, the driver of stability.
First, we saw the humanitarian reset as an opportunity to repurpose the humanitarian country team into an operational humanitarian development, humanitarian Development Peace advisory group for donor coordination, but also as a substantive platform for policy dialogue, driving coherence, integration and national partnerships.
In April this year, I launched an ambassadorial level development partners dialogue, which I co chair with the rotating member state.
The first meeting drew very strong engagement from embassies, IFIs, and UN entities and government.
Our priority now will be to ensure that these platforms evolve beyond strategic exchanges and information sharing mechanisms and become more implementation oriented and strategically useful coordination forums capable of supporting practical follow up, policy coherence and linkages between the technical development and political discussions.
The lesson is clear.
As resources tighten, coordination is what still guarantees a country's access to the full UN offer.
It is not an overhead.
It is what makes delivery possible and no actor can do it alone.
Number two, UN country team and UN mission integration.
One of the most important lessons from Libya is that complex challenges increasingly require integrated responses that bring together development, humanitarian, human rights, peace building, and political perspectives.
I am report that the integration between the UN political mission in Libya and the UN country team in Libya works, driven by strong joined up leadership and facilitated by the resident coordinator office and with a joint cooperation framework as our common anchor for strategic planning and implementation.
Intention is not only to strengthen analytical and policy capacities, but also to position the UN more effectively in accompanying and aligning the Libyan led processes and to concretely deliver what development can offer to stability and resilience.
The evidence is there where the UN is structured and supported to act as one, it delivers as one.
Number two, economic governance is increasingly becoming a driver of stability, but has been often a driver of instability.
Libya's experience demonstrate that economic governance challenges challenges are often at the heart of broader development governance and stability concerns.
I was given the task through Security Council Resolution 27 96 last year to set up an integrated economic unit to address the question on strengthening economic governance.
This brings together capacities from the UN mission, from the resident coordinator Office, from relevant UN entities such as UNDP and such as UNODC, as well as strengthening partnerships with IFIs in particular IMF, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank.
As a driver for overall stability and vice versa, economic governance requires joint analysis, shared engagement strategies, and coordinated support across multiple UN entities and partners.
We now work with national institutions such as the National Central Bank of Libya, such as the National Audit Bureau, the Attorney General, and other relevant actors to support dialogue on economic reform and accountability.
What is clear is that a modular presence of the United Nations teams on the ground is absolutely essential to be able to deepen partnerships and to remain relevant over time.
It means that one, you have a temporary need for specific capacities, but that capacity doesn't necessarily need to be based in the country for a longer period of time.
It really needs to be a very modular on demand expertise driven presence.
In closing, countries do not experience their challenges in silos, and neither should we.
Our host governments and you member states in this chamber, are not asking for separate humanitarian, development, political or economic responses.
You are asking and we are asking for integrated solutions.
Achieving this will be the measure of our collective success.
Thank you very much.
The resident coordinator in Livia.
I now invite Mr.
David McLaughlin Card, Regional Director for Asia Pacific of the United Nations Development Coordination Office.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair, Excellencies, colleagues.
Within the rubric of the UN 80 reset, the question we ask is, how can the UN development system mobilize the right mix of expertise, financing, operational support, and partnerships around national priorities quickly, coherently, and accountably? Across the Asia Pacific region, countries face increasingly overlapping risks and these don't have boundaries or borders, climate vulnerability, disaster exposure, debt and fiscal stress, demographic change, inequality displacement, food and energy insecurity, the digital transition and complex political or crisis dynamics.
These risks do not always align neatly with formal country classification.
Middle income countries may face vulnerability and implementation gaps.
Large and highly diverse countries may require highly specialized policy level support, and small island and multi country contexts may require a different mix of proximity, regional capacity, and operational flexibility.
The test of the regional architecture, therefore, is whether it makes resident coordinators and UN country teams more effective in delivering cooperation framework results in line with national priorities, particularly where countries face complex risks, constrained resources, and rising expectations for SDG acceleration.
So this framing keeps the focus on delivery rather than institutional structure and the regional architecture should be a mechanism for precision support, helping RCs and UNCTs access the right expertise at the right time, align capacities behind national priorities, reduce duplication, and strengthen the accountability for collective results.
A strong message is that regional architecture should not be another layer, but it should simplify access to the system, the knowledge hub, and the resources available to country teams.
Let me quickly address five key propositions.
First, tailoring regional support must be driven by country demand, the risk, and the implementation contexts.
Asia Pacific shows why this matters.
The region includes small island developing states, least developed countries, landlocked countries, middle income countries, higher income countries, and large and diverse complex countries.
All of these are facing challenges that transcend boundaries and formal categories, while they remain important, they don't fully capture the vulnerability, capacity, scale, or development demand that we need to address.
Secondly, regional architecture should simplify access to the UN system.
The test is whether it helps RCs and UN CTs access the right expertise quickly and aligned with their regional assets with the cooperation framework priorities and reduce that duplication, delivering more coherent support to host governments.
The regional architecture should make the system faster, lighter and more responsive, not create another bureaucratic layer.
Thirdly, the RC system is the hinge between national priorities, UNCT capacities, and regional assets and tailoring works where RCs can convene, prioritize, and align system wide support behind cooperation framework results.
The expertise on demand must therefore be operationally clear, predictably accessible, clear gateways, and allow rapid deployment mechanisms.
Fourthly, financing constraints are key to delivery.
Fiscal pressure is turning cooperation framework implementation into a prioritization challenge.
Without predictable and flexible financing, integrated planning will not translate into integrated delivery.
The region must support the resource mobilization, including with regional development banks.
Fifthly, regional capacity must complement, not replace country presence.
The aim is not to make the UN more distant, but to make the full breadth of UN expertise more accessible to countries while preserving proximity, trust, and political understanding.
This is the important part, connecting to South South cooperation and triangular cooperation and global best practices is where the region needs to be.
Let me quickly, Mr.
Chair, give a couple of examples of the work of the regional collaborative platform at the Asia Pacific region.
Firstly, it is aimed to be a knowledge hub to deliver expertise on demand.
We have an IBC issues based coalition on climate and energy transition that is meant to bring global best practices of green climate and renewable energy independence to the countries that need it.
It's especially relevant to the most vulnerable countries affected by climate change and in particular, the nations of the Pacific.
This is closely allied to the IBC on resilience, which helps government formulate disaster mitigation strategies, co chaired by ESGP and looking at such issues as sea level rise and mitigating and protecting agriculture across the region.
Last year, we stood up a new IBC on digital transformation, which is how to leverage artificial intelligence and knowledge transfer from the technical giants of our region to the developing world, leaving no one behind on the new technologies.
An advisory group on Blue Ocean economies has been stood up to provide and translate the promise of the Antigua and Barbuda action strategy and to promote development operations across the small island developing states.
A networking group on youth and aging from the PAC for the future, which best practices for youth engagement, job creation, linking AI technologies to the new economies, but also assisting governments to provide social safety nets and tailored to support to aging populations across the region.
Finally, this year, we're standing up a new networking group on transnational crime.
Um, in reaction to requests from multiple resident coordinators in different countries for more coherent policy support on such issues and transnational problems as illicit funds transfers, human trafficking, scam setters, et cetera, which are a huge drain on resources and an impact on SDG achievement across the region.
As these examples, if I may, tailored support at the regional level is not a static classification exercise, but it requires the UN development system to configure the right mix of country presence, regional expertise, policy advice, financing support, operational capacity, and partnerships around supporting national priorities and cooperation framework results.
The value of the regional architecture should therefore not be judged by whether it makes it should be judged by whether it makes support to countries faster, more coherent, more relevant, and ultimately more accountable.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair.
I thank the Regional Director for Asia Pacific, the UN Development Coordination Office.
I now invite Mr.
Simon Springt, UN Resident Coordinator in Barbados, and the Eastern Caribbean to take the floor.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair and very good morning.
It's a real honor to be here in the council today as we advance our discussions on the keyCPR and as we reflect how to further strengthen the UN development system in support of program countries.
I'd also like to say, it's really been heartening over the last three days to hear the full membership support to the resident coordinator system and we hope that we can continue to build on that.
At its core, the QCPR and the UN 80 are about delivery, including completing the unfinished business of the 2018 repositioning of the United Nations development system and translating its commitments into tangible results for people.
This is not a theoretical ambition.
Eastern Caribbean, where I live and work in support of seven member states and three overseas territories, really illustrates exactly what is at stake.
Small island developing states in our region face a specific and compounding set of realities, high exposure to climate change and external shocks, heavy debt burdens, limited institutional capacity, sensitivity to volatile global markets, and a geographic dispersion that increases both the cost and the complexity of coordination.
These are not marginal challenges.
They are structural and they demand the United Nations that is precisely designed for these contexts.
Experience from the Eastern Caribbean demonstrates that strong coordination capacity, supported by a distributed national presence is indispensable for effective delivery, for policy dialogue, and for building partnerships that sustain results over time.
The multi country Sustainable Development Cooperation framework for the English and Dutch speaking Caribbean is an example of what this looks like in practice.
Across 22 countries and territories, the multi Country Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework provides a single integrated framework that aligns the full United Nations system behind shared national and regional priorities, including those expressed in the Antiguon Barbuda agenda for SIDS.
In a context defined by small island states and high vulnerability, this coherence is not a luxury, it is essential.
It reflects precisely the direction of this reform, moving from fragmentation to integration and ensuring that cooperation frameworks function as the central strategic instrument guiding all UN development support.
In practice, this means countries can access shared policy support on common regional challenges, climate resilience, disaster risk financing, shock resistant social protection, while still tailoring interventions to their specific national circumstances.
Scale and specificity together.
However, this does not come without challenges.
The Cooperation framework's design architecture is sound, but its full potential hasn't yet been realized and does require a change in developing finance incentives from agencies and from member states to make this collective commitment work more effectively.
Arguably central to making this work is the United Nations resident coordinator.
In the Eastern Caribbean, as across all of our program countries, resident coordinators serve as conveners across the full development ecosystem, working alongside governments, United Nations entities, international financial institutions, regional organizations, and development partners chairing internal and external coordination structures that support government led responses to development and humanitarian challenges.
This convening role is what makes coherence real as it reduces collective fragmentation and duplication.
It mobilizes financing, in our case, and particularly for climate resilience, and it enables collective responses to share challenges that no single country or agency can address alone.
As an example, as we have just started on Monday, the 2026 Atlantic Hurricane season, I co chair the Caribbean Development Partners Disaster Management Group with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, which helps drive the Caribbean regional response mechanism in the event of a disaster.
UN 80 offers a genuine opportunity to strengthen this role further, ensuring that the UN delivers not as a collection of separate entities, but as part of one broader coherent system of development support.
But reform only succeeds when it's grounded in country realities.
For small island developing states and multi country contexts, that means three things tailored configurations that reflect the actual context, strong and sustained coordination capacity at the country level, resident coordinators offices that are fully resourced to meet the needs and expectations placed on them, and these expectations are only growing.
To meet these, we need predictable sustained funding, recognition that coordination is a system function, not a peripheral one, and continued active support from member states, both in New York and in capitals.
Without strengthened capacity of the resident coordinator, the ambition will suffer and remain a statement of intent.
Empowerment does not equate to gatekeeping, but drives coherence in coordination with the United Nations country team, including those non resident agencies, which we are increasingly viewing as networked and readily accessible rather than non resident.
I think how we define presence does matter.
The cooperation framework gives us a glimpse of what can be possible when the system is aligned, integrated, and genuinely driven by national priorities.
That is the standard that the QCPR and the UNAD set for us.
Reform only succeeds when it delivers more coherent, responsive, and timely support at country level, grounded in national priorities, focused on people and capable of deploying the right expertise at the right time.
We have the right framework, we have the right experience, and now we need the resolve and the resources to follow through.
Thank you.
I thank the UN resident coordinator for Barbados and Eastern Caribbean.
I will now open the floor to delegations wishing to participate in the interactive discussion.
Participants are invited to press the microphone button to indicate the request to intervene.
As previously stated, the limitations will be 3 minutes for statements on behalf of groups and 2 minutes for national statements.
For our interpreters, I kindly ask you to please deliver your statements at a normal speaking speed.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Mozambique.
Thank you, Vice Chair and thanks to the panelists for their insights.
The operational realities in Mozambique are multi layered and multidimensional.
Some are man made, others nature made, some are the result of structural constraints in domestic and others external shocks.
Whatever their origins, we don't have the luxury of addressing them in isolation.
Therefore, national ownership in addressing these challenges must be understood strategically, not as a collection of isolated sectoral requests, but as priorities agreed through the cooperation framework and national development strategies.
That's a Take, for instance, debt distress.
The UN country team must be able to support resource mobilization, debt management, climate financing, et cetera Here, the convening power of the RC is an asset.
On climate vulnerability is the same.
The tools exist and there are a proof of concept examples, including from the humanitarian field, as we saw recently in action in Mozambique.
So we must be able, upon request from the government to access the right expertise quickly with clear protocols, predictable financing, and a common catalog of expertise, including digital matching tools.
I thank you.
We than the distinguished representative of Mozambique.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Jamaica to be followed by Norway and Switzerland.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President.
Jamaica welcomes this important dialogue and I thank the distinguished panelists for their very insightful presentations.
Secretary-General report on the implementation of the QCPR underscores that no two development trajectories are alike.
This recognition is at the core of effectively delivering tailored support in countries in special situations.
Jamaica commends the UN development system on efforts to deliver context specific assistance across a range of across a range of country settings.
From the perspective of Jamaica, effective tailored support should reduce fragmentation in the development system and foster integrated policy support for countries.
It should improve access to predictable and flexible financing.
This is not only necessary for disaster recovery, but for investment in resilience, early warning systems, and adaptive social systems.
It should provide support for capacity development, including through the deployment of technical expertise from within the UN system to support SIDS where there is a need.
Simplifying processes is also very important.
Effective tailored support should utilize strong data and evidence to inform decisions about the support offered to SIDS.
There should be strong support for countries national development priorities and aspirations.
Cities in the Caribbean are situated in the second most disaster prone region in the world.
We often find ourselves trapped in a cycle of borrowing to finance disaster recovery efforts, which increase debt and limits fiscal space to invest in development.
Many of us in the region are classified as middle or high income countries due to the international system's reliance on GDP and GNI as measures of progress.
This significantly reduces our access to concessional finance and increase borrowing rates.
For us, better support starts with Can you press the micro again, please? Go ahead.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Vice President.
For us, better support starts with recognizing the interconnecting nature of climate vulnerability, debt constraints, and limited fiscal space.
Expanded access to concessional and affordable finance is critical.
The use of the multidimensional vulnerability index would allow the international system to have better appreciation of the challenges that cs and other climate vulnerable countries face regardless of income classification.
The use of innovative financing mechanisms such as debt for climate swaps, debt for nature swaps and debt pause clauses and loans also serve to support climate vulnerable countries.
Given the increased frequency and intensity of extreme climate related, climate change related weather events, support for investment in disaster risk reduction is of paramount importance and Jamaica stands as a prime example of the benefits of this.
Or use of prearranged financing instruments such as catastrophe bonds and catastrophe insurance facilitated the quick disbursement of recover funds following the passage of Hurricane Melissa last year.
Such funds would not have been readily available otherwise.
Finally, the international system can also support countries through reducing transaction costs, simplifying processes, and providing technical support where there is a need.
Thank you, Mr.
Vice President.
I thank the distinguished representatives of Jamaica.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Norway.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair Ann.
Thanks to the panel for very interesting presentations.
As we have said in earlier statements, we strongly support more coherent UN country teams that deliver, especially in complex settings.
We noted the criteria for the composition of the country teams in the QCPR report, but they are quite general.
I guess the challenge will be how to weight them up against each other and who shall decide.
We believe that the resident coordinator is essential for such process and of course, the needs and situations of the host countries as reflected in the cooperation framework.
I note some resistance from agencies on the role of the RCs.
This is a tension that needs to be solved and brought into a good path going forward.
This is not the time to start weakening the RCA system.
My question to the panel is this, who should, in your view, be involved in the process of composing the country teams? Where shall that discussion take place and what kind of time frames should one work with? Thank you.
I than the distinguished representative of Norway.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Switzerland.
Thank you, Chair and thank you to the panelists.
We would like to express our appreciation to the resident coordinators for their work, performing key functions in very challenging circumstances.
I would like to ask a question in regard to coordination resources in connection to UN 80 work package 13 on shared platform Initiative.
We welcome the measures proposed by Work package 13 as steps into the right direction, such as the standardized collocation of OCHA and RC offices, for example.
However, we are not sure that this is enough.
We think More should be undertaken to provide RCHCs with integrated analysis, guidance, and support, especially in fragile settings and crisis situations in order to perform the coordination role to its best, while of course, not jeopardizing humanitarian principles.
In this regard, what institutional measures at regional and central level would be helpful to be taken to strengthen integrated coordination support provided, especially by DCO and OCHA? Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Switzerland.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representatives of the United Kingdom.
Thank you, Vice President and thank you to the panelists for their valuable insights.
As with other panels, we really thank the RCs for their attendance.
It's really added crucial insight from the ground, thank you for taking the time.
I have three questions.
First, several panel members mentioned positive engagement with the IFIs at country level.
It's good to hear the success stories of where this has worked on the ground.
How can the UN and member states ensure that these and other success stories and lessons learned can be replicated in more locations, including through the UN 80 process? Second, the RC to the DRC is example of the high figures spent on the Ebola response, yet no support to the structures was very telling.
We very much support that development and sustainability, thank you, must be ensured in humanitarian response.
How can we use UN 80 and the humanitarian reset to ensure this? I'd also welcome the RC to Libya sharing a bit more detail on the lessons learned from the humanitarian reset as well as the UN country team and UN mission integration that you mentioned.
Finally, if RCs were to select one primary reform that member states should get behind, what would this be and what impact would it have on the ground? Thank you.
I thank the Distinguished representative of the United Kingdom.
We now give the floor to distinguished representative of the International Organization of Employers Civil Society.
Excellency, colleagues.
I'm speaking here on behalf of the private sector.
I'd like to focus on the issue of tailored architecture and support at the country level, which was discussed on the first panel.
The Pact for the future mentions partnering with the private sector more than 20 times.
Yet, how are we translating this commitment into meaningful collaboration at the country level? The International Organization of Employers represents 50 million companies in 150 different countries.
We have partnered with UNDCO and the Conrad Adner Stiftang to conduct dialogues and workshops and to develop a playbook or guide for resident coordinators and employers federations and chambers to support engagement in cooperative frameworks and VNRs.
The objective is to strengthen collaboration on priorities such as jobs, skills, infrastructure, digitalization, business, and human rights, amongst other things.
There is some progress in this collaboration, mainly in middle income countries, but much more remains to be done.
We must be more systematic in our approach and including the private sector and business, we remind you, is not a single sector.
SMEs drive employment and growth while multinational companies contribute investment, innovation, and expertise.
We strongly encourage that everyone work together closely with business associations, Federations, and chambers so that they can bring together large and small companies across the different sectors.
Employers remain the most trusted institutions by the Edelman Trust Barometer.
If we want to go forward on the 2030 agenda, let us work together in a structured collaboration with business representatives.
Thank you.
We thank the distinguished Representative of International Organization of employers.
We now give the floor to Distinguished Representative of Women's Environment and Development.
Thank you, panelists.
This is also in response to panel one.
My name is Veronica Brown.
I'm the coordinator of the women's major group, and here on behalf of the major groups and other stakeholder mechanism and a co convener for the Feminist cross Coalition working group on UN 80.
From the perspective of feminist movements working alongside communities in diverse country contexts, we welcome the focus on ensuring that the UN system is tailored to the realities, priorities, and needs of countries rather than applying one size fits all solutions.
As discussions on UN AD move forward, we highlight three principles.
First, national ownership must remain at the center.
Country configurations should be driven by country needs and priorities developed through inclusive dialogue with host governments, UN country teams, and relevant stakeholders and strive to deliver evidence based context specific policy recommendation.
Second, we should be honest about where coordination challenges already exist.
If the objective of UN AD is to improve coherence and reduce fragmentation, then we must also examine whether the current resident coordinator system is delivering on those objectives in practice.
In many contexts, UN entities continue to face overlapping processes, multiple coordination requirements, and unclear lines of accountability.
Before pursuing significant reductions in agency presence on the ground in the name of coordination, we should first assess how existing coordination mechanisms are functioning and where improvements can be made.
Third, expertise on demand must remain accessible, responsive, and grounded in country realities with considerations to the risk of prization by over reliance on consultants over staff positions and the disproportionate impact of this prization on women, including the risk of losing consistent specialized expertise on gender equality through this initiative.
UN AD presents an opportunity not to make the system smaller, but to make it more effective, more responsive, more capable of supporting countries in achieving their development priorities in the SDGs.
Thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of Women Environment and Development Organization.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Palau.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I'm happy to be taking the floor in our national capacity and just to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the panelists for their insightful comments.
I do want to take the opportunity of having a resident coordinator who is currently serving in a multi country office setting to provide maybe some questions and also some feedback as well in terms of the work that the MCOs are doing.
Over the last three days, we have been making a series of comments of the importance of how the UN AD proposals are important in how the multi country office settings our work, and we do believe that they are distinct and unique from other setups where most of the UN system is present in other larger countries and larger contexts where RCs largely covering just one country.
So we do want to seize the opportunity to perhaps ask a few questions specifically on the multi country office setting.
The first question would be is in terms of the number of the UN AT proposals, whether or not there has been an assessment by those resident coordinators that are covering multi country offices.
Palau is also one that's covered by a multi country office in Mcrnesia.
Whether or not there's a clear idea of how these proposed changes can enhance the RC's ability to coordinate across multiple UN country teams and deliver integrated support to program countries.
Then our second question would be specific to the country team configurations where for an MCO, the country team configurations are more regional in nature rather than a specific country context.
If you can share whether or not these reforms are designed in a way to take into account the multi country office configurations.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Palau.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the Association, Mana for Human Rights and Immigration.
Mr.
Chair, I take the floor on behalf of my organization and of the asset, I would like to emphasize that achieving the SEG requires the presence of effective, strong public institutions capable of transparently managing the resources.
The example of Yemen is a true test to the ability of the UN development system to adapt with the exceptional circumstances facing countries affected by prolonged conflict.
Yemen has been suffering for more than a decade from war, institutional collapse, and economic meltdown.
Millions of Yemes live in dire humanitarian and developmental circumstances in addition to the regional challenges, including poverty and the lack of food security.
We believe that the success of any UN developmental intervention in Yemen should be based on the principles of transparency, accountability, and with respect of institutions and national circumstances to serve equitably all citizens and to enhance trust between the people and the state.
Mr.
Chair, our discussions have highlighted the importance to have UN responses adapted to national priorities.
Yemen needs a special approach in this regard.
And we would like to mention that the recent constitutional developments in Yemen, including the vacuum arising from the death of the president in May 2026, require the need to support a clear legal and constitutional process that preserves the institutions of the state and prevents a further institutional collapse.
Constitutional stability is important in Yemen, and it is a cynic non for sustainable development and for lasting peace.
Thank you, Chair.
I thank the representative of the Association of Maona for Human Rights and Immigration.
I now invite the panelists to briefly respond to comments and questions from the delegation.
I give the floor if you're still online to Mr.
Bruno Lamquis, UN wrestling coordinator in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Are you still online, Mr.
Lamarquis? I am online.
Thank you very much.
Maybe on the question from Norway, I think we should decide who should be involved in the reconfiguration.
I think first form should follow function.
This process should be guided by the content and the priorities of the cooperation framework.
This is the star that should guide this conversation.
To agree on the what, to agree on the how and to agree then at the end on the who.
I think it's largely happening that way, but there is not yet as far as I know, a set methodology to have this objective process undertaken in an inclusive way.
So having a methodology would really help.
I think also what we did in Congo, having this capacity mapping, comprehensive capacity mapping is also very, very, to me, very good practice because it's an eye opener to see who is really on the ground doing what and are those activities, those staff working supporting the implementation of the cooperation framework.
I think the RC should be at the center of those discussions, but in a very inclusive, participatory manner with the entire UN family, resident, non resident and if needed, calling on regional and global offices of the agencies.
With consultation, it's important to consult with national partners and development partners.
On the question from the UK, I think there is partner countries who have a lot to gain from strong UN IFI collaboration.
It's really at the benefit.
But one practical suggestion I have based on my experience in the DRC, What really made a difference is a dedicated person dedicated capacity that was funded by PBDSO and there are not many in the world.
At some point she was alone nowad there are three in the world.
You have someone who speaks UN language, who speak IFI language, regional and global development bank, and we can make linkages between the two systems from a policy alignment perspective.
It's very key not to engage into those partnership.
The entrepreneur is not money.
It's not money.
If the UN goes to the IFIs to talk about money, it won't be a constructive conversation.
It's all about policy alignment.
How do we? How do we help countries move reforms forward? On the Ebola question, well, I think there is work to do within the UN, with all development partners.
What I said is obvious we should leave something behind when there is an outbreak with massive investment.
But the system as it is built, there will be a lot of funding poured into those crisis very fast, and the development funding either won't come or will come later.
So I think there is work to be done on the donor side, on the IFI side, on the UN and all of that should really be also led by the respective government leadership.
And if there is one reform to be pushed, I think RCs, we often talk about that.
The fact that the 2018, 2019 UN development system reform has not yet been pushed through the board of the agencies, especially the large operational agencies.
So when it comes to the mutual accountability framework, the role of the RC, the role of the cooperation framework, and so on.
There is work to do with agencies so that they fully embrace, they fully abide, and also to strengthen the position and the leadership and the authority of the resident coordinator.
Thank you, Mr.
Marquis, miss Richardson.
Thank you very much, dear delegates.
It's a really rich set of questions and I will not attempt to answer all of them.
I think Bruno just answered quite well the question from Norway.
Just to add to that, I think what absolutely should not be the guiding question or the guiding, let's say, principle is what already exists on the ground.
And so we have a tendency often to, of course, sometimes seek the easiest way out.
And that is definitely nothing that will help us to change in short and medium term.
So I think it's very needed to make sure that the principle is try and move away from the simplest way of going forward of repeating what is already there.
Now, just to say on Switzerland's question, and I think it actually speaks a lot to the need to have data interoperability, the importance of making sure that we don't operate with different datasets and also with different systems.
I think it goes a long way to also what we heard from the deadgs speakers from Mozambique, from Yemen, but also from Jamaica.
Because if we do that, we actually just deepen the divisions that are between the different dimensions that actually are not only multi layered, but actually they are interconnected and they are interdependent.
I've been RC, I think, I'm not sure if this is my fifth or my sixth RC assignment and I was an RC before the reform, during reform, and now after the reform.
I've seen that sometimes our systems First of all, I think that there is a lot happening on the ground that you might not be always listening here in New York, and I think that's why these exchanges are so valuable and also the exchanges that we've had throughout the years during the RC global retreats that we have at the end of the year.
So these are invaluable, in fact, to move sort of discussions forward.
But often at country level, there are ways of finding solutions, and these integrated solutions and which might not be sort of put to scale at many of in many countries.
But I think indeed, the cooperation at the country level between the country teams, the UN country teams, and the humanitarian country teams is absolutely essential.
And here again, the importance here is to strive to have the two talk at best with each other and to be integrated in many of its objectives, but also how the whole HDP cross pillar cooperation comes together.
So what was very helpful in Haiti.
I was in Haiti before coming to Libya was to have, of course, OCHA and the RC office co located.
Unfortunately, it's no longer the case when I left, but that was a very helpful thing.
Now, just on the specific, and I think also I want to highlight that in Haiti, what was important was the Chamber of ESC and the platform of EcoSok.
We have, for those of you who might be aware, there is an ad hoc advisory group in Haiti, which is an ad hoc group within the EcoSok.
And that was actually very helpful to me to be able as an RC, as a triple hat in Haiti, to actually be able to keep development at the center also of the conversation, to not be driven only by the humanitarian prerogative, but actually putting development out there as the solution.
A humanitarian response extremely needed at the time, but because it was lifesaving.
But, you know, it's not seen as it should not be a solution, right? So the Ecosof played a very important role, as did actually the regional collaborative platform because and this was particularly with the chair previous speaker, Jose Manuel Salasar was also very helpful in helping me convince many agencies, development agencies to actually stay in Haiti because we had a lot of development programs happening around the capital outside in the rural areas.
That was very important because if we would have abandoned that then it means that we would have only increased the country's vulnerabilities and would have also weakened our possibility to actually to help the country get back on its feet once violence was residing.
Unfortunately, there's still a lot of challenges obviously in Haiti.
Coming to the question also of the UK, how we work with the IFIs, I think Prune already responded.
We have a dedicated office here at headquarters that actually captures a lot of the lessons learned, the PBSO, the UN IFI team and they help us to capture some of those lessons learned and we asked to share with them.
But it is very essential and of course, the relationship becomes very different, whether you're in a country like Haiti who is a big borrower to these IFIs or in Libya, which is not a borrower at all.
But the fact is that there is a lot of expertise within the IFIs and that we can benefit from, but also vice versa.
Many of them, for example, in Libya, are not on the ground.
Right? So they benefit from our on the ground knowledge and our on the ground temperature taking on a daily basis.
That partnership is absolutely essential to actually again achieve that coherence that is so important, particularly when it comes to policy advice.
Policy advice is important in any country context, whether you're in a deep humanitarian crisis or where you're in a deep political transition, policy coherence will always be and is always essential.
Um, I think, if there is one reform, and I think someone, I think that the delegate from Norway mentioned that there is still some resistance against the RCs from some agencies.
I must say I've seen it because I was first in RC, as I mentioned before the reform.
I must say, yes, we don't have formal authority, and I think my previous colleagues my colleagues have talked to that.
But we have an earned authority.
We are useful, if we act with integrity, then we earn that authority.
I think we have to be strong development practitioners and we are.
I myself, I have 35 years experience.
We have a very credible track record that also gives us that authority.
I must say I see much less resistance.
In fact, I see a lot of understanding and I see a lot of wish, let's say, a lot of desire from agencies to use us better.
I just came from, we had a small strategic reflection among the heads of agencies, myself, who are basically based in Tripoli, and basically I told them, how can I be of help? How can I be more of help? They really want to use our function much more strategically for alignment, for coherence.
I think that that resistance is really, at least from my perspective, is certainly not as it was in the beginning before reform.
But if there is one reform that I think has to happen, of course, it's closing these loops.
There are a lot of unfinished business here.
But for me, it is the incentives across the board, incentives and accountability for agencies, agency reps, for donors.
I think there and also for RCs.
I think that is the number one reform I think that will actually make it a break it.
Thank you.
Thank you, miss Richard Sun.
I now give the floor to Mr.
McLckln Court.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Most of the questions were directed at resident coordinators, but myself, like Urika, have been five times resident coordinator.
Perhaps some regional comments, five quick points.
This the nexus between humanitarian development work needing to close and become more closely working together, particularly in disaster risk reduction, which was a point made by several.
I'm very pleased that as a Regional Director for Development Coordination Office, I get a seat at the table at the interagency Standing Committee with OCHA.
To talk about how we can work on these early recovery efforts after disasters.
Then I think that greatly facilitates the humanitarian development nexus.
There was a question about how we can ensure the right sizing and configuration of country teams.
I think the regional collaborative platform or the regional platform for integration to be has a big role in ensuring that the regional positioning of assets is right sized and correctly positioned to ensure that there's access to expertise.
I'm not advocating for opening any new offices, but the deployment of advisory services strategically into resident coordinators offices or in country teams can make a great difference in getting that expertise to host governments where it's needed in terms of policy support.
Thirdly, a very important point about private sector engagement.
I'm very pleased the Global Compact has a representative working in my office to ensure that there is greater dialogue and communication with the private sector through chambers of commerce at regional and national level.
Fourthly, on funding and resource mobilization, I think we would benefit from closer collaboration with regional financial architecture.
It's not perfect, but also a problem in our region is, of course, the lack of harmonization of regional presences, many of versus Bangkok, et cetera This point about colocation and coordination being inextricably intertwined, I think is a very important one, which is my last point.
Um, in that not many questions have come about business operations strategies and the need for operational efficiencies to continue to be advocated by member states as part of the reform so that the savings from operational efficiencies can be plowed back into development.
I think we need more discussion also at regional but also country level on business operations, harmonization, common back offices and common premises.
This would greatly, I think, enhance the efficiency and coherence of the UN development system.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
McLaughlin Guard.
Now, Mr.
Springer, Thank you very much.
I guess it leaves me to address the question raised by Palau, which I'm very grateful for.
Maybe by way of context because we always talk about multi country offices, but what does that actually mean in practice? I live in Barbados, but I support seven UN member states, three overseas territories, and in a single country setup, normally I would interact with all cabinet ministers, but across the Caribbean, this is about in excess of 160 ministers.
Trying to have that level of political engagement, to be able to really work with governments to design how best the UN can support their requirements.
What we have done, we've now outposted resident coordinator officer staff into each of the member state countries, which means we now have a full time presence, which of course comes at a cost, but we have a full time presence in those countries, being able to, as many member states have said, really build those important relationships that are really required to have a meaningful relationship to drive UN engagement.
Then within those countries, we have roughly 5-7 agencies and 20 to 20 staff in each of those countries.
It is a complicated structure and it gets even a bit more complicated because our cooperation framework covers 22 countries and territories, but is coordinated by five resident coordinators and six UN country teams.
So But as I said, the architecture is sound.
It is complicated, but I think we are finding ways to be able to use a relatively complicated architecture to really drive the UN system's performance based on what governments are asking us for.
As we've developed the new cooperation framework, which will be signed sometime this month, we've really taken all aspects of UN AD to note, trying to without presupposing member states decision, but we've really tried to future proof or future proof our cooperation framework for some of the eventualities of UNAD.
I think as we all know that cooperation frameworks, while they are a cycle, they can be opened and adjusted as requirements dictate.
I would like to mention just briefly on the private sector, I'm part of three private sector networks in the Caribbean.
We have the Arise Network, which focuses on disaster risk reduction.
We have the OCHA UNDP Network Connecting Business Initiative, which also focuses on disaster response, and we also have a growing UN Global compact, the Network Caribbean, which I'm also a board member on.
Another thing, we're through the Caribbean response mechanism, which is our disaster response mechanism.
We have a very similar setup to the cluster system, and I'm very pleased to say that we have the Caribbean private sector organization who leads one of those coordination structures.
And then finally, maybe to UK's comment on IFIs, the 15th of June, I'll be convening a meeting in Barbados on harnessing equity capital to drive food systems transformations, and we have four deal rooms, we're bringing in banks, et cetera, and we have four deal rooms, and those are being led by EIB, CAF, IDB, and the Caribbean Development Fund.
I think it shows a strong level of cooperation that is built on partnerships rather than simply on financing.
Thank you.
Let me take this opportunity to thank the panelists for the valuable insights and for all the delegations for their constructive inputs.
We have concluded our program of work this morning.
I would like to draw your participants attention to two side events taking place at 1:15 today.
The first title, why are pool funds and joint programs still at such low levels at the country level despite the global commitment.
That will take place in conference room 12 and it's organized by Dan Hammar Gerald Foundation, and the second title, The Future of Multilateraliism, Building the UN Development System for the post 2030 AR will take place at a 66 UN Plaza, and it's organized by the major group for Children and Youth.
I welcome interested participants to attend this discussion.
The council will reconvene at 3:00 P.M.
This afternoon at this chamber to continue and conclude this program of work.
The meeting is adjourned.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for that.