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UNDP Key Partnerships

“Development outcomes require complex sets of interventions by multiple actors. Effective partnerships that bring together various actors around a common goal are therefore key…Partnerships for UNDP will be at the cutting edge of new ways of doing business: they will require extensive networking and will demand high-quality knowledge management, developing and institutionalizing partnerships."

Source: The Way Forward: the Administrator’s Business Plans 2000-2003

The year 2000 paved the way for the creation of a new Bureau for Resources and Strategic Partnerships (BRSP) to transform UNDP’s partnerships.Strategic partnerships have been initiated with other organizations within the UN system as well as with donor countries, civil society organizations, the Bretton Woods, and financial institutions such as regional development banks and the private sector. The BRSP has for mandate to enable information exchange and facilitate and be serves as an information exchange, a facilitator and catalyst of partnership strategies.

Key Partnerships

Netaid - netaid.org uses the Internet as a tool to empower people to act on the issue of extreme poverty. This 1999 initiative is a collaborative effort between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and CISCO systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the internet. It is an effective partnership that generates change in the lives of others in communities around the world. Netaid challenges the issue of poverty in accordance with UNDP’s development goal to halve world poverty by 2015.

World Bank - The World Bank is working in more than 100 developing economies with the assistance of government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector. The World Bank works with other UN bodies such as UNDP to provide policy coordination, project financing and aid coordination for development work. With the objective to eliminate poverty, the World Bank uses finance and knowledge as a means to improve living conditions of people. UNDP has recently collaborated with the World Bank, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Research Institute for the publication of an important report entitled: World Resources 2000-2001, People and Ecosystems, the Fraying Web of Life. UNDP is also working in partnership with the World Bank on the Digital Opportunity Task Force which aims to develop an implementation framework with concrete timetables and targets to bridge the digital divide before the end of the decade.

International Monetary Fund - The IMF is an international organization of 182 member countries that was established in 1946. The functions of the organization are to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange stability, and exchange arrangements to foster economic growth. The IMF works with UNDP to provide temporary financial assistance to countries during times of financial need.

Global Environment Facility (GEF) - The Global Environment Facility provides financial support to address four critical threats to the global environment. These threats are: biodiversity loss, climate change, degradation of international waters and ozone depletion. The GEF was launched in 1991 and restructured following the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The three implementing agencies of the GEF are the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Bank. The GEF Assembly is composed of all 166 participating states and 32 countries sit on their Council, the Board Of Directors of the GEF. GEF is part of a global environmental mission working towards sustainable human development (SHD). GEF’s Small Grants Programme is administered by UNDP.