4th meeting - Executive Board of UNDP, UNFPA and UNOPS (Annual Session 2026)

Colleagues, good afternoon.
May I invite you to take your seats.
Cowboy.
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Cowboy.
Thank you, Kay.
Colleagues, I declare open the fourth meeting of the annual session 2026 of the Executive Board of UNDP, UNFPA, and UNPS.
We will now continue the joint segment with agenda item three, internal audit and investigation.
Under this item, the board will consider the reports of UNDP, UNFPA, and UN reports on internal audit and investigation activities in 2025, as well as the related management responses.
With me on the podium are miss Linda Maguire, Assistant Administrator and Director Bureau of Management Services of UNDP.
Mr.
Chris Taylor, Director of Office of Audit and Investigations, UNDP, Mr.
Andrew Saban, Deputy Executive Director for Management of UNFPA, Mr.
Moncf Grebe, Director Office of Audit and Investigation Services, UNFPA, Mr.
Carl Ludwig Sol, Chief Financial Officer of UNPS and Mr.
Abdul Den, Director of Internal Audit and Investigations Group for UNPS.
Joining us also via teleconference videoconference, are Mr.
Rakesh Nango, chair of the UNDP Audit and Evaluation Advisory Committee, miss Kumiko Matsua Muller, chair of the UNFPA Oversight Advisory Committee, and Mr.
Nawiro Mori, chair of the UNPs audit and Advisory Committee.
The representatives of the respective advisory committees will also briefly present the reports of their committees.
Just reminding that this item is scheduled to proceed until 3:45 P.M.
While every effort will be made to accommodate as many interventions as possible, delegations unable to take the floor may submit their statements to e statements.
Questions may also be shared with the Executive Board Secretariat, which will transmit them to the relevant entities.
With that, I now invite Mr.
Chris Taylor, Director of the Office of Audit and Investigations, UNDP, to introduce the UNDP report on internal audit and investigation activities in 2025.
Thank you, Mr.
President, Distinguished delegates.
It's my privilege to present the annual report of the Office of Audit Investigations.
Time is short today, so I'll be brief.
In 2025, the office continued to operate independently in accordance with International audit and investigations standards.
Based on the work carried out during the year, the office concluded that UNDP systems for governance, risk management and control was satisfactory with some improvement needed.
In short, UNDP controls remained resilient in the face of significant challenges.
This assessment was based on a wide body of audit and investigations work.
The office issued 99 audit reports and ten advisory notes, generating a total of 229 recommendations.
These reports covered approximately $2.3 billion of expenditure.
The office identified areas for improvement in the areas we most frequently reviewed, specifically project management, procurement, governance, and administrative services.
Manage remained committed to addressing identified issues.
By year end, 81% of audit recommendations had been implemented, indicating sustained follow through on audit findings.
The office experienced another year of record demand for investigation services.
We received 457 new cases and closed 462, demonstrating sustained productivity in a high volume environment.
In 2025, there was an increase in reporting of workplace misconduct issues, including harassment and abuse of authority.
This trend reflects emerging organizational risk and a growing willingness amongst personnel to report misconduct.
At the same time, financial irregularities accounted for a substantial share of cases, underscoring the need for continued vigilance in high risk operational areas.
The office substantiated 57 cases of misconduct, resulting in disciplinary action, contract termination, and vendor sanctions.
These outcomes reinforced the office's role in safeguarding resources and upholding accountability.
Finally, a few words on the future.
The fall in core contributions will impact OAI's budget from next year.
OAI is relocating 31 positions from New York to regional offices to position its people closer to the global network that it serves and to release annual savings of around $1 million.
This will be disruptive in the short term, but it will strengthen OAI's operating model in the future.
The office will continue to adapt its approach over the strategic period to provide relevant risk based oversight and to support UNDP in strengthening accountability, integrity, and performance across its global operations.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you, Mr.
Taylor, for your presentation.
I now invite miss Linda Maguire, Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau for Management Services, UNDP to present the management response.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Good afternoon, distinguished members of the Executive Board, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm pleased to deliver UNDP's management response to the 2025 Annual Report of the Office of Audit and Investigations, including the management note to the annual report of the Audit and Evaluation Advisory Committee.
Let me begin by thanking you for your engagement during the 21st of May informal session.
Several of the points I will touch on today respond directly to issues that were raised in that discussion.
I thank OAI for its report.
Its observations are taken seriously across the organization, and I thank the AEAC for the strategic advice it provides to the administrator.
2025 was a demanding year.
Core contributions declined sharply, creating one of the most difficult financial environments UNDP has faced in decades.
Despite this, UNDP delivered a record 4.9 billion while our systems of governance, risk management, and internal control were again rated satisfactory with some improvement needed.
Our recommendation implementation rate stood at 81% with no long outstanding observations at year end.
We received an unqualified audit opinion and procurement fraud continued to decline.
Taken together, these results reflect an oversight architecture that continues to function effectively during a period of significant organizational pressure.
On the question of recurring country office observations and whether management is adequately addressing underlying causes.
While these findings are recurring rather than systemic, management continues to strengthen controls, guidance, and oversight.
We also welcome OAIs shift towards risk based audit opinions aligned with the organization's enterprise risk framework.
In program and project management, where most observations are concentrated, we are strengthening controls and policy and embedding portfolio and risk based approaches, supported by automation in quantum, our ERP, and capacity building.
Targeted professionalization through PPM certification continues to reinforce monitoring discipline across country offices.
In procurement, the integrated quantum platform, revised thresholds, and automated controls, Continue to strengthen prevention and reduce fraud exposure, supported by continued investment in workforce capacity.
Governance related findings continue to reflect pressures on country office financial sustainability amid declining core funding.
Which management is addressing through budget discipline, workforce optimization, relocation, income generation, and targeted strategic investments.
UNDP's updated corporate accountability framework and strengthened AML CFT, screening further reinforce the broader control environment.
Regarding investigation caseload, timelines, and OAI resourcing, management views the increased level of reporting not as a control failure, but as growing confidence that concerns will be heard and acted upon, including through referrals for management action.
Resourcing, OAI's budget has remained broadly stable.
Safeguarding adequate and independent assurance capacity remains a priority for management and further detail is set out in our written management response.
Regarding risks associated with organizational restructuring, we are closely monitoring trends in abuse of authority and harassment complaints, treating each case on its merits and reinforcing prevention measures, survivor centered response mechanisms, and PSEAH awareness, including dedicated victim support.
Management notes with concern that OAI substantiated eight sexual misconduct cases in 2025 compared with three in 2024.
At the same time, stronger reporting may also reflect growing confidence that concerns will be acted upon.
Any substantiated case is taken seriously and management reaffirms its zero tolerance commitment.
Finally, we continue to value the AEAC's strategic advice, the committee's engagement on UNDP's preparatory work towards the statement on internal control over financial reporting represents a meaningful contribution to strengthening financial governance and accountability.
This work also aligns with implementation of the new strategic plan for 2026 2029, which management will continue to monitor closely in partnership with the AEAC.
Thank you for your attention.
We remain ready to respond to any questions and I hand back to the chair.
Thank you very much, miss McGuire, for your presentation.
I now invite Mr.
Moncef Grebe, Director Office of Audit and Investigation Services of UNFPA, to introduce the UNFPA report on internal audit and investigation activities in 2025.
Mr.
President, distinguished members of the executive board, colleagues, I am honored to present the annual report of the Office of Audit and Investigation Services, OAIS.
In 2025, we operated with independence and integrity under the guidance and strategic advice of the Oversight Advisory Committee and in full conformity with international professional standards, including the new global internal audit standards.
Based on the work performed in 2025, we issued an overall opinion of partially satisfactory with some improvement needed.
This assessment reflects an organization whose core systems are functioning while recognizing opportunities to further strengthen performance.
In 2025, OAIS achieved a record level of delivery, issuing 32 audit reports and six advisory reports, the highest annual output in the history of the office.
This builds on the strong performance achieved in 2024 and demonstrates our commitment to providing timely, risk based assurance and practical insights to management and to the executive office.
Our audits covered a total expense of $418 million.
Our audits reviewed critical business processes like humanitarian assistance, ICT governance, and identified recurring issues in governance, implementing partner oversight, program supplies management, and procurement compliance.
Most of these gaps and issues did not come from a lack of will or commitment.
They came from a lack of guidance, a lack of training, a lack of capacity, and that distinction matters because it tells us exactly where to focus.
Yet, our audits highlighted encouraging practices across UNFPA and the entire organization, including innovation in monitoring approaches, strong interagency collaboration and sound ICT governance.
Now, let me turn to our investigations.
We managed a massive caseload of 418 matters and closed 184 cases during the year, including every single case dating back to 2019 through 2021.
These milestones are testament to the professionalism of OAIS investigators and the ongoing efforts to improve investigative processes and ensure that allegations of wrongdoing are addressed promptly, effectively, and fairly.
Fraud and financial irregularities continue to represent the largest category of substantiated cases with an associated financial impact of approximately $2.9 million.
These figures reinforce the importance of preventive controls, fraud awareness, and a strong culture of integrity throughout the entire organization.
Most investigations initiated by OAIS were based on reports submitted by UNFPA personnel, demonstrating their trust in OAIS and our determination in building a speak up culture in UNFPA.
I am particularly proud of the progress made in adopting a victim centered approach in cases of sexual misconduct because how an institution treats those who come forward with concerns or who have experienced wrongdoing often at a time of great vulnerability is the true measure of its character.
I am also proud that my office led the development of a victim centered approach manual, which was adopted by the UN system to strengthen system wide coherence and guidance in this critical area.
Looking ahead, OIS will carry forward its strategy protecting integrity enabling results.
The strategy seeks to strengthen assurance advisory services, and a culture of improvement across UNFPA.
OIIS faces a budget reduction that will affect the delivery of its strategy in 2026 and beyond.
Investing in OIIS is critical.
And key because it will help strengthen accountability and strengthen UNFPA resources.
OAIS is collaborating closely with management to find solutions within UNFPAs overall budget.
In closing, I thank Executive Board, UNFPA senior leadership, and all staff.
I also would like to recognize the exceptional dedication of professionalism and resilience of OIST.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you, Mr.
Grebe, for your presentation.
I invite Mr.
Andrew Sabaton, Deputy Executive Director for Management, UNFPA, to present the management response.
Thank you, Mr.
President, Distinguished members of the executive board, colleagues.
UNFPA welcomes the 2025 annual report of the Office of Audit and Investigation Services and the report of the Oversight Advisory Committee.
We appreciate the professionalism and constructive engagement of both bodies, and we value their continued contribution to strengthening accountability, oversight, and organizational learning across UNFPA.
UNFPA takes note of the audit opinion that our governance, risk management and control processes remain partially satisfactory with some improvement needed.
At the same time, the report confirms that these processes are adequately designed and operating effectively and that the issues identified do not significantly affect the achievement of organizational objectives.
In 2025, UNFPA continued to strengthen its oversight performance.
Implementation of audit recommendations remains strong, reaching a 95% implementation rate for recommendations issued prior to 2025, despite a significant increase in the overall volume of those recommendations in recent years.
Through the Oversight Compliance monitoring committee chaired by the Deputy executive director, management continues to monitor implementation on a monthly basis with clear accountability across business units and regular engagement with senior management.
Management also continue to address recurring issues identified by OIIS, particularly in implementing partner management, program oversight, procurement, supply chain management, and financial controls.
Actions taken include strengthening Quantum plus our ERP, embedding enterprise risk management into program planning, updating policies and workflows, and reinforcing assurance and second line oversight mechanisms across regions and across headquarters, including through the establishment of regional controller units and strengthened financial oversight capacity.
Dedicated management discussions during the recent regional leadership meetings also continue to support closer follow up, peer learning, and accountability on recurring oversight issues across the regions.
We also welcome the significant progress made by OAIS in reducing the investigation backlog, including the closure of legacy cases and strengthening of its investigative capacity.
UNFPA remains firmly committed to a zero tolerance policy towards all forms of misconduct.
Finally, we appreciate the valuable guidance provided by the oversight Advisory Committee and remain committed to maintain a constructive dialogue as we continue strengthening governance, accountability, and internal controls across the organization.
We thank the board for its continued guidance and support.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Sabatan, for your presentation, and I now invite Mr.
Abdul Deng, Director of Internal Audit and Investigations Group, UNOPS to introduce the UNOPS report on internal audit and investigations activities in 2025.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair.
Danrich, I'm very pleased to confirm that in 2025, UNOPS maintained its independence.
We had no restriction in accessing data, information, and stakeholders.
We comply with the II standards and the CIA guidelines when it comes to investigation.
We achieved full completion 100% of our annual plan with additional information or additional activities.
Based on the work done, we issued an opinion of partially satisfactory, some improvement needed, meaning that units governance risk and control are stablished and functioning with some improvement needed.
Here I want to pause quickly and elaborate a little bit.
If you look at the corruption perception index in 2025 and you go down to the 25 bottom countries, UNOS operate in 21 of the 25 countries.
This shows the challenging context, high risk where UNOS operate, hence this ring.
Otherwise, you might lean to satisfactory.
I share with you the informal UNF strengths.
Today, I will share just one or two.
One is UNOFs agility and resilience.
When we go to the field, we witness UNOFs capacity to deliver in very difficult context, deliver project with impact.
On top of that, I want to highlight here the record performance in implementing our recommendation.
97% has been implemented.
Just one recommendation is pending.
This shows UNOFs willingness to improve and to adapt our recommendations.
Now moving to audit, we issued 76 report and 142 recommendations.
The budget was 72 report, and we went beyond our plan.
What's come from our audit, I share in details the issue we have found.
Systemic issue.
One is a deviation from the design protocol mandatory and strategic one is the absence of the mechanism or framework to manage crisis.
ENPs manage crisis well.
The problem is there is no structured framework that the organization can use across the board.
Moving to investigation, we receive 33% increase in our cases.
We close 133 investigation, a decrease of sexual exploitation by 10%, and 78% of our cases involve financial fraud.
What is important to know here is 70% of the sexual exploitation cases involve IPs implementing partners.
It's a problem.
Now, accountability, what come from our investigation? UNOPS sanction 100 vendors from our investigation.
UNOPS separate 17 people from our investigation, of which seven are senior leaders.
Going forward, what the organization could improve? One, market intelligence.
Our executive director said this morning, we are not resident, but we are ready to deploy.
We are good to deploy.
What is missing here is market intelligence.
Proactively before we go to a country, it would be good to do a minimum of market intelligence to avoid any challenges that might impact the implementation of our project.
Due diligence of our third parties.
I just said that we sanction 100 vendors, it means that there is a need to improve our third party due diligence.
In conclusion, Mr.
President, I would like here to thank my dedicated team.
I'm a very lucky director.
I have a very strong, dedicated and professional president team.
I would like to thank them here.
I'm thanking the Executive Board for your continuous support, the audit and advisory committee for the support and guidance, US senior leadership.
We are independent because the director set the tone.
It's important to mention it here.
And finally, I would like to thank the entire UNS personnel for their support.
Thank you.
I thank Mr.
Yang for his presentation.
I invite Mr.
Carl Ludvig Soul, Chief Financial Officer of UNOPS to present the management response.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair, distinguished members of the executive board, colleagues.
I am pleased to present UNPs management response to both the 2025 report of the Internal Audit and Investigations Group, IAIG and the report of the Audit Advisory Committee, AAC.
UNPs management extends its sincere appreciation to the IAIG for their dedicated support and contributions throughout 2025.
The group's comprehensive oversight and strategic guidance remain vital to safeguarding organizational integrity and driving operational excellence.
It is encouraging to note that the IAIG has once again confirmed its organizational independence free from interference.
Mr.
President, as noted by the Director of IAIG during our informal session, UNOPS continues to operate in exceptionally challenging environments.
The year 2025 was a testament to the resilience of our agile and cost effective fee for service model and the can do mindset of UNOPS personnel who work in some of the world's most challenging contexts.
In 2025, 64% of UNOPs 2.7 billion implementation services were conducted in countries in special or fragile situations.
In 2025, UNP management further strengthens its implementation of audit recommendation.
There was a commendable rise in the implementation rate from 96% in 2024 to 97% in 2025.
This underscores our dedication to reinforcing internal controls and driving operational excellence.
In addition, IAG's overall audit opinion on UNOP's governance, risk management, and control processes was partially satisfactory with some improvements needed.
This means that the issues identified do not significantly affect the achievement of UNOP's objectives.
Nevertheless, we remain committed to addressing the identified issues.
I will now provide example of key actions being taken, noting that a detailed formal response has been shared with distinguished members and also discussed in the informal session.
Regarding the restructuring of the Chief Information Security Officer's role, management has integrated the function into the Information Technology Group to centralize cybersecurity accountability.
To mitigate risks, the CISO function retains a direct escalation path to the deputy Executive Director and operates via dedicated budget.
UNPs management acknowledges and appreciates the strategic prioritization by IAIG regarding complaints of sexual misconduct, specifically noting the expedited timelines for such investigations.
We take this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to zero tolerance for sexual misconduct, harassment, abuse of authority, retaliation, and all other types of wrongdoing, including fraudulent and other proscribed practices.
Regarding the audit Advisory Committee, we extend our sincere gratitude to the six members of the committee for their high level independent council, which remains fundamental in refining UNOP's oversight and functional frameworks.
We specifically value the chair's proactive collaboration with the executive board and the wider network of UN advisory bodies.
Management acknowledge the committee's report and its timely emphasis on securing the sustainability of the self financing fee for service UNOP's business model.
And agrees that in the absence of core funding, establishing the executive director's ability to commit funding to multi year projects supporting the 2026 to 2029 strategic plan is critical.
In closing, Jun Ops management reiterates its commitment to working with both the IAIG and the AAC to develop and implement the action plans with the aim to integrate lessons learned for ongoing enhancement and accountability.
Thank you for your attention.
We remain ready to answer any questions.
I thank Mr.
Sul for the presentation.
Let's now turn to the respective audit Advisory Committees.
I will now invite Mr.
Rakesh Nanjer, chair of the UNDP Audit and Evaluation Advisory Committee to present the annual report of the UNDP Audit and Evaluation Advisory Committee for 2025, and he will be joining us remotely.
Rakesh, the floor is yours.
We're not hearing you at all.
Could we try that again, please, Rakesh? No.
Can you hear us? Amico, please speak.
May I can you hear me, Mr.
President? We can hear you now.
Thank you.
Please go ahead.
Perfect.
Thank you so much, Mr.
President.
Apologies for the slight delay on the mic.
Let me first present the broader overall context within which all of the oversight bodies and the UNDP itself is operating and then present to you and distinguished delegates the five key areas which I'd like to bring to your attention.
First, the broader overall context.
One, the big elephant in the room is obviously the funding challenges for UNDP, not necessarily UNDP alone, but pretty much many of the developing organizations today.
The core funding in UNDP continued to decline and the only benefit we had was non core replacing it.
However, the core funding can be leveraged at least seven times, and therefore, the benefits are much higher in the case of core funding.
If we're reading the tea leaves, the challenge does not seem to be going away anytime soon.
Second, UNDP underwent a major leadership transition, as you all know, last year.
During this time, the associate administrator held the Fort capably and there was a smooth transition.
Third, over last year, the UNDP also re examined its business model and strategic plans.
And finally, with the overall context, while the system of the RCs was still maturing, the UNAT was introduced providing other different changing challenges.
It is remarkable that the independent bodies continued to adapt to these challenging and changing circumstances.
Now, the key areas that I'd like to bring to your attention, first on financial governance.
I'm very pleased to report that UNDP and UNCDF received unqualified audits in the course of the year, and we all know that IPSS 47 and 48, which are the new accounting standards that have to be implemented from January of this year, UNDP has adopted these seamlessly, largely because of the proactive measures taken by the department headed by miss McGuire.
Third, within this financial governance context, we had also requested the UNDP management to issue the statement of internal controls.
Again, very pleased to report that the UNDP management has taken this seriously into consideration and has expedited the preparation of the statement, obviously offering further comfort to you as well as to the other stakeholders.
I'm also very pleased to see that this was taken proactively even before the UN Board of Auditors brought this to our attention.
Second broad area I'd like to cover is risk management.
The risk appetite framework was approved by the board last year, and I'm happy to report that implementation of that risk appetite statement is underway.
This obviously means that risk registers have been established and they are being appropriately populated based on the portfolio that's currently under implementation.
These things, as we know, take time to mature and it is too early to say how well the risk management system is working.
But from the current perspectives of AEAC, we see the maturity of this happening systematically and I'm comfortable with how this is proceeding.
Third, the area of audit and investigations which Mr.
Taylor presented.
There is also a couple of other things in addition to the indicators that Mr.
Taylor presented.
We see the performance indicators continually improving.
They are also taking serious internal reforms to look at improving the internal efficiency and effectiveness, as well as manage their declining budgets.
The Social and Environment Compliance Unit made further actions and have done an excellent report on benchmarking across other agencies, including MDPs.
This will hold us in good stead going forward.
Fourth, on the question of the ethics department, again, what we see is an excellent example of value for money.
The ethics department has introduced many new ideas, including ethics champions, and we look forward to their implementation of the anticipated data driven approaches, which will be proactive in providing strong bigger comfort to the overall bodies on the ethics function within the UNDP.
And last but not least, Mr.
President, the Independent Evaluation Department presented to you their new policy and are looking actively at how best the work program is adaptive and resilient to the areas where UNDP is looking for most.
IE, where is the shoe pinching and being proactive here would be helpful.
We are working or suggesting ideas to them and look forward to further implementation of their programs.
As a bottom line, Mr.
President, distinguished delegates, I'd like to say that AEAC is very comfortable with the system of governance and internal controls and risk management within the UNDP.
We believe the system is robust and working well and delivering appropriately towards all.
Thank you very much for your time.
I thank Mr.
Nango for his presentation.
I now invite miss Comico Matsuo Muller, chair of the UNFPA Oversight Advisory Committee to present the UNFPA annual report of the Oversight Advisory Committee for 2025.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Mr.
President, distinguished members of the Executive Board, Executive Director.
It is an honor to present the 2025 Annual Report of the Oversight Committee.
The committee is composed of five independent external members.
The committee confirms that it operated with full autonomy and enjoyed unrestricted access to all necessary information throughout the reporting period.
The year 2025 was pivotal, marked by the approval of the strategic plan 2026, 2029, and engagement on the UN 80 reform agenda.
As the UNFPA launched its internal reform, the OAC closely monitored the relocation of headquarters unit to Nairobi.
We commended management's disciplined risk mitigation approach regarding staff attrition while stressing the absolute importance of protecting vital oversight roles such as evaluation during these transitions.
The Office of Audit Investigation Services, or AIS, achieved record output, issuing more audits reports, and reducing lead times to 90 days.
However, audits revealed recurring weaknesses in country offices stemming from inadequate supervision.
We advised management to sharpen findings categorization to address root causes.
To this end, UNFBA began conducting thematic analysis to identify broader organizational drivers.
On investigations, OIS closed 138 cases, significantly reducing longstanding backlogs.
Financial irregularities and commodity diversion remain the primary risks across a pool of over 1,700 implementing partners.
Consequently, the OAC recommended shifting fraud policy ownership to OIOS to ensure sharper operational alignment.
Turning to ethics, the office achieved 100% compliance in financial disclosures and launched the Ethics Champions Network.
While we commend these efforts, challenges remain regarding training fatigue and risks from soft power misuse.
We are advised to continue preserving the independence of the ethics function alongside formal leadership endorsement of ethical values.
Regarding evaluation, the Independent Evaluation Office is successfully embedding its work into strategic planning.
As it pilots artificial intelligence approaches, the committee emphasized the necessity to human oversight of human oversight and ethical safeguards to maintain decentralized evaluation integrity.
The OEC remains attentive to the supply chain management transformation.
While progress is noted, external funding uncertainty and IT system constraints persist.
Implementation of board of auditors recommendations remains slower than expected in this area, and we have called for prioritizing high risk, long outstanding items to demonstrate quick wins, though we note good progress already this year in 2026.
Finally, the 8% decline in global actual expenditures incurred by implementing partners dropping from $477 million to $439 million was driven by a combination of macroeconomic funding pressures, severe conflicts, and deliberate internal oversight tightening to address audit weaknesses.
In conclusion, the OEC recognized UNFPA significant progress in imending enterprise risk management across the organization.
Moving into 2026, our oversight will prioritize the execution of the new strategic plan, supply chain management transformation, ICT governance, and cybersecurity, the UNAT reform agenda, implementing partner assurance, and the closure of board of auditors recommendations.
On behalf of the committee, I thank the executive director and her team for their continued transparency and unwavering commitment to robust oversight.
Thank you.
I thank miss Matsua Muller for her presentation and now invite Mr.
Naohiro Mori, chair of the UNOPs audit and Advisory Committee to present the UNPS Audit Advisory Committee annual report for 2025.
Mr.
President, distinguished representatives and members of the executive board, thank you for this opportunity to address you today.
On behalf of the audit Advisory Committee, I wish to convey a few key messages regarding our work and observations throughout 2025 as detailed in our annual report.
Throughout 2025, the committee executed its mandate to advise the executive director and the executive board on the functioning of oversight in UNOS.
The committee maintained full independence, supported by a dedicated Secretariat and budget, which allowed us to provide objective and independent advice throughout the year.
In 2025, I participated in the tenth annual meeting of the United Nations System Oversight Advisory Committee.
To deepen our understanding of UNPs operations in practice, I and members of the committee visited the UNOS offices in Thailand and Myanmar.
During the mission, the committee observed firsthand the organization's agility, the efficiency of its global shared service center, and the ability to enable sizable and cost effective implementation in very challenging operational contexts while maintaining a robust control environment.
Our work this past year was defined by a critical people, moving the organization from the stabilization phase of the comprehensive response plan to a forward looking perspective, preparing the strategic plan 2026, 2029, including areas for continued transformation.
The committee reviewed the 2024 report of the United Nations Board of Auditors and noted that the opinion on the financial statements remained unqualified.
Regarding internal oversight, the committee noted the overall audit opinion of the Internal Audit and investigations group as presented in its annual report of partly satisfactory with some improvement needed.
Indicating that systems are in place and functioning while requiring further enhancement.
In this context, the committee acknowledges management's continued efforts to address audit recommendations in a timely manner.
The committee notes the confirmation of the functions adequate resourcing, independence, and unhindered access to information and the executive board.
In relation to ethics, 2025 saw the launch of a new code of ethics and whistleblowing mechanism.
This leads me to my perhaps most critical message, which relates to the UNOP's financial sustainability and the management of reserves.
Mr.
President, a central theme of our report is the financial policies and procedures required for UNOS to remain a going concern.
The committee noted that actions for the comprehensive response plan are now technically complete.
However, as UNOPS commences implementation of the strategic plan 2026, 2029, it faces a unique financial paradox.
As a self financing fee for service entity, UNOPS has no core funding and no access to commercial credit to fund the multi year internal investments required to advance the strategic transformation commitments endorsed by this board.
The current net zero requirement, coupled with the continued suspension of the executive directors authority to utilize part of reserves in excess of the minimum to invest in the future capabilities, represents a significant barrier to long term sustainability.
The committee finds that for UNOS, as for any self financing organization, it is essential to utilize part of past surprises to build future capabilities.
Thus, advice to the executive board is to consider reinstating the executive director's authority to utilize excess reserves for internal investments in accordance with the provision of the UNPs financial regulations and rules.
This is not merely a technical request.
It is a fundamental requirement for the organization to pursue the strategic ambitions to scale up and speed up for impact set out in the strategic plan 2026, 2029.
In conclusion, as chair of the audit Advisory Committee, I am pleased to report that UNOS by 2025 demonstrates notable institutional maturity.
The committee has observed a strong commitment to transparency, a robust response to prior audit findings, and a clear vision for the future.
I am the committee remain available to meet with members of the executive board to discuss these observations or any other aspects of the AC annual report for 2025.
Thank you for the opportunity and the AAC perspective and advice to the executive board.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I thank Mr.
Maury for his presentation.
Colleagues, we have very limited time for this phase of the program.
I'm going to open the floor now for statements or questions, but I urge you to be very concise in your interventions.
We begin with the distinguished representative of Rwanda on behalf of the African group to be followed by Norway.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President, very good afternoon, everyone.
On behalf of the group members of the Executive Board, the African groups thanks the Office of the Audit and Investigation for their presentation of their annual reports, and we appreciate continued efforts to strengthen oversight, accountability, and institutional integrity within all the agencies.
Our focust will remain on those areas of the audit that we picked interest in.
We note of the overall audit opinion of the UNDP that governance, risk management, and control processes were assessed as satisfactory with some improvement needed.
While this is encouraging, the recurring nature of several findings suggest that need for stronger preventive and schematic approaches to address underlying weaknesses is needed.
The group noted that 229 new recommendations were issued during the reporting period, mainly in program and project management, procurement, governance, and finance, and administrative services.
We would greatly appreciate further clarification on the context to which these findings are recurring, whether certain operational contexts are more affected than others, and what measures are being taken to address the root causes in a sustainable manner.
In the same speech, we welcome the 81% implementation rate of audit recommendations.
However, the fact that nearly one fifth remain outstanding raises important questions regarding follow up and accountability, particularly for high risk recommendations.
The group encourages strongly for monitoring and for more regular reporting on overdue recommendations.
We also noted positively that the audit plan completion target reached 100%.
But at the same time, we remain concerned by the increase in the average time required to issue audit reports, which rose from to 105 days against the target of 75 days.
Clarification for the operational and resource related challenges contributing to these delays, as well as measures being taken to improve timelines will be greatly appreciated.
The group further noted the significant increase in investigation case loads with 457 cases opened in 2025, the highest number recorded to date.
While this may be or reflect improved reporting awareness mechanism, it may also point to continuing weaknesses in internal controls, compliance systems, and organizational culture.
We further noted we take note of the risk identified by OAI, including budget reductions, regionalization processes, and increasing operational demands.
The group stresses the importance of ensuring that oversight functions remain adequately resourced, independent, and effective, particularly in the program countries facing increasingly complex operational environments.
The African group again, encourages greater emphasis on preventive auditing, high risk detection, and capacity building to support country offices.
We encourage also encourage the responsible use of information, AI tools to enhance efficiency and data protection.
Finally, the group appreciates the important work of the Office of Audit Investigations and reiterate its support for continued efforts to strengthen transparency, accountability, and institutional effectiveness across all operations.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Rwanda and give the floor now to the distinguished representative of Norway.
Thank you, Mr.
President and thank you to all the presenters.
I delivered this statement on behalf of Belgium, Switzerland, France, Ireland, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Canada, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Australia, Luxembourg, and my own country, Norway.
We thank UNDP, UNFPA, and UNOPS for their continued efforts to strengthen internal controls, risk management, and accountability in their organizations.
We take note of the reports of the audit and investigation offices of UNDP, UFBA UNOPS, express our continued support for these functions and reiterate the importance of their full independence and direct access to the executive board.
We also expect the organizations to provide the internal audits and investigation offices with sufficient capacity so they can discharge their mandate effectively and efficiently.
Mr.
President, please allow us to highlight a few elements.
Firstly, we wish to emphasize the importance of independence in addition to capacity.
Across the reports, we see strong commitment to organizational independence, which is welcome.
But independence must also be matched by sufficient staffing expertise, and financing.
If caseloads increase while budgets and capacity tighten, this may also affect the delivery of the independent mandate.
Protecting these functions is therefore not optional.
It is a core part of managing institutional risk.
Secondly, we wish to stress the importance of effective case processing in investigations and management follow up of audit recommendations.
The reports show both high investigative activity and the continued need for timely implementation of audit recommendations.
This matters greatly.
Strong oversight depends not only on identifying weaknesses, but also on processing investigation cases of alleged wrongdoing efficiently, reducing backlogs and ensuring that findings lead to corrective action.
In a high risk environment, the ability to respond quickly and correctly is essential for maintaining donor trust and reducing exposure.
Thirdly, we underline that internal audits and investigation must be seen as tools for risk prevention, learning, and institutional improvement.
The common themes across the reports include recurring weaknesses in procurement, partner oversight, financial controls, and governance arrangements.
These are systemic issues that require sustained management attention.
Oversight is most valuable when it helps organizations not only address individual cases, but also identify patterns, strengthen controls, and prevent similar issues from recurring.
For us, the overall message is clear in times of increased risk and pressure, internal audits and investigation functions must be safeguarded as a critical line of defense.
Strong oversight is a precondition for accountability, sound risk management, and credible delivery.
I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Norway.
I give the floor now to the United States, followed by the Netherlands, and if you bear with me, we will close the list at that point.
United States.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair.
The United States welcomes the work of UNDP's and UN OPs respective audit and investigations bodies.
Their independent expertise is vital to the protection of the resources that member states and our publics entrust to the UN.
We note that the overall adequacy and effectiveness of corporate governance, risk management, and internal controls was evaluated as satisfactory with some improvement needed for UNDP and partially satisfactory, some improvement needed for UNPs.
We strongly support the expanding confidence, speak up culture, and robust whistleblower frameworks that had driven increased internal reporting across both organizations.
We welcome continued control improvements that prioritize proactive prevention, ensure secure reporting channels, and guarantee survivor centric responses to all sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment allegations.
On the financial side, fiscal discipline and resource protection must remain paramount.
UNDP has yet to recover the bulk of $548,627 lost to fraud last year, UNP saw its substantiated financial losses expand sharply to 5.3 million severely impacted by a single 4.4 construction misrepresentation case in Africa.
We expect unyielding and unyielding approach to fund recovery, contract termination, and vendor disbarment, and we request an update on what specific steps are being taken and timeline to recover these funds.
Across the organization's global operations, structural control gaps must be remediated immediately.
At UNDP, ten country offices and one corporate cybersecurity audit were evaluated as satisfactory or requiring major improvement.
For UNPS five internal audits and advisory reports received major improvement needed rating while three project financial audits received unqualified unsatisfactory ratings due to expenditure support gaps.
Unsatisfactory findings must be addressed immediately.
What steps are being taken to redress these findings and when will we receive updates? The United States expects UN system wide zero tolerance for waste fraud and misconduct.
We will continue to monitor these high priority recommendations closely and expect full implementation as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
I thank the United States.
I give the floor to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands aligns itself with the statement delivered by Norway and wishes to make the following remarks in a national capacity.
We commend the internal audit and investigation functions of UNDP, UNFPA and UNOPS for the work undertaken in 2025 as outlined in their respective reports.
The important oversight roles of these functions ultimately contribute to more effective governance, risk management, and control processes.
We therefore call on UNEP, UNFPA and UNPs to continue to implement outstanding audit recommendations.
Furthermore, we emphasize that adequate staffing and financing of these functions is key.
Could the audit offices elaborate on the effects of the current resource and capacity constraints? Specifically, what can these offices no longer do as a result of these constraints? And what options are UDP, UNFPA, and UNPS management considering to ensure that these offices are able to deliver audit, investigation, and advisory services in an independent and effective manner throughout the strategic plan period? Mr.
President, please allow us to make a few points based on the documentation provided in today's presentations.
With regard to OAI's annual reports, we appreciate OAI's transparency about its constraints, its risk based approach to both audits and investigations, and the clear prioritization of high risk and CAA cases, as well as the openness to engage with member states on performance indicators and timeliness.
In light of the growing caseload and the disruptions expected from relocation and budget reductions, what concrete safeguards are in place to ensure that high risk investigation cases related to CAA and fraud are not delayed or deprioritized.
And with regard to OAIS annual reports, we commend OAS for the results achieved in 2025, including the highest output of audit reports to date, a 97% implementation of the 2025 work plan, and the significant reduction of the backlog of cases.
The clear communication of OAS to the board, including through its closed briefings on recurrent issues and risks is much appreciated and allows us to conduct our oversight role more effectively.
One recurring issue identified in the report relates to the management of implementing partners, which we note that UNFPA is currently addressing.
When are the measures taken to improve this expected to yield the intended results? In other words, is the management and oversight of implementing partners likely to remain an overarching issue in next year's audit reports? Thank you.
I thank the representative of the ingdom of the Netherlands.
I invite the entity representatives and the chairs of the audit advisory committees to respond as appropriate.
Please keep your responses brief given the time available.
Leda.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the questions.
For anything we don't answer, we're happy to do so in writing, but just a few.
I'll try to group them together.
There were, I think, Rwanda and Norway on implementation rate.
So just to say that for UNDP, that 81% what accounts for it.
You know, the most outstanding recommendations are very recent, so they are within the normal timeline.
Of the 189 outstanding recommendations as of December 2025, 82% of them are under 12 months old.
So it's just to say that it's not as if they're growing, it's that we have a big chunk that we're working through, but they're very much in the normal timeline.
Of course, we want to implement them well and really think through how to improve.
Um, so on root causes, there are a couple of questions about that and also particularly weakness in program and project management procurement were mentioned, I think by Rwanda and the African statement as well.
So we are coordinating and looking at, you know, what are the root causes instead, you know, is it root cause analysis or is it improving reporting metrics? We do think that we're reaching the root causes, not just improving reporting because our finance recommendations are procurement and are implementing sort of national implementation um, figures have either improved or remained steady.
On PPM per se, 48 recommendations, 41% of country office findings.
This is a big group of recommendations.
We're taking actions on PPM certification, on standardized quality assurance, on integrated risk modules in quantum at project level.
These are just some examples.
Corrective measures also extend into management.
How we sit down you know, the Central Bureau of Management with each of the regional bureaus to go through in quarterly bureau dialogues, what is going well, what is not going well at bureau and at country office level.
Just another example.
Then just finally on adequate resourcing.
I mean, this is Norway, but not only this is obviously a concern all around, we have managed to protect OAIs budget and ethics, I should add in 2026, 2027 has not yet been concluded our budgeting process.
Um, but OAI indicated, I think planned relocations will hopefully free up some fiscal space there, maybe 4.5% or so of savings, and hopefully we'll be able to make do within that buffer.
Thank you.
Mr.
Taylor.
Thank you, everybody, for your questions and just more broadly for your support to OAO and to my colleagues in the integrity functions.
We do feel it and we do appreciate it.
I'm actually going to start just at the bottom quickly with the question from the Netherlands around the SEAH investigations because it's an area that we take extremely seriously in OAI.
As we go through relocation, there will be some disruption and it's fair to say that, but we are very conscious that we owe those people in particular on the high priority cases, high risk cases that come to us to make sure that those cases are not dropped.
And there's a number of steps that we have in place.
I mean, most important will be to make sure that as the team transition and relocate, we are either taking those same individuals with us.
They're very proficient, they're very strong at what they do.
But if we're not, we are forward planning to replace them like for like with people who are just as capable, so that we're maintaining that capacity.
We're also training some of our other investigators within the function on how to do SEAH investigations because they are a different discipline and they do require different types of skills.
They require a lot of emotional intelligence and so on actually to do them properly.
We're training others in the team so that we've got some additional resilience behind us.
Then the third layer will be that if necessary, we will bring in short term contingent investigators.
There's plenty of people in the market that want to work for UNDP and that we can draw on that have experience on SEH cases.
We are forward planning to try and minimize the amount of disruption that we get and that's the example on the SEAH side.
There are similar plans in place for other types of investigation as well within the function, but I just really wanted to focus on SEH because it is such an important area.
I think Linda has already spoken a little bit about the issue of recurrent issues, which was raised by colleagues from Rwanda.
I think in my mind, there's a difference between the recurrent issues that we identify in the annual report and systemic failures.
The way that we classify types of control issue in the report is quite high level.
For example, program and project issues.
Of course, UNDP has 3,000 plus different projects, and when we go to countries, we really look in detail at how effectively they're being managed.
I think if you look at anything in the complex environments that we work in long enough and hard enough, there will be issues coming up.
What we need to do in OAI to support the management team is to try and identify where they genuinely are areas where the same problem has arisen from one country office to the next.
We do that in different ways.
Linda mentioned the bureau briefings that we have.
We're also now experimenting with AI to see if we can more accurately identify where they genuinely are common threads.
This is flashing at me.
Can I answer one more question? Yes.
One more question, which is then just around recommendations and the recommendation rate.
Again, Linda mentioned that a bunch of those recommend Yeah.
There was one additional point that I wanted to make, which is the recommendation rate as a single KPI is quite a blunt measure because you can have a very high recommendation rate by, for example, making recommendations which are very compliance focused and very easy to fix.
What we're trying to do is we move towards a more risk based approach to audit.
What I mean by is expecting the audit team to go beyond a compliance failure and really engage with the management team to understand why there was a compliance issue in the first place, and then create a recommendation which addresses that root cause.
Often that root cause is more complex than there was an issue that you didn't do, you should do it.
It might have a underlying issue to do with training or capacity or maybe access to the right skills in the local market.
Some of those things take longer to fix.
That's why the recommendations, I think as we become more risk based, sometimes they will naturally take longer to implement.
It's important to track that, but it is also important, I think for us in OAI and we'll take this away to provide a bit more context around that rate is really telling us in terms of risk exposure for the UNDP.
There were other questions I will refer to my notes and come back to colleagues if necessary.
Thanks.
Thank you.
We turn now to Mr.
Nango briefly.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President.
I'd just like to compliment what both Linda and Chris mentioned.
First, in response to the chair from Norway, let me reassure you that the independent functions are completely independent from all aspects, not just structural, but also from financial and behavioral aspects.
And we have including with the other oversight bodies, never had issues with documentation, availability of those or the freedom to have discussions with staff and management.
This has been completely open and we have always seen a receptivity on the side of management, and for that, we are truly grateful.
On the financial independence, you did mention the improving or increasing caseload and the budgets which need to be concomitant.
We again had very open discussions with both Chris and the other oversight bodies, heads of the other oversight bodies to ensure that the resources, both financial and human, are available for them to conduct what work they have to.
We were convinced.
We had long discussions with them, including the relocation of staff that Linda mentioned, and had this not been the case, we would have certainly gone back to the administrator to have broader discussions on the financial independence side.
Last point, Mr.
President, on the longstanding recommendations that Linda responded to.
In our discussions with them, we've looked at both which ones are longstanding and more importantly, which one should be prioritized from a higher risk perspective.
Again, in discussions, we were comforted by the fact that management was targeting the implementation of the recommendations in an appropriate way and ensuring that the longstanding recommendations stay within targets.
Thank you again, Mr.
President.
Thank you.
We now turn to UN FBA, Mr.
Saboton.
Thank you, Mr.
President and race through three of the points really.
Firstly, I'm going to have a shout out for management here because we did hear that this was a record year in terms of the audit reports and audit recommendations.
In my intervention, this was a record year for management implementing the recommendations at 95%.
That was over 220 recommendations at record number and year.
I just want to give a shout out in the sense of if I go back four years, you know, on the trial, we had less than half that number of recommendations issued in a year and we had a lower implementation rate.
So very clear how seriously management takes the implementation of this.
I also want to put another perspective on the funding issue.
Obviously, we're all aware of the funding environment we're currently in at the moment.
I would just like to say that the OAIS budget for the next four years 43.8 million.
This is only marginally lower than the budget for the previous four years, which was 43.9 million.
That's less than 1 million.
That actually equates to a quarter of a percent reduction.
No other part of overview NFPA organization has got away with less cuts in this time.
It's very serious that management tries to sustain quite rightly, the financing for the independent audit services.
We can't compare the last year of a budget for the independent audit services with the first year of a new one because in UNFPAs rules, any unspent balance in any year of the four years in the independent services can be carried forward right away.
That can't happen in any other part of our organization where you would give up your institutional budget figure at the end of every year.
By default, that last year of a budget has everything unspent from the previous year, which is more than we can give at the beginning of the first year.
We have despite that, we are working hand in hand with colleagues to try and make more funding available wherever we can.
But I just want to put one figure out there because I know this comes up since I've joined UNFPA, that's in 2009.
The actual budget increase for the independent audit and evaluation services has had 155% increase.
Um, that's at a time when we've actually had a 57% increase in revenue.
Again, no other part of the organization has grown so materially in that period of time.
The final question, the final thing referred to, yes, I hope that we will not be returning year after year with the same questions on the implementing partners, some things we're trying to do.
My intervention, we mentioned we are actually creating and the board approved the budget last year to creation of regional controller units, which will have units, which will have people in the region monitoring the assurance activities of our implementing partners.
We are actually doing a more differentiated risk management process concentrating on where the risk is.
We are putting in risk at the point of program creation and evaluation and we're starting to look now given we're in increasingly humanitarian environments at a much larger Um, we want to come back to you with much more risk sharing models.
It is a riskier environment we're actually operating in at the moment, and we're required to take bigger risks.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Grebe.
Thank you very much and many thanks to the distinguished delegates.
I will focus my response probably to the main issues that have been highlighted.
To the distinguished delegate of Norway, I wish to reconfirm that our office is independent and this has also been re emphasized in our new charter that was approved by the executive director and was submitted to the executive board.
This is also a tribute to the office and the role that it plays within you and FPA.
The other aspect also related to a the implementation of the audit recommendations.
We have an excellent dialogue with management.
Management takes also all recommendations seriously.
I can tell you throughout the or in the last three years that I've been with the organization, I haven't seen any recommendation disagreed by management.
They take on board all recommendations and they start implementing them.
Many thanks to management.
Let me now turn to the distinguished delegate of the Netherlands on the budget issue and also on the implementing partners.
On the budget issue, unfortunately, yes, we had a budget reduction which had also some impact on our delivery as an office.
First of all, we had to reduce the number of consultants that were dealing with a certain number of investigation cases.
This also had an impact on the number of cases per investigator.
If I take the GIU standard, it calls for any investigator has to deal with 5-7 cases.
Now we have a standard in OIS, we have investigators dealing cases 15-20 cases, which is really hard for them.
We also had to cut the number of audit time on the field for audit missions, moving from three weeks to two weeks, also reducing the number of members in any audit mission.
It has also an impact.
But we have moved also and implement a certain number of stopgap measures, including prioritizing when we can remote audits, also using artificial intelligence and data to help us get the assurance that we need.
But I must say that those are the things we did, but the things that we will never do as an office is to pause an investigation.
Was an investigation related to sexual misconduct, that's a no go.
Every case we receive, every allegation we receive is promptly reviewed, assessed, and investigated.
I can give you all the assurances needed that this has never happened.
Also, we will always continue supporting the victims.
This has not stopped, we will continue supporting the victims, and also we will hold the perpetrators accountable.
This has not stopped.
On the implementing partners, I can also inform you that we are conducting a cross cutting audit on all implementing partners.
Why do we have these recurrent issues? They are these issues on implementing partners, they are highlighted in every country office audit.
What we did this year is we are conducting right now an audit of UNFPA implementing partners overall audit.
We are questioning the data.
We want the story behind the data.
We are not stopping at just using the data, but what is the behavior? Why do we have these issues? It turns out we have elements of policies, we have also elements of capacity in country offices, and there will be a certain number of recommendations that will help you and FPA strengthen its control over the selection, assessment, monitoring of all implementing partners.
I hope that the number of issues will decrease in the upcoming years, but we will have to come back to you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We now turn to UNP, starting with Mr.
Sola, Mr.
Dearing, and then Mr.
Maury.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
With respect to the questions raised by the distinguished delegates from Norway and Netherlands, it's absolutely important for us that management recognizes independence and funding of both audit and investigation functions.
UNP had a lot of reductions and restructuring in corporate functions management budget, but since 2022, we have not reduced any funding for the management expense.
On the interbendent functions, particularly on IAIG because this is a very, very high commitment on our side.
Just to be brief on the question with respect to the overall recognition of how important this function is, we have achieved a 97% implementation role and that's another increase in the implementation.
It's just a sign how serious we take this implementation of internal audit recommendations.
Respect of the statement made by the distinguished delegate of the USA, yes, we had losses in certain environments.
We take these very seriously because we are directed by our partners to work in these most special and fragile environments.
As the executive director said, this is where disproportionate size of our business is actually conducted, our projects are conducted.
That's why we have to introduce risk measures to work in these environments and we investigate these and address the findings on these projects and the recovery of funds and particularly the mitigation measures in order to avoid these losses in the future.
But it is very much essential to our business model to work and be able to work with fiduciary responsibility in those environments.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
I will respond to two questions.
One is related to our independence.
Since 2022, the board has been monitoring ISG independence through two aspects.
One, our functional independence.
Are we do we have unrestrict access to the board, to the audit committee? Do we have closed session? Yes, you have come from it.
The second aspect is our operational independence.
Through our charter, the process to approve our budget, we do not go through process to approve our budget.
We have specific process.
I deal strictly with the executive director.
And the next one is our annual work plan.
Our executive office and senior management has no say on our annual work plan.
They can give us input, but we decide what to do.
So if there is any interference in the future, and I think it will not happen, I'll report it to the right channel.
On budget and resources for your information, I have relocated 22% of the personnel last year of IIJ leading to a lot of savings that I'm using for two things.
One to add one more investigators and to invest on the actual intelligence without asking for more budget.
Just because I relocated the team, I save money for salary, I save money for travel costs, and I invest it in actual intelligence and recruiting one more person.
So that's what I do, and if there is any need in the future, I'll reassess it.
But for that, I want to tell you that we are embarking actual intelligence.
When you embark in actual intelligence, you need to pause, assess the maturity of the actual intelligence, and see how it impact the time you take to investigate, the time you take to audit, and then reassess the resources needed.
In the future, the way you work will not be the same, and then the resource needed will not be the same.
I need to be prudent, I need to be accountable of the financial budget I have, and reassess when needed and come back to the right channel before asking for additional resources.
On recovery, you have the experience on SVA, is very strong in monitoring the recovery, and our job as investigators is to investigate and to pass it on to our general counsel.
So for that, I will just pause here because the CFO has responded on recovery purposes.
Thank you.
Thank you to both Mr.
Sola and Mr.
Deng.
We now go to Mr.
Maury.
Thank you, Mr.
President, Distinguished representatives.
As you know that UNOS operates as a self financing fee for service entity.
So even though it is part of the UN agency, it actually behaves like a private industry organization.
In which that constant cost efficiency and then reducing the cost is the paramount activity.
However, as the audit committee, we protect the independence, budget, and activities of IAIG as Abdul has indicated.
This is very important to us as a function of the UNPs operating as a self financing fee for service entity.
So I can assure you that every meeting that we have with AAC, this is something that we discuss.
In terms of the implementation partner, and then there was a question about the construction project.
I UNOPS has recognized those issues, and then they have established the portfolio oversight committee, which actually looks at the systemic issues that could potentially impact the operations of the UNPS and we do pay attention from the AAC point of view on systemic issues, not the individual cases, but what actually breaks the organization and also individual significant cases such as construction projects.
Yes.
Those are very unique as ad, and then Kyle mentioned that we are operating in a very difficult and fragile context, so these things could actually happened.
But I can assure you from the AAC point of view that we are continuing to look at these, and then we will report back to the executive committee and respective distinct representative if you see anything that we need to report.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you, Mr.
Maury.
We're going to go back to miss Kamio Matsori Moller, chair of the oversight Advisory Committee of UNFPA to close us up.
Thank you very much for the floor.
I think I don't have much to add, but I would like to address the issue of IP management audits.
It is true that the implementation of the recommendation of OAIS has been really advancing a lot and especially now in 2026, it has been even more accelerated.
There were areas that we were concerned, for example, in the supply management, but huge progress has been made since then.
Regarding the IP management, I think the OAIS has been able to identify the key weaknesses area in the area of selection compliance, financial monitoring oversight, and the assur activities.
But it also concludes that there is a big issue on the capacity of the field in the country offices.
We have insisted that the oversight committee insisted that it is very important that the root cause of a the systemic issues are identified and addressed.
In this regard, the committee is quite pleased to see that OAIS included in its strategic plan for 2026, 2029, a number of cross country audits like Mof just mentioned.
Of course, this, root causes changes because the whole environment changes.
UPA operates in a number of countries with one conflict hit by one conflict after another and sometimes with health issues.
So, um, I do note that UNFPA is adapting the audit and also the addressing the findings in accordance with these risks that UNFPA is exposed.
In regard to IP management, I would like to inform that this year, the committee is meeting in the summer and we have one specific session dedicated to address the IP management issues, particularly with focus on assurance activities.
And we also have a joint session with oversight coordination office together with OAIS to specifically to address the cross country issues with focus on IP management.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I thank all of the representatives for their responses and the delegates for their questions and comments.
This concludes the consideration of Agenda item three, internal audit and investigation.
Please be informed that the board wish to inform the board that a draft decision under agenda item three, internal audit and investigation is under preparation and will be presented for the board's consideration later in the session.
We're going to now proceed to Agenda Item four on ethics, 30 seconds for a quick podium change, and then we will right back.
Let me see.
Thank you.
Colleagues, if you could retake your seats, we will now continue the joint segment with agenda item four on ethics.
Under this item, colleagues, we have resumed.
Under this item, the board will consider the reports of UNDP, UNFPA, and UNPS on the activities of their respective ethics offices in 2025, as well as the related management responses.
I'm very pleased to welcome back to the podium, miss Linda Maguire, Assistant Administrator and Director of Bureau for Management Services, UNDP, Mr.
Alexandra Maggi, Director Ethics Office UNDP.
Mr.
Sabaton remains with us.
I also welcome miss Miriam Bailey, ethics Advisor for UNFPA, miss Valerie Costa, Director of People and Culture Group UNPS and Mr.
Burke and Mago Fechil, Director of Ethics Office UNOPS.
I'm going to read verbatim from my notes which says, Please note that this item is scheduled to proceed until 4:30 P.M.
Please check your clocks.
While every effort will be made to accommodate as many interventions as possible, delegations unable to take the floor may submit their statements to e statements, and this is highly encouraged.
Questions may also be shared with the executive board Secretariat, which will transmit them to the relevant entities.
We're asking for your collaboration, your cooperation in being very tight, including from the podium in this segment.
Without further ado, I give the floor now to Mr.
Alexandra Maggi, Director of Ethics Office UNDP, to present the report on the activities of the UNDP Ethics Office in 2025.
Thank you, Mr.
President, for the opportunity to introduce this report.
The ethics Office activities help manage risk, strengthen organizational culture, and reinforce the integrity of UNDP's accountability system.
Allow me to highlight three points from the report.
First, the UNDP Ethics Office is delivering at scale across a large decentralized organization.
Second, the data demonstrates that we are having concrete impact.
Third, we are continuing to strengthen our efficiency and effectiveness through innovation and forward looking improvements.
On delivery at scale, the office supports more than 23,000 personnel across 130 offices as well as UNDP hosted entities.
In 2025, this included 143 awareness sessions, delivered and nearly 2000 financial disclosure files reviewed.
The office also continued to contribute its expertise beyond UNDP, including through support to the International Civil Service Commission's review of the standards of conduct.
In short, this report demonstrates that this is a well established function that is able to deliver activities at a significant scale.
On impact, the ethics offices responded to the board's invitation for stronger measurement as reflected in the report.
For example, following our activities in One Bureau, 96% of respondents reported improved awareness of ethical standards, and 82% reported greater confidence in using internal channels for advice, reporting, and protection against retaliation.
Training efforts in several offices also increase demand for confidential ethics advice, an important indicator of trust and a pathway to earlier risk identification and management.
On continuous improvement, the office is investing in approaches that increase the reach and strengthen the responsiveness.
The ethics Champion Network, for example, grew by 60%.
The office launched an AI enabled guidance tool that addressed more than 45,000 low risk queries, allowing the team to focus on the higher risk matters.
Further improvements are underway to support a more anticipatory ethics function.
Overall, the report presents a mature ethics function delivering at scale, showing measurable results and continuing to evolve to remain future ready.
This contributes to and enables the oversight and good governance to be expected from stewards of public funds.
I take this opportunity to thank my colleagues in the UNDP Ethics Office for their dedicated work, management for its support to this independent function, and the executive board for its continued engagement.
Mr.
President, this concludes my statement.
I am pleased to address any questions.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Maggie, for your presentation, and I give the floor to miss McGuire for the management response.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to deliver our management response to the annual report of the Ethics Office.
UNDP appreciates the ethics Office's work in strengthening ethics, accountability, and organizational integrity.
Management commends the office for its outreach in 2025 with the highest ever participation level in ethics learning activities.
And welcomes the continued expansion of ethics services, including increased demand for confidential ethics guidance.
Management recognizes the office's innovation in deploying AI enabled tools to handle routine low risk queries, allowing the team to focus on higher risk and individualized advice.
This is a meaningful efficiency gain in a function that operates at significant scale.
Management is pleased to note that the financial disclosure program achieved 100% compliance in UNDP, an important control that reflects the seriousness with which personnel approach their disclosure obligations.
Management welcomes a strengthened whistleblower protection framework reflected in the revised policy and recognizes the ethics O's role in supporting a safe reporting environment and strengthening institutional accountability through its work on protection against retaliation.
Management also values the ethics O's engagement in system wide ethics collaboration and supports its ongoing efforts to strengthen case management and analytics capacity through innovative tools.
Allow me to close by reaffirming management's commitment to a strong culture of ethics, integrity, and accountability across the organization and to an independent and well supported ethics office.
The constructive partnership is central to ensuring this behavior and principle decision making and accountability.
Thank you and back to you.
Thank you very much, miss McGuire, for your concise presentation.
I give the floor now to miss Marianne Bailey, ethics advisor, UN FBA, to present the report on the activities of the UNFPA Ethics Office in 2025.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Mr.
President, distinguished members of the executive board, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honor to present to you the report of the UNFPA Ethics Office activities for 2025.
While 2024 was a year of transition and strategic reorientation, 2025 has been a year of strengthening and expansion of the ethics office work to fulfill its mandate.
This included developing a new ethics office strategy established on four strategic pillars, fit for purpose hub for excellence, inclusive ethics, and accessible communication.
Our primary objective in 2025 was to move beyond policy and reach our global workforce directly.
We more than doubled participation in our training and outreach activities this year, reaching a total of 2514 personnel in 23 duty stations around the world.
In addition to virtual training sessions, I personally conducted three in person missions to the Asia Pacific, Arab States, and the Latin and Central America region, connecting directly with regional and country officers.
Further, to increase visibility and trust, we also created the ethics Champions Network to provide an in person reference for colleagues navigating ethical dilemmas.
To expand our virtual and in person live training, we launched several multimedia communication materials, such as bite sized interactive training, videos, brochures, and monthly newsletters, which are available in multiple languages.
Parallel to this awareness raising and outreach, we have remained steadfast in our compliance mandate.
For the financial disclosure Program, I'm proud to report 100% compliance among the 950 participants, identifying and resolving previously undisclosed conflicts of interest.
We're also seeing a sustained increase in proactive disclosures in 2026, showing a shift from reactive protection to proactive prevention.
In 2025, we continue to receive a higher number of PAR protection against retaliation requests, showing enhanced psychological safety and colleagues feeling empowered to submit complaints without fear of reprisal.
We recognize that 2025 was also a period of organizational restructuring, which increases the risk of workplace friction.
In response, the ethics office developed and disseminated practical guidelines to help staff identify and address workplace issues and promoted a bystander capacity.
We remain a primary advocate for the informal resolution of workplace conflicts to avoid escalation and prevent misconduct and provide staff with guidance and referrals to other resources.
Throughout this period, the ethics office continues to function with full independence and impartiality.
I'm happy to report that all of our recommendations to the executive director, including protective measures for whistleblowers, have been fully implemented.
Looking toward 2026, 2029, we have updated our long term strategy to align it with the UNFPA's broader goals.
2026 will be dedicated to ethical leadership, ensuring those in management positions set the highest tone at the top.
In closing, we are committed to collaborating with a broad range of stakeholders and to advise the executive office and to help organization achieve its mandate.
By doing so, we are safeguarding U NFPA's reputation and most importantly, UNFPAs mandate.
Thank you, Mr.
President, distinguished members of the executive board.
I look forward to your guidance and questions.
I thank miss Bailey for her presentation.
I give the floor now to Mr.
Saboton for the management response.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Excellencies, distinguished members and observers of the board colleagues.
It is a privilege to present the UNFPA management response to the 2025 Ethics Office report.
UNFPA remains steadfast in our commitment to a zero tolerance policy for wrongdoing and to fostering a culture of integrity.
We are greatly encouraged by the growing trust our staff place in the ethics office.
In 2025, requests for ethics advice rose to 703, reflecting a proactive workforce that seeks early guidance.
Furthermore, our protection against retaliation mechanism remains robust.
We fully implemented all recommendations for temporary protective measures this year, demonstrating our unwavering commitment to protecting whistleblowers and maintaining a safe, speak up culture.
UN FPA leadership fully supports the unique independent mandate of the Ethics Office, and to safeguard this, we exempted the office from our 2025 budget reduction measures and travel restrictions, ensuring that their vital work continues despite a challenging funding environment.
We achieved a 100% completion rate for our financial disclosure program among the designated staff and maintained a high 86.2% compliance rate for mandatory training.
Moreover, to modernize our outreach, we expanded our interactive digital modules and proudly piloted the ethics Champions Network to provide peer to peer ethical guidance directly to our field personnel.
Looking forward to 2026, we are excited to automate the financial disclosure platform to reduce manual workloads, and we welcome the new support and Connect tool for streamlined workplace conflict resolution.
Management will continue to work closely with the wider integrity group to ensure coordinated staff support.
We thank the ethics Office for their rigorous work and look forward to our continued collaboration.
Thank you.
I thank Mr.
Sabaton for his concise presentation.
And the Burkan Mango Vekl, Director Ethics Office UNPs to present the report on the activities of the UNOS Ethics Office in 2025.
Thank you, Mr.
President, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues.
I'm pleased to present the work of the Ethics Office as outlined in our annual report covering 2025.
Let me begin by confirming that throughout 2025, the Ethics office was free from undue interference in the execution of its mandate and remained fully compliant with the applicable JIU standards on operational independence.
Turning to our day to day operations, the Ethics Office's service delivery remained largely consistent with the previous year.
Allow me to highlight some key aspects of our work.
In 2025, the ethics Office launched an overhaul speak up and whistleblowing mechanism supported by the integrity portal, which serves as a one stop shop for reporting allegations of misconduct, for accessing information on UNS internal justice system, whistleblower processes, and related services.
Since its launch, the ethics Office has observed a substantive increase in the utilization rate for requests for protection against retaliation compared to the previous system.
Last year, the Ethics Office also launched UNPS' first code of ethics, which serves as the foundation for this new mechanism.
The code is based on the standards of conduct for the International Civil Service and applies to all UNOPS personnel, including non staff.
During 2025, the ethics Office also overhauled the previous speak up approach by introducing a more preventive framework, grounded in behavioral psychology and visualized through a new poster.
Under this framework, personnel are encouraged to engage in dialogue by speaking with each other, speaking out for UNOS values enshrined in the code, and speak up against misconduct.
To embed these reforms in day to day operations, the Ethics Office initiated a range of training and awareness raising activities in 2025, which continue to be a priority this year.
Among them are Uses first ethics dialogues, designed as a series of management led discussions reaching over 3,200 personnel last year and more than 310 sessions across UNops operations.
In November 2025, the ethics Office also launched the Global Ethics Starts with Me Training campaign aimed at contributing to broader culture transformation using scenario based learning on topics such as the Code of Ethics, the integrity Portal, and the Speaking with O and O framework.
With regard to whistleblower protection, the Ethics Office finalized its first standard operating procedures for the implementation of the Protection against retaliation policy, further professionalizing day to day operations.
In this context, during 2025, the ethics Office handled a total of 45 matters relating to protection against retaliation.
Of these, 31 were advisory matters, while 14 were categorized as formal cases.
Of these, nine formal cases were closed in 2025, six resulted in findings of no prima facie retaliation as they did not meet the standard required under the policy.
Three cases were referred for investigations, following which retaliation was not established in one case, while in two cases, retaliation was established by the ethics office.
For these recommendations were made to the executive director for appropriate corrective measures.
Referrals were also made to the General Council for consideration of possible disciplinary or other procedures.
Finally, in 2025, the Ethics Office also continued its partnership with the United Nations Secretariat Ethics Office in the implementation of its financial disclosure and conflict of interest program.
During the year a total of 1263 personnel, including non staff, were designated to file under the policy achieving a compliance rate of 99.9%.
All members of UNP senior management team were fully compliant with the program.
In closing, Excellency's distinguished delegates, I would like to thank you for your continued support of the work of the ethics Office and also of our independence.
I also want to thank my hardworking team who's watching right now for their hard work and dedication throughout this year.
Thank you, and back to you.
I thank Mr.
Mango Vekel for his presentation, and I give the floor now to miss Valerie Cocto, Director of People and Culture Group UNPS for the management response.
Thank you, Mr.
President, distinguished members of the executive board.
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of UNF management, I'm pleased to address the board on our response to the 2025 annual report of the Ethics Office.
I wish to thank my colleague Becka Manioveco and his team for their continued professionalism and for the quality of this year's report.
Management confirms that the ethics Office operated entirely free from interference in 2025 with full access to this board and the audit Advisory Committee.
We responded positively to nine critical recommendations during the year and reaffirm our commitment to that standard of engagement.
2025 was a year in which the structural reforms in this board has long supported became operational.
The integrity portal and the first UNIPS Code of Ethics went live in January 2025, completing the overhaul of the Speak Up and whistleblowing mechanism mandated under decision 2022 slash 24.
The standard operating procedures for the Protection against retaliation policy were finalized in November.
Management regards these as significant milestones while the real test lies in their use.
The data emerging from the first year of operation, growing portal traffic, increased number of cases submitted directly, higher participation in ethics training are early signals that personnel are beginning to engage with these mechanisms.
Management takes note of this with measured confidence, recognizing that awareness and trust must continue to be actively built.
On protection against retaliation, management accepts the ethics Office assessment of the increase in formal cases.
What matters to us is the quality of our response.
Where intrapive measures were recommended, we implemented them.
Where retaliation was ultimately established, corrective measures were approved and applied without delay.
This is the standard we hold ourselves to and we are clear that any erosion of FIT would undermine the credibility of the entire framework.
On financial disclosures, the 99.9% compliance rate and the reduction in identified conflicts of interest are encouraging.
Management sees in these figures evidence of gradual shift in how personnel understand and act on their obligations.
This commitment is especially important for cross cutting protection priorities such as prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.
Ethics Office works with PSCH and the navigation support function and workplace conduct colleagues reinforces a coherent, survivor centered, and people focused approach to reporting and ensuring all speak up channels linked to practical protection and remedial measures for those most vulnerable.
I see my time is almost Mr.
President, but I'll go to the last paragraph.
We will continue to respond to the ethics Office recommendations in a timely manner and to make ethics a living part of UN's culture.
I'm so sorry.
But thank you so much for wrapping up.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Costa, for that.
Colleagues, I now open the floor for statements or questions.
I implore you to be concise.
We have currently three delegations on the speaker's list.
If there are any others who wish to take the floor for very brief interventions, please indicate no, or I will close the list.
I give the floor to Tanisio speaking on behalf of the African group to be followed by Rwanda and the United States.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of African members of executive board, namely Chad Kovar Madagascar Mo Zabi, Nigeria, Rwanda Zamb, and my own country, Tunisia.
The group welcomes this opportunity to reflect on the importance of ethics within the work of UNDP, UNFPA and UNPS and we reaffirm our collective commitment to the principles and values that guide the UN system.
The group believes that strong ethical culture is fundamental to fostering trust between member states staff and wider public.
Ethics should not be understood solely as a matter of compliance, but rather as a guiding framework that informs leadership, decision making, and organizational conduct at all levels.
In this regard, several elements deserve particular attention.
First, accountability and transparency.
Remain indispensable to sound governance.
Second, the importance of promoting an inclusive and respectful workplace culture.
Third, the importance of maintaining strong independent and quarterly resourced ethic functions across the organizations.
Fourth, the importance of continued efforts to strengthen ethical training and awareness across all categories of persons.
The African group also wishes to highlight the close relationship between the ethics and the credibility of the multilateral system.
At a time when confidence in international institution is being tested, the conduct of organizations and their personal matters greatly.
Upholding ethical standards reinforces trust in the UN system as impartial, principled and reliable partner.
In this regard, the African group encourages continued efforts to strengthen internal justice systems, leadership, accountability, prevention of misconduct, and protection against sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment across all entities of the UN development system.
Conclude, Mr.
President, the African Group encourages enhanced cooperation among the ethics functions of UNDP, UNFPA, and Ops in order to promote coherence, exchange of best practices, and reinforce a common culture of integrity while fully respecting the distinct mandates and governance structure of each organization.
And thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Delegate of Tunisia and give the floor to the Distinguished Delegate of Rwanda and then the USA.
Thank you, Mr.
President, and we align ourselves with the statement delivered by Tunisia.
Just ins, I think the statistics, the numbers, the reports we read from all the agencies are really encouraging to see that there is trust.
That's what we see from the numbers we're seeing.
There is confidence in these eth offices, there is a even confidential approach to the ethics office.
This is incredibly very useful.
I think it speaks to one fact, the fact that as you grow, as you invest in, there is a confidence, and this is very important, like Tunisia mentioned for the credibility, accountability, but also effectiveness of our organization, but particularly the agencies now we speaking to.
We also like the fact that we spoke to protection of the whistleblowers, which is very, very important.
If that is not done, then even these statistics, you may see them backsliding.
I think there need to continue investing in all these success numbers.
But also the report again across all the agencies, we saw that where they highlight what needs to be done.
I think there is something that probably you need to do to follow up, and then probably in the future report that we're going to see, also see what has been done.
But also, more importantly, and lastly, I think what these numbers are suggesting is that there is a need to protect gains, there is a need to protect where you are, what these officers are doing, there's a need to scale up.
There's also need to be provided with resources.
We saw that you reached out to, I think, 143, you know, across 48 countries, that's very impressive.
We wish to see even more than that and even other agencies.
A very good job.
I think there's trust for the ethics office and for us, we really support the office because the importance of the ethics, the foundation of the very working of these agencies is extremely, very important.
If we go less, then even the investment we put in in terms of resources will not sit down.
But again, thank you very much.
We are very much appreciate that.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished Delegate of Rwanda.
I give the floor to the United States.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair.
The United States welcomes the work of the ethics offices.
While 100% compliance in financial disclosure is a baseline expectation, the sheer volume of ethics inquiries demonstrates both offices work is crucial.
Regarding technological modernization, we note the deployment by UNDP of the AI guidebot to manage low risk inputs.
As a question to the UNDP ethics Office, at what specific stage or risk threshold does this automated system hand over users to a human? We also note that UNIC has started to develop an AI tool to automate its outside activity screenings.
We support these digital tools to the extent that they streamline routine processing and reduce administrative overhead, but caution that adjudication and appeal rest within the ethics office personnel.
Finally, we reject the ethics Office's involvement in ideological culture markers and DEI driven strategies.
Our support is for an ethics function that ensures accountability.
Thank you.
Ethan Good Delegate of the United States.
We now invite the entity representatives to respond as appropriate.
I heard one question for UNDP.
I don't know if the authors feel like they need to comment on anything else.
That's good.
So then we give the floor to miss McGuire, UNDP or Alexandra Alexandro.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you to the delegations for those expressions of support and to the US for the question on our deployment of AI enabled tool.
We're very excited about it.
We did see this as a initiative that needed to be launched fully consistent with the frameworks that we've developed at UNDP for use of this technology.
We worked very closely with our colleagues in Linda McGuire's team in ITM, as well as our Chief Digital Officers team to make sure that we Were consistent with the safeguards and parameters for this type of technology and decided that for this initiative, we'd really use it just for the guidance queries that we received.
There's quite a few individuals who come to the ethics office for this role that we have in directing them to the most relevant resource or tool.
It's an important function, but it's one that can be primarily addressed through this technology.
Of course, we wove in an escalation procedure, and we're continuously monitoring the tool to see what feedback we get from it, to make sure that we're keeping the human in the loop is appropriate.
Thank you.
Great.
I thank the delegates for the questions and question and comments, and I thank the representative for their responses.
This concludes the consideration of Agenda Item four on ethics.
I would like to inform the inform the board that a draft decision under agenda item four, ethics, is under preparation and will be presented for the board's consideration later in the session.
Thank you very much.
We will now take another 30 seconds for a quick podium change before we move on to agenda item five on Protection against sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Battery.
It? Yes.
Yes.
Colleagues, we are ready to resume.
So we will now continue the joint segment with agenda item five, Protection against sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment.
Under this item, the Board will consider updates from UNDP, UNFPA, and UNOS on efforts to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment.
We have back remaining on the podium, miss McGuire, Mr.
Sabotan, and miss Costa.
This item is scheduled to proceed until 515.
We have made up a little bit of time, but we need to keep that pace going, please.
Last segment was excellent.
Let's try and match that with this one.
So while we will make every effort to take as many interventions as possible, delegations unable to take the floor may submit their statements to e statements and questions, of course, may also be shared with the executive board Secretariat.
First, let me give the floor to miss McGuire to deliver remarks on behalf of UNDP.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Good afternoon again, distinguished delegates, colleagues from UNFPA and UNPS.
I am pleased to provide an update on UNDP's efforts to prevent and address sexual harassment and sexual exploitation and abuse PSEAH, including key results achieved in 2025 as outlined in our information note.
I will also reflect on issues raised during last week's very helpful informal discussions and highlight UNDP's priorities going forward.
In 2025, we intensified outreach and training, reaching more than 6,700 personnel in 169 workshops.
Following training, participants' confidence in reporting sexual misconduct increased by 24%.
This outreach also drove demand for guidance and support with more than 1,000 requests received in 2025.
Since 2024, we have reached 15,000 personnel and will continue to prioritize this critical prevention work.
Sustained funding remains essential to driving meaningful change as highlighted by the Joint Inspection Unit in its recent review of sexual exploitation and abuse.
Across the UN system, funding cuts are already affecting PSEAH efforts, including victim support services at country level.
UNDP continues to invest in PSEAH notwithstanding this difficult climate, including recruiting a new victim support officer in 2025 in line with our victim centered approach.
However, continued declines in core funding will ultimately impact on our capacity to deliver.
Building trust in the internal justice system remains critical as victims will only come forward if they believe the process is credible.
Our dedicated sexual misconduct investigators continue to prioritize SEAH cases.
In 2025, we placed 31 individuals in clear check up from 25 in 2024.
We expanded our misconduct disclosure scheme pilot to ten countries.
And continued screening all personnel through Clear Check to help prevent the rehiring of individuals with a history of sexual misconduct.
We remain actively engaged in interagency processes at all levels as collaboration is often the most effective way to deliver services such as victim support, particularly at a time of funding constraints.
We have made important progress in three critical but challenging areas, engagement with implementing partners, strengthening victim support, and identifying and managing SH and SEA risks across our operations and programming.
These are all high priorities in our corporate strategy and action plan.
Going forward, we will continue to embed PSEAH across UNDP, ensuring that prevention, protection, accountability, and response remain integral to our governance, operations, and culture, underpinned by strong and active leadership and continuous learning.
Thank you for your attention.
I look forward to the discussion.
Back to you.
I thank miss McGuire for her presentation and give the floor now to Mr.
Sabato.
Mr.
President, distinguished members of the Executive Board, observers, colleagues, I'm pleased to provide an update on you and FDA's unwavering commitment to protection from sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment.
Over the past year, we have translated this commitment to strategic and intentional action, completing our first strategy and finalizing its next iteration.
Our approach remains evidence informed and impact driven.
We have operationalized a new impact focused M&E framework and a digital dashboard to ensure actions are driven by data and analysis.
Our efforts have been bolstered by successful resource mobilization, including securing two staff secs, as well as a 1.5 million grant for an interagency SEH prevention toolkit and knowledge hub.
Protection from sexual misconduct is now formally embedded in our strategic plan and emergency response procedures, reflecting a deep integration into our organizational culture.
In 2025, we strengthened survivor center support and saw a significant increase in implementing partners rated at full PSEA capacity and across our country offices.
Utilization of the sexual misconduct support focal point rose by nearly 63% compared to the same reporting period last year.
We also addressed investigative timeliness with cases completed on average in under four months.
By elevating GBV program is critical to our PSEAH architecture, we have enhanced sexual misconduct response prevention and interagency coordination.
However, we remain clear eyed about persistent challenges.
Global disruptions and funding cuts have scaled back sexual misconduct focused programming and have reduced dedicated staffing.
In many contexts, structured interagency coordination has weakened, requiring us to merge efforts with GBV and accountability to affected population workstreams.
We also face ongoing resistance to reporting across the aid sector.
Fear of retaliation, loss of assistance or job insecurity have impacted personnel and communities willingness to come forward and there remains a deep concern across both groups that reporting will not lead to meaningful action.
These challenges offer vital lessons.
Protecting personnel and the people we serve requires a shift from box checking to demonstrable impact.
We must leverage innovative prevention methods, strengthen the survivor support ecosystem, and ensure that PSEAH systems are sufficiently resourced.
We are building proactive measures and accountability for sexual misconduct into UN FPA's architecture as core to our mandate.
Our strategic direction for 2026 focuses on transformative change.
We are pivoting from reaction to pro action, emphasizing meaningful prevention, enhancing reporting enablers, and providing technical support to high risk hotspots.
We will continue to execute high impact strategic partnerships using our expertise in GBV and gender equality to drive collective action.
Our goal is system wide accountability that extends far beyond awareness, raising or simply responding to reported incidents.
Our commitment to personnel and the people we serve is absolute.
We look forward to your continued support as we work to ensure UN FDA remains a safe, protective, and accountable organization for all.
Thank you.
I thank Mr.
Sabaton and I now give the floor to miss Cocto on behalf of UNOS.
Thank you, Mr.
President, distinguished members of the executive board and colleagues.
It is my pleasure to address you on our state first commitment to the prevention of sexual exploitation abuse and harassment PSEAH and to report on the substantive progress achieved during 2025, the challenges that persist, and the strategic priorities guiding our efforts moving forward.
UNS maintains an unwavering resolve to protect both our personnel and the communities we serve.
This commitment extends beyond a mere compliance obligation.
It is fundamental to our mandate, our institutional credibility and the trust reposed in us by partners and affected populations alike.
Throughout 2025, we undertook a deliberate transition from raising awareness towards achieving strategic and operational impact.
We moved from policy commitments and training completion to measurable advancements in organizational systems, behavioral standards, and accountability.
Such progress has been predicated upon sustained engagement across all levels of the organization.
Our PSCH focal points at the regional and country levels have been instrumental in this endeavor.
Serving as technical advisors and catalysts for institutional change.
Through their dedicated efforts supported by headquarter functions, we continue to strengthen the foundations of a system increasingly capable of effective prevention, early detection, and victim centered response.
The four strategic achievements that stand out in 2025.
First, through a working group co chaired with the UNDP, we developed the first ever minimum standards for commercial partners now being embedded into our contracts.
Secondly, we expanded implementing partner assessments, 81% of partners we assessed, moving us towards active capacity building and follow up monitoring, including piloting a new methodology to evaluate the quality of completed assessments.
Third, prevention of rehiring perpetrators.
The misconduct disclosure scheme is now fully integrated into all our recruitment processes, complementing the comprehensive application of care check across all contract modalities.
Fourth, leadership engagement has transition towards proactive prevention.
Environments where senior senior leaders consistently model expected behaviors and facilitate reporting, we observe increased reporting rates, more robust team cultures, and safer environments for open dialogue.
Notwithstanding this progress, I wish to address several persistent challenges.
Reduction in global funding, particularly for gender based violence services are exacerbating the gap between reporting and survivor support.
The resulting lack of essential services risk eroding trust in the system, particularly in regions where the need is most acute.
Our focal points are stretched, oftentimes one person carrying PSEA duties for an entire country or region alongside a full time role.
Sustainability risk is real and we are actively advocating for change on this.
No single agency can close these gaps alone.
Our joint work with UNDP and UNFPA, the shared assessments, joint training, coordinated policy updates is more critical now than ever, and we are proud of what we've built together.
Our 2026 agenda focuses on consolidating gains while addressing structural issues and further cultivating a speak up culture.
We must remain vigilant and avoid complacency, addressing specific structural priorities.
Enforceable standards for commercial partners, commercial partners tool kits developed with our supply chain network will establish PSCH requirements that are contractual.
Rolling out role specific training such as bystander intervention and an updated leadership induction on PSCH, emphasizing scenario based learning tailored to various geographical contexts, and structural support for our PSCH support, and strengthening trust in reporting, acknowledging that the under reporting of allegations remains a challenge that hinders our progress.
Furthermore, we remain dedicated to the full implementation of the joint Inspection unit recommendations to ensure alignment with system wide standards.
The challenge before us is one of culture as much as systems.
Policies, training, and procedures are necessary but not sufficient alone.
Lasting change requires an organizational culture where prevention is proactive, reporting is safe and accountability is consistent.
UNPS remains fully committed to this transformation.
We will continue to learn, adapt, and contribute to collective UN efforts to eliminate sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I return the floor for any questions from distinguished members.
I thank miss Costa for her presentation.
I'm now going to open the floor.
I have four speakers on the list.
I'm going to invite any other who wishes to take the floor for a very short intervention to indicate so now.
Otherwise, we will go ahead and close the list.
We have Nigeria to be followed by the United Kingdom, who will both speak on behalf of groups, followed by Sweden and the United States.
Nigeria, you have the floor.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the African members of the executive board, namely Chad, Cor devoir, Madagascar, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tunisia, Zambia, and Nigeria.
The African members of the Executive Board thank the administrators and executive heads of UNDP, UNFPA, and UNPS for their joint update on protection against sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment.
The African members of the executive board unequivocally condemn all forms of sexual exploitation, abuse, and sexual harassment.
These are not merely procedural failures.
They are profound violations of human dignity and a betrayal of the trust that communities, beneficiaries, and member states place in this organization.
We cannot speak of development, humanitarian action, or peace building sorry, while those entrusted with delivering them harm the very people they are meant to serve.
We acknowledge the steps taken by UNDP, UN FDA and UNOPS to strengthen safeguarding systems.
We recognize that this work is neither simple nor complete.
Reinforcing reporting mechanisms, deepening staff accountability, and building genuine investigative capacity requires sustained political will.
Not just at headquarters, but at every level where these organizations operate.
The African group reaffirms its support for a victim and survivor centered approach.
Policies and procedures matter little if those who have suffered cannot access them, do not trust them, or fear that coming forward will cost them more than staying silent.
Accessible reporting channels, credible protection against retaliation, confidentiality, and timely support services are not optional features.
They are the floor.
Mr.
President, Progress has been made across the United Nations system, and we acknowledge it.
But progress is not the same as adequacy.
Prevention remains our most, sorry, our most powerful tool, and it demands more than training, models, and awareness campaigns.
It requires a genuine shift in organizational culture, one in which leadership models and standards it expects field realities are taken as seriously as boardroom commitments.
Those in positions of power understand that accountability applies to them as much as to anyone else.
We also welcome the strengthening of interagency screening mechanisms to prevent individuals who have committed misconduct from simply moving between United Nations organizations.
This is a basic safeguard and its full implementation is long overdue.
The Africa members of the executive board further underscore the importance of transparency with member states.
Regular honest reporting on allegations, investigations, outcomes, and institutional reforms is not a bureaucratic exercise.
It is the basis for extending or withholding confidence in these safeguarding frameworks.
We expect this reporting to continue and deepen.
Mr.
President, Africa hosts a significant share of United Nations development, humanitarian and peace building operations.
The people in these communities are not abstractions.
They are the measure of whether this work succeeds or fails.
Safeguarding mechanisms must be designed with them in mind.
Accessible, culturally informed, and built on genuine partnership with national authorities, local institutions, and civil society.
Mr.
President, the Africa members of the executive board remain committed to constructive work with UNDP, UN FPA, UNPS and all member states toward the United Nations that is truly worthy of the trust placed in it.
I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Nigeria and give the floor note to the United Kingdom.
I delivered this statement on behalf of Albania, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, the EU as a donor, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Moldova, Monaco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Zambia, and my own country, the United Kingdom.
We thank UNDP, UNPs and UNFPA for their continued efforts to strengthen protection from and response to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.
As we made clear in board discussions last year, while we recognize agencies are facing resourcing constraints, the effective prevention of and response to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment is a non optional core accountability commitment.
Leadership is critical to protect gains and drive further change.
Across the system, financial pressures and staffing reductions are weakening protection systems, limiting prevention efforts and access to survivor support and risking hard won progress when needs remain high.
The erosion of gender based violence services is particularly concerning as these constitute essential entry points for reporting.
Persistent under reporting remains a systemic challenge driven by fear, lack of trust, and perceived inaction.
These challenges are acute for children, particularly girls who are among the most vulnerable and depend on child sensitive safeguarding approaches.
Would welcome greater clarity on how agencies are ensuring their prevention, response and victim survivor support approaches are child sensitive.
The important 2025 JIU review on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse underlined the need for dedicated expertise, clear accountability, and sustained resourcing.
We urge agencies to protect the good practices that the review identified and fully implement the recommendations for areas of further improvement.
This includes the need to prioritize and protect sufficient human and financial resources for sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment prevention and response, particularly at country level, recognizing the importance of building country level capacity and strengthening national safeguarding systems.
How will the agencies report to the board on implementation of the JIU recommendations and the Office of the Special Coordinators Comprehensive Assessment.
The JIU review rightly highlights that tackling sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment requires a coherent and consistent system wide effort.
With shrinking resources, collaboration should increase, not diminish.
We encourage agencies to strengthen interagency collaboration and to improve efficiency and impact through mechanisms such as the common approach to protection from sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment, and the misconduct disclosure scheme.
UNA and the Humanitarian reset constitute a unique opportunity to strengthen protection from sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment efforts and embed a well resourced, sustainable and accountable system wide approach.
We urge agencies to work with member states and each other to influence these reform processes to ensure this happens.
Mr.
President, please allow us to highlight a few elements based on the joint background note.
We welcome the important progress that has been made across agencies and recognize the efforts being made to maintain and improve protection from sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment systems in these challenging times.
We note that while appointment of protection from sexual exploitation and abuse focal points is positive, dedicated expertise remains scarce with limited specialized personnel in the field.
We urge UNDP, UNFP and UNOS to continue to protect and resource dedicated protection from sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment capacity in the context of ongoing funding constraints.
We welcome the continued support for interagency efforts shown by all agencies, including implementation of key priorities of the CB Task Force on sexual harassment and IU recommendations.
We commend the agencies for showing leadership on innovative and collaborative PSEAH approaches in particular, taking a holistic approach, expanded focus on due diligence and engagement with implementing partners, improving reporting mechanisms, commitment to victim survivor centered approaches, and rollout of the misconduct disclosure scheme.
Looking ahead, sustained progress will require renewed commitment to PSEH as a core accountability commitment.
We welcome UNOPS has identified PSEH as an organizational risk and we encourage consideration of dedicated protection audits.
We welcome UNFPAs work to develop an interagency prevention toolkit and digital knowledge platform.
We welcome UNDP's efforts in promoting PSEH through expanded awareness raising mechanisms as we encourage UNDP to continue developing effective local reporting mechanisms.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom.
I give the floor now to Sweden to be followed by the United States.
Sweden, please.
Hi.
That's on.
Thank you.
Sweden attaches great importance to the protection against sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment and aligns itself to the joint statement delivered by the United Kingdom.
In addition, we noted in the Joint information note that almost 42% of UNFPA personnel in 2025 chose not to report when they are aware of instances of sexual misconduct.
We would appreciate it if UNFPA could please elaborate on how you are following up on this important and concerning finding.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Sweden and give the floor to the United States.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair.
The United States notes the findings provided in this joint report and recognizes critical vetting progress, including UNPs fully integrating the misconduct disclosure scheme into its recruitment platform, the expansion of Clear Check tracking, and UNPS averaging a 3.5 month case closure timeline.
These are essential areas of progress.
Note that the total sexual misconduct case load at UNDP increased and note that while increased reporting can be a good indicator of progress, the report also highlights several concerning barriers to PSEAH including deficiencies and policy application and lengthy investigative timelines at UNDP.
Are these challenges attributed squarely to funding constraints, or are there other policy and institutional factors at play? We also noted that 27% of cases at UNDP were closed early due to lack of survivor consent.
As another question for UNDP, what steps is UNDP taking to address the barriers, including retaliation concerns, distrust and system, and the lengthy investigation process and perceived limitations on accountability? Finally, it appears the UNDP country offices with interagency processes in place to receive and respond to allegations has decreased from 70 in 2024 to 63 in 2026.
As a final question to UNDP, can we ask for more information on what led to this reduction? Then just a final point while I very much appreciate the time constraints we have today.
The segment on essential oversight functions and the interactive nature of it, we find particularly valuable.
I want to make sure we give this segment its due diligence and time.
But again, I know we are under strict time constraints.
Thank you.
Thank the representative of the United States.
I give the floor now to the representatives of the entities to respond, beginning with UNDP.
Thank you very much for all of the questions and the comments.
I'm going to try to group them again.
Maybe starting with the US and I think there were some from the UK statement as well on barriers to reporting and informal reporting mechanisms.
Um, so we do I mean, there are two sides of it.
There's barriers, and then there's accessibility.
So we do make our confidential reporting channels open in 26 languages, and they are those channels are supported by a team of trauma informed sexual misconduct investigators.
There is also a question, I think in the UK statement about the child sensitive protection and prevention, and this approach too is embedded in our safeguard standards.
Um, So on the 37 formal reports, so while reports have increased, we still find in terms of barriers that there is a fear of retaliation, concern over the length of investigations, absolutely, and perceived limitations for holding perpetrators accountable.
So we need to call out those barriers and do something about them.
So on the prevention side, um, together with existing accountability measures, we are trying to strengthen the support to victims.
That's why we have the victim support Officer, and we do think that that's a good mechanism to build trust.
Now on the timeline for investigations, OAI was here and we do have a 13 month average.
So that is from receipt to closure.
And so that's everything included.
And it reflects this figure does reflect the complexity of these cases.
In some cases, it's shorter, in some cases, it's longer, but that is our average.
And so we are trying to reduce the timelines.
We're focusing on prioritization, on capacity strengthening, on process efficiencies, while ensuring that the investigations do maintain due process and quality and have that victim centered approach.
So the 13 month average, I would say, isn't fully representative of the current performance and timelines, really do vary.
Um, so, sorry, I'm running out of time.
But let me just see if there was anything else on interagency, just I did want to flag that, you know, the cooperation with UNPS and UNFPA is really exemplary, and I just want to, you know, highlight that as an excellent example.
I think I spoke to the MDS and also Clear Check and how we're applying that and we're expanding the MDS pilot.
Thank you, miss McGuire, Andrew.
Mr.
President.
Picking up on some of the points I heard the delegate from Nigeria on behalf of Nigeria and others, no response was needed, but thank you very much.
We appreciate the commitment and the support to this very vital area of our work.
On the comments made on behalf of the UK and others, all our country offices have reporting systems that are child friendly.
GBV programs are designed specifically to meet the needs of child survivors.
We have indicators in our M&E framework that will enable us to track progress on this specific aspect of our work.
Um, we also co lead multiple interagency workstreams and we participate in all the JIU focused workstreams and indeed lead on the prevention and survivor response working groups for the IASC.
Resourcing is, of course critical for us, and I'm very interested and I'll come back onto one other point that was picked up from the presentation we done last week, which was the 42%.
But next to that, in the presentation was the fact that 34% of GBV programs have been suspended across the aid sector in total.
And 29% of IASC organizations reduced or suspended their PSEA activities.
They are under pressure.
I must admit through what I also covered in our intervention, we've been able to secure two continments from member states, one based at headquarters, one, one based in headquarters.
Actually at our moment, the current level of staffing and resources allows us to maintain our existing PSEA approach.
Our strategy document, the second iteration of which I was referring to earlier, actually has a kind of bronze, silver, gold standard of what we can do with the minimal funding we've given at the moment, but what we can actually do and achieve more and have a wider reach across and more in depth reach across all our country offices and regional offices if we are able to secure some more funding.
I'd implore that again because and I hope you won't find me be cheeky here, but I'm in my third formal session this afternoon and everyone has referred to lack of funding.
I would like to give every area more funding, but I have to also balance the books.
But we are doing the best.
This is a critical area of work and we'll continue to do it.
As regard Sweden, analysis tells us that the resistance reporting is primarily around the fear of retaliation, loss of jobs, and belief with nothing were done.
Of course, that always is amplified when we actually have a more a austere funding environment, I'm afraid, but we do know that those people do speak to people.
And through GBV programs and we intend to build on these as enablers and to improve our reporting.
Additional resources would enable us to expand that presence across the world.
I would also point out in my iteration as well, we did actually carry out 15 missions to countries and regional offices here.
We are not just sitting in headquarters trying to work out this problem.
We're going to the ground on there.
And also M&E framework will also allow us to measure our impact on reporting barriers as well as those enablers across the organization.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you very much for that, Valerie.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I would like to reiterate what my colleagues from UNDP and UNFPA mentioned about the comments that have been made in the further enriching things to look out for.
We appreciate that.
Regarding the delegate from the UK, I think your specific question around UNIPS on the need for child friendly prevention and response mechanisms, we do recognize that and work on this.
We work very closely with child well being entities such as UNICEF.
On the ground, both in support when child allegations arise to ensure that we have adequate investigation approach to work with children, but also on the prevention and risk mitigation best practices to ensure we are able to provide child friendly reporting mechanisms and project design as two examples.
On the JIU question, UNPS accepted all JIU recommendations, and we will report regularly using existing audit reporting mechanisms, and we are fully engaged with and actively participating in the Office of Special Coordinators interagency working groups operationally, we have deployed cross functional internal task teams, drawing from the PSEH team, HR policy team, IAIG and the legal group.
The cross functional teams, they really comprehensively map internal policy gaps and ensure strict compliance with an immediate focus on executing milestones tied to the 2026 deadlines.
Um We also underscore our commitment to interagency collaboration.
I think I've been talking about this matter since I joined UniPS 2023, and I think the light joiners to this subject and I really want to thank colleagues from UNDP and UNFP because without the collaboration and sister agency learning, we wouldn't have been where we are as UNPS at the moment.
Just to reiterate and to emphasize on On the Car check and misconduct disclosure scheme, we are actively participating in the interagency working group to harmonize clear check procedures, and we already apply both CC and misconduct disclosure scheme to all our contract modalities for staff and non staff modalities.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I thank the representatives of the entities for their responses.
This concludes the consideration of Agenda item five on Protection against sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment.
A draft decision under the Agenda item five is under preparation and will be presented for the board's consideration later in the session.
Colleagues, we're going to take 30 seconds literally for a podium change.
We still have 15 17 minutes for the entire segment that we have left.
We will lose translation at 6:00.
We're hoping to maintain at least microphones, but please bear with us.
We do want to be able to wrap this up within the allotted time, if at all possible.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, colleagues.
We will now continue with agenda item two, update on the implementation efforts on the repositioning of the United Nations Development System.
Under this item, the Board will receive updates from UNDP, UNFPA, and UNPS on their respective implementation efforts related to the repositioning of the UN development system.
I'm very happy to welcome to the podium, Mr.
Hao Liang Zu, Associate Administrator, UNDP.
Mr.
Saboton remains with us, and I also welcome miss Hilary Balbueno, Chief of Staff of UNOPS.
This item is scheduled to proceed until 6:00 A.M.
We've been given until 6:05 P.M.
While every effort will be made to accommodate as many interventions as possible, if you're unable to take the floor in the alloted time that we have, you can send your statements to e statements or share your questions with the executive board Secretariat.
Without any ado at all, I now invite Mr.
Hao Liu Yang Chu, associate administrator, to deliver remarks on behalf of UNDP.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President.
Excellency's distinguished delegates.
It is my pleasure to update the executive board on UNDP's efforts and the repositioning of the UN development system.
As we move closer to 2030, the urgency of delivering on sustainable development goals is evident.
In this context, the importance of a coherent, effective, and responsive United Nations development system is indisputable.
We cannot afford non delivery.
This is the UNDP's premise for advancing UN General Assembly mandates on UNDS repositioning reinforced through the quadra comprehensive policy review and the UN 80 initiative.
Excellencies, for UNDP, reform is not an end in itself.
It is a means to ensure that the system is able to deliver integrated country owned solutions at scale and with impact.
ENPs commitment is reflected in substance and in practice.
Our contribution to the UNDS reform is focused on four key elements.
First, UNDP advances the UNDS reform by fostering policy coherence through practice.
END integrated the policy support to our governments and partners.
Roles assigned to us by the General Assembly in 2018 and reaffirmed in the 2025 Ecsirc resolution is at the service of our governments, RCs, and the UN teams on the ground.
From the SDD push to SDG financing to the climate promise, ENDP helps translate global commitments in nationally level policies and investments aligned with national priorities.
We need and can do more in this regard, but we need more support.
Secondly, ENDP continuously ensures accountability for reform implementation.
ENDPCPDs are fully aligned with and derived from cooperation frameworks.
Or confirmed by the resident coordinators.
We continue to be the largest participating UN organization in pooled funds, and we will ensure compliance with the provisions of the management and accountability framework.
Third, the UNDP supports the RC system despite a constrained funding environment.
The UNDP remains the strong supporter of a sustainable and adequately funded resident coordinator system in 2025.
The UNDP remains the largest single entity contribute to the UN SDG cost sharing arrangement with a total contribution of $22.2 million, even though our quality sources declined by 24%.
Fourth, the UNDP delivers efficiencies in support of UN wide reform objectives.
We lead three of the five active common back offices and manage over 40 40% of common services across 132 UN country teams.
Due to time constraints, I will not get into more details in this regard.
To close, the UN eight Initiative offers an opportunity to build on the progress achieved.
In doing so, it will be important to draw on experiences from implementation over the past years.
A key lesson is that impact is driven by strong, empowered country level cooperation, driven by national agenda, and the ability to adapt to evolving development needs.
The NDP remains committed to engaging constructively under the member states guidance and the oversight, including through this executive board.
Thank you very much.
I thank the Associate administrator for his remarks and give the floor now to Mr.
Sabaton on behalf of UN FDA.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Excellency, distinguished members of the executive board, colleagues.
I'm pleased to join UNDP and UNPS to update you on UNFPAs contribution to the 2024 QCPR and UN reform agenda.
We fully support the Secretary-General vision for an agile, coherent, and impact orientated UN development system, shifting focus from processes to measurable country level impact.
Our new strategic plan sets out our commitment for system wide coherence anchored in our mandates, sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender equality, and demographic resilience.
Our plan introduces demographic resilience as a fourth outcome, integrating analysis into cooperation frameworks and strengthening collective UN support through the HLCP task team.
Human rights, gender equality, and SRHR must remain the structural core of system wide action.
These rights based mandates are fundamental to achieving the SDGs and ensuring reform delivers for those se behind.
Sustained country presence is the foundation for effective delivery, especially in fragile settings.
We remain committed to a strengthened resident coordinator system, supported by our $4 million contribution in 2026.
RCs are strategic conveners, but reform must not dilute specialized capacities or fiduciary accountability.
We must preserve country program documents as essential governance and oversight instruments approved by the board.
At the regional level, we support reforms that improve access to specialized expertise and surge capacity without creating new coordination layers.
Expertise on demand can strengthen country teams, while it cannot replace the contextual understanding, trusted relationships, and sustained engagement required to deliver effectively, particularly on normative issues and in fragile and humanitarian settings.
In humanitarian settings, UNFPA welcomes efforts to drive efficiencies through integrated supply chains, common operational services, and stronger coordination.
At the same time, specialized entities must must retain the expertise and operational capacity needed to deliver lifesaving services, including on sexual and reproductive health, gender based violence, and HIV.
This includes safeguarding HIV related data and coordinating functions as discussions on the future of UN AIDS continues.
Operational transformation is central to UNFPAs value proposition.
As co chair of the UN SDG Business Innovation Group, we actively advance system wide efficiencies.
We've generated over $105 million in measurable efficiencies since 2019 through common services and simplification.
Gains, we reinvest directly into program delivery.
Sustainable reform requires sustainable financing.
Flexible and predictable core funding is essential for mandate delivery and agile responses.
While resource mobilization is stable, our core funding is below the funding compact target, and we urge member states to close this gap, as strong commitment to reform requires equally strong predictable resources.
UNFPA remains fully committed to working with member states and UN partners to build a coherent, efficient and impact orientated UN system.
This system must safeguard rights based mandates, protect our specialized expertise, and ensure sustainable delivery for women, girls, and young people.
Thank you.
I thank Mr.
Saboton for his remarks and give the floor note to miss Hilary Balbueno of UNOS to deliver her remarks.
Excellency, honorable members of the board, I'm pleased to provide an update on UNPs continued engagement and efforts in support of the UN Development System repositioning.
In late April, a detailed information note was published on the UNPS Executive Board website, and for the third year in a row, the note is complemented by an annex with detailed reporting on the complete UN Development System Reform Checklist.
UNP listened carefully to your comments and questions at the joint informal consultation last week and we closely followed the EcoSC operational activities for Development segment.
To put our efforts into perspective, the UNA Initiative provides a critical opportunity to build on the recent gains under the UN development system repositioning to address remaining challenges and further strengthen coherence, effectiveness, and delivery across an increasingly complex operational environment.
UNPs aligns directly with these overarching priorities through our strategic plan, 26 29, positioning the organization as an agile implementation partner to maximize impact on the ground.
Our model remains flexible and demand driven, enabling UNOPS to respond efficiently and at scale, including in fragile and crisis affected settings.
In 2025, UNPS delivered in more than 130 countries, with the majority of our portfolio implemented in close collaboration with our sister agencies.
From the outset, UNOPS has been a steadfast supporter of the reinvigorated resident coordinator system, actively participating in 102 UN country teams last year.
And engaging consistently in country level coordination and planning processes through our lean and often non resident presence.
As part of our ongoing commitment already in late November 2025, UNPS contributed to this year's cost sharing arrangement for the RT system in the amount of $2.58 million.
UNPS attaches great importance to the management and accountability framework, the MF, and continues to engage constructively in its review to simplify it, improve clarity, and to remove hurdles to implementation.
UNPS has operationalize the math requirement to consult with the resident coordinator at key stages of strategic planning by capturing this obligation within the individual performance assessments of UNPS UN CT members, ensuring institutional accountability for framework alignment.
The recent system wide evaluation reaffirmed important progress while underscoring the need to further strengthen collective delivery on the ground.
UNPS has accepted all recommendations and has since been heavily involved at interagency level on the necessary follow up actions.
This comes at a time when the system is continuing to adapt to evolving operational and financial realities.
In this context, the UNA initiative has created vital momentum.
As part of the UN 80 Work Package five and under the coordination of the Deputy Secretary-General, the Executive Director of UNPS has facilitated the reconfiguration of UN country teams with strengthened RC leadership in close collaboration with other work packages to enable more contextualized, tailored country footprints anchored in the cooperation framework in support of national priorities and needs.
Efficiencies have always been at the heart of the UNPS operating model, as echoed by member states of the operational activity segment, expanding common back offices, common premises, and global shared services is vital to reducing duplication and costs.
UNPS continues to play a key role in advancing these system wide efforts through its co chairing of the UN SDG Business Innovation Group, alongside UNFPA.
In this capacity, the UNPS Deputy Executive Director for Management and Policy also co leads the UNAy Unified Services Roadmap work package.
Excellency, distinguished delegates, the repositioning of the UN development system has delivered meaningful progress.
UNAy now provides a transformative opportunity to consolidate these gains and build a more effective, efficient, and integrated UN development system that delivers measurable results on the ground.
Thank you.
I thank miss Balbo for her remarks.
Colleagues, we are running plumb out of time.
We have three requests for the floor.
I want to go straight to the distinguished permanent representative of Zambia to be followed by Switzerland and Nepal.
I have to say that we are not going to have time for responses from the podium.
So any questions that are embedded in your presentations, we will take and you will get responses in writing to those.
Sa.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
I'm very mindful of the time, so I'll take less than the allotted time.
I speak on behalf of the African members of the board.
I have four comments and then three questions, I'll get responses in writing.
All right, then, thank you very much.
Four comments.
Firstly, just four priorities.
The first national ownership must remain the foundation for the reposition development system.
Cooperation framework should continue to guide UN engagement while remaining firmly anchored in national development plans and priorities.
Coordination should reinforce leadership and not replace it.
Second, reform must translate into better delivery.
Coordination has value when it reduces fragmentation, accelerates implementation, and helps countries access integrated solutions to increasing complex development challenges.
Third, coherence must not come at the expense of mandates and comparative advantages.
UNDP, UNFPA, UN ops each bring distinct expertise and capabilities.
A stronger UN development system is one that better combines these strengths in support of national defined results.
Fourth, efficiency gains must serve development impact.
Efforts to streamline business processes, expand shared services, and improve operational effectiveness should ultimately free up more resources for programs and strengthen support to program countries.
We wish to underscore that adequate, predictable and flexible funding remains indispensable.
Expectations for greater coherence and stronger delivery must be matched by the resources required to achieve them.
The African members welcome continued reporting on implementation.
Going forward, we'd appreciate more evidence on how reforms are improving country level delivery, strengthening the use of national systems, advancing joint programming, and ensuring that efficiency gains are invested in development results.
In this regard, we would welcome the views of UNDP, NFPA and UN ops on three questions.
First, how are the entities aligning the repositioning agenda with UN 80 while assuring country level delivery is not disturbed.
Second, how will we preserve institutional mandates and comparative advantages while strengthening system wide coherence? Third, what mechanisms are in place to ensure efficiency gains and ensure that resulting savings are redirected in development programs and national capacities.
I just want to point out here that indeed reforms are not the end in itself.
The value lies in its ability to strengthen delivery and improve development outcomes at country level.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished PR of Zambia and give the floor now to the distinguished PR of Switzerland.
Mr.
President, Excellencies, I delivered this statement on behalf of the following member states, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Luxemburg, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the European Union as a donor, and my own country, Switzerland.
We share the ambition to make the UN development system more coherent, effective, efficient, and impactful at country level.
Since the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 72 slash 279, progress has been made and UNDPO and FBA and UNPs have played a constructive role, yet the system is still not delivering on its full potential.
Fragmentation, competition for funding, and weak incentives for collaboration continue to undermine collective impact.
In the context of lagging SDG progress growing humanitarian needs, and constrained ODA, this is not sustainable.
We need a UN that acts as one UN at country level under the leadership of an empowered resident coordinator with UNDP, UNFPA and UNPs as fully engaged and supportive partners.
The UN AD Initiative offers a unique opportunity to accelerate and strengthen the implementation of the repositioning of the UNDS launched in 2017.
We ask all UN entities, including UNDP, UNFPA and UNOS to actively engage in and show ownership of efforts under UN AD Workstream three through concrete steps.
First, ensure that UN sustainable development cooperation frameworks are the real drivers of country work.
The cooperation framework should be the single costed system wide strategy at country level in line with national priorities.
Entity specific country program instruments must be genuinely derived from and not only loosely aligned with cooperation frameworks.
We encourage UN DPU and FBA and UNPS to ensure that their country level reporting clearly captures contributions to the cooperation framework results and joint UN outcomes and not only to their agency specific outputs.
It is also key that the three agencies ensure life work plans and resource pipelines to be visible to the RC throughout implementation.
One question here would be, what more could UNDPUN FPA and UNPS do at global, regional, and country level to further elevate the cooperation frameworks as central strategic frameworks.
Secondly, it is important to consistently and fully support resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator leadership.
This includes recognizing the RCHC as the default strategic interlocutor for high level engagement with government and donors, systematically involving the RC and major strategic decisions and ensuring that project proposals agreed directly with donors are fully aligned to the cooperation framework and are shared with the RCHC in advance.
Question here, can you share which challenges the three agencies face that limit their ability to do so.
We also support a stronger role for RCs in the selection and performance assessment of country representatives.
We call on UNDP, UNOPs and UNFPA to more systematically request and integrate RC feedback into the performance assessments of their country representatives.
Third, tailor agency in country presence to national contexts, comparative advantage, and the needs identified in the cooperation framework in consultation with our season host governments.
We encourage UNDP UNFPA and UNOPS to draw on the system wide evaluation on progress towards a new generation of UN CTs and meaningfully contribute to the UN country team reconfiguration.
Fourth, advanced shared services.
We are encouraged by the system wide efficiency gains of over $980 million in 2025 and count on UNDP on FPA and UNOS to build on this progress to make shared services, common back offices and co location the norm.
However, the number of common back offices at country level remains limited.
Question, what, in your view are the main obstacles to establishing common back offices? Do you have suggestions as to how these obstacles can be overcome? Finally, we acknowledge that as member states, we also have an important role.
Funding practices must incentivize collaboration rather than fragmentation.
The current imbalance between core and earmarked resources and the proliferation of short term project based funding undermines strategic planning and joint work.
Question here.
Beyond funding, what is the one key change member states can enact that would enable you to reduce competition and better alignment? Thank you.
And without further ado, I'm releasing the interpreters.
Thank you for staying a few minutes extra with us.
And I give the floor now to Napal.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Nepal, thanks UNFA for the comprehensive information note on UNDS reform 2026.
We welcome the strong alignment of the new advised to subjects that we have.
If there are any for me.
Thank you so much for being with us.
For the I know we don't have any microphone and I can't and it all.
This meeting is adjourned, please reconvene the decision negotiation conference room.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.