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Lending a Hand: UN Aid

Investment and trade are the main external factors contributing to economic growth. Grant aid-- ODA, Official Development Aid-- now amounts to a bit more than $50 billion a year; and most of that goes directly from government to government. A little over $5 billion goes through the UN system (of which about 20% is for emergencies); and about the same amount through the World Bank. We can see why the G77 at the UN is most concerned to influence the massive flow of investment and terms of trade. This is also where the advanced economies come in, so carefully put by the EU in ascribing to the UN the role of "intellectual leadership."

Intellectual leadership can be understood to comprise social concerns, "human development," the ethical dimension lacking in free-flowing globalization. As UN experience has grown in the past decades, it turns out that the UN has become the instrument for concrete expression and channeling of a nascent global conscience. This has happened through the series of international thematic conferences which give substance to the UN Agenda for Development. The main strands in the Agenda converge on poverty and human rights as universal and supreme objectives, it being accepted that the whole process displays the "right to development." It is in this context that the $5 billion ODA, channeled through the UN, can be of real importance. On the whole, these funds go to support "social" sectors, human services otherwise neglected; and more and more in the poor countries that are outside mainstream development. As I have just mentioned, the UNDP wants to give this a new twist, focusing on creating conditions that attract investment.

In the councils of governments, since 1970 it has been accepted (the U.S. excepted) that ODA should amount to 0.7% of GNP of the "donor" governments. This was re-affirmed at the Rio Conference on Environment in 1992. With few exceptions, governments have not come up to that level; indeed, from 1992 to 1998 ODA was in decline. There was a slight upturn in 1998. Only four countries-- Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden-- met or exceeded 0.7%. According to latest information, Canada stood low at 0.29% GDP. (Why? With a budget surplus! This is leadership?) The U.S. brings up the rear at 0.10%.

Meantime the UN, pressed by donors, has done a lot in recent years to coordinate the direction of assistance hitherto handled quite separately through many UN funds and agencies. In terms of overall policy and strategy, ECOSOC has struggled to achieve coordination at the intergovernmental level; while within the administering Secretariat, the several departments and funds are brought together in the Executive Committee for Economic and Social Affairs instituted by the Secretary-General (supported by the UN "Development Group" that underpins coordination). The head of the UNDP presides over this process; and operatively the UNDP at country level has been the arm of the Secretary-General in gathering the UN siblings into one family in one UN house, led by the UN Resident Coordinator-- a title deliberately innocuous to induce loyalty to UN paternity (or is it maternity?).

Besides the substantive Agenda for Development, there is now a formally agreed and sanctified Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), guidelines for a common process for planning and formulating program aid in each country. There is related agreement on evaluating these activities. Nineteen countries got into UNDAF in 1999, another 42 will follow this year, 2000. Everyone should be in by 2002. No fewer than 29 UN organizations have joined in this amity-- a gargantuan achievement. (Who is to blame for the hydra heading but the parenting governments?)

A solid demonstration of UN togetherness in January 2000 was a tripartite UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF joint Executive Boards' (the intergovernment apparatus) review of UN development support for India. This is the third such tripartite exercise.

Just a word about UNDP under its energetic new Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, a Brit with a rare stretch of experience and vision-- refugees with UNHCR in Thailand, editor of the (London) Economist Development Report, partner in an international management firm, and a Vice-President of the World Bank. To reiterate, he wants the UNDP to take the lead on poverty and, to that end, on helping countries create the conditions that attract investment. He wants to restore UNDP's flagship role, and to put UNDP strength out in the countries.