DEVELOPMENT: UN’s Development Role in Jeopardy

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 28 1996 (IPS) - The United Nations is warning member states that development activities of the world body are being jeopardised by a decline in international assistance from Western donors.

“In the last four years, real development assistance – if you take out humanitarian aid – has declined by 20 to 25 percent,” says Gus Speth, Administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

Resources needed for development cooperation “are shrinking dramatically,” Speth recently told the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The United Nations “is being threatened in an unprecedented way by a financial crisis that afflicts both assessed and, to a lesser degree, voluntary contributions.”

Speth’s fears have been reinforced by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who told delegates Friday that the United Nations cannot fulfill its role in promoting development cooperation without “adequate resources on a sound and predictable basis.”

The Secretary-General says the capacity of the United Nations and of its funds and programmes to respond to the needs of developing countries is being weakened by decreased funding.

In 1995, the United Nations spent 10.7 billion dollars. Some 7.8 billion dollars went to development and relief activities and the remaining 2.9 billion dollars on peacekeeping, according to the latest figures released here.

Of the 7.8 billion dollars, 5.4 billion dollars was spent on development and 2.4 billion dollars on humanitarian assistance.

The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) alone spent about 1.6 billion dollars, followed by the World Health Organisation/Pan American Health Organisation (900 million dollars), and the U.N. Children’s Fund (826 million dollars).

Additionally, the U.N. Secretariat earmarked about 505 million dollars for development activities followed by the World Food Programme (483 million dollars), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (400 million dollars), the U.N. Population Fund (336 million dollars), and the U.N. Industrial Development Organisation (218 million dollars).

Among Western donors, official development assistance (ODA) is currently at its lowest point since 1970 as a percentage of gross national product (GNP), declining from 59.2 billion dollars in 1994 to 58.8 billion dollars in 1995. Total private investments, on the other hand, have nearly quadrupled since 1990, reaching about 170 billion dollars this year.

Speth said that it will be impossible to achieve sustainable, people-centred development without international cooperation and increased development assistance.

“Despite all the globalisation, despite the trade opportunities, despite the private sector investment, development assistance is still essential,” he noted.

Speth also says private sector flows are dramatically skewed in favour of a small number of countries, and that development cooperation and development assistance are absolutely essential to the successful development in most countries today.

“It is one of the great myths of our moment that the developing world is doing much, much better, when in fact recent World Bank data shows that over 60 percent of the countries where the United Nations and others have development assistance operations, have in fact experienced declines in real per capita incomes over the decade ending in 1994,” he said.

“If we are going to have successful development cooperation and successful development assistance, the United Nations is absolutely essential to make that development assistance succeed,” he added.

Speth singled out Japan as one donor that was “setting the right pace” and “leading in the right direction.” He described Japan as “the number one contributor to development cooperation.”

Speth also highlighted four countries of the 26-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation for Development (OECD): Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands — countries that have met and, for years, exceeded the 0.7 percent of GNP target established by the international community.

Australian delegate Miles Armitage says traditional sources of funding were not sufficient for the activities being undertaken at the United Nations in the economic, social, and environmental fields.

“Without new funding strategies, the international community would not be able to undertake the development strategies to which they had agreed at the global development conferences,” he said here.

Ambassador Prakash Shah of India says the consequences of sharp cuts in development assistance will be long-term and severe. “It will place a heavy burden on the least developed countries (LDCs) and countries in Africa who have not been able to attract flows of private capital,” he said.

Shah also warns that without increased development assistance, the agreements reached at all the recent major international conferences “could end up becoming mere pieces of paper.”