DEVELOPMENT: New UNDP Administrator Challenges Planned Cuts

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 1999 (IPS) - Mark Malloch Brown, who assumed the post of UN Development Programme (UNDP) administrator on Thursday, hit the ground running by saying he would fight plans to cut German and Dutch contributions to the agency.

“There has been cut after cut at UNDP,” Malloch Brown said as he took office Thursday, replacing James Gustave Speth. “This cut is one too far.”

The new UNDP administrator said he would begin a battle to convince UNDP’s donors to step up support for the development agency and to persuade the German and Danish governments not to go through with their respective plans to reduce funding.

Germany has announced plans, still being debated in the government, to cut its yearly contribution to UNDP by half, or about 25 million dollars annually.

The government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has defended the move by pointing to its need to meet targets for balancing its domestic budget in the Maastricht Treaty, which sets guidelines for nations participating in the European common currency, the euro.

Denmark, on the other hand, justified slashing its UNDP contribution by 23 percent, on a one-time basis for the current year, saying it would need to earmark funds for the reconstruction of Kosovo.

Malloch Brown, however, sharply attacked the Danish move, arguing, “This is a dangerous trend, and I hope other countries will not follow it.”

Malloch Brown noted that, although UNDP has a “total resource envelope” of some two billion dollars, more than 1.2 billion dollars of that amount consists of “non-core” funds that are spent largely in UNDP projects and joint programmes in Latin America.

Yet UNDP’s core funds, 90 percent of which go the the poorest countries, including many African states, has been in sharp decline in recent years, Malloch Brown added.

The core funds have plummeted to some 750 million dollars, down from 1.2 billion dollars a few years ago, he said – and they are now at a level which he contended is the minimal amount to provide “first-class services.”

As a result, he said, the Danish cut is alarming because it will “essentially tax Africa to fund Kosovo.”

Not all UNDP donors are scaling back their commitments to the development agency. In recent months, several countries – including Britain, France and Belgium – have pledged to increase funding to UNDP’s resource base.

Yet the selection of Malloch Brown, a British national and former World Bank vice president of external affairs, may have come at a sensitive time for some European donors.

Several diplomats have told IPS, on condition of anonymity, that Denmark may be upset that its candidate for the UNDP top spot – Poul Nielsen, the development cooperation minister and official European candidate for the post – was bypassed in favour of Malloch Brown.

A few European nations, including Denmark, indicated their intention to scale back their UNDP contributions shortly after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced in April that Malloch Brown would replace Speth, a US national who stepped down after serving two years of his second four-year term.

Although he is British, Malloch Brown was widely perceived to be the choice of the United States after it failed to convince its European allies to support another US candidate to become UNDP administrator, a position normally held by a US national.

“We felt he had the competence and the heft to do this,” one US diplomat said of Malloch Brown’s appointment.

Annan, however, stressed that Malloch Brown, who had been an adviser to the secretary-general’s effort over the past two years to streamline the United Nations, had made “an invaluable contribution to the success of my reform programme.”

Annan added, “It seemed vital to me that we develop a close working relationship between UNDP and the World Bank.”

Malloch Brown, in his inaugural appearance, said that he would try to maintain links between the UNDP and World Bank, but added that he intended to ensure that UNDP projects could provide an alternative to the development work of the World Bank.

To do that, however, UNDP and the development community as a whole needs more funds at a time when official development assistance (ODA) from the North is declining, he said.

Citing his agency’s Human Development Report, Malloch Brown noted that with just nine billion dollars more in ODA every year, safe water could be provided for all, while with six billion dollars more, “we could give basic education to every child on Earth.”

To do that, however, UNDP will have to push its business strategy and convince the donor community – including the two nations now contemplating cuts – to boost funding. “We don’t consider it a battle lost, but a battle begun,” he said.