DEVELOPMENT: US, Europe Seek to End UN Pledging Conference

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 1999 (IPS) - The United States and other western nations want to end the annual “pledging conference” at the United Nations when rich countries promise funds to UN agencies involved in social and economic development.

“The pledging conference has outlived its usefulness,” Aira Paivoke of Finland, spokeswoman for the 15-member European Union (EU), told delegates this week.”We strongly believe that this should be the last such conference.”

“For the first time, this year no EU member state will announce pledges at this event,” she announced.

Speaking on behalf also of several non-EU states – including Norway, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Cyprus and Malta – Paivoke said she would like to see the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly pursue the “formal abolition” of the pledging conference next year.

She said that EU members would, as appropriate, individually inform the various UN Funds and Programmes, of their pledges for next year.

The United States, Australia, Canada, Iceland and Switzerland also made a collective statement that they would not participate in the pledging conference, which concluded Wednesday.

The conference has taken place in November every year, providing a platform for donors to make their pledges to several UN Funds and Programmes, including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme, UN Population Fund, the UN Environment Programme and the UN Development Fund for Women.

UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown said he feared that the difficulties expressed about the pledging conference were symptons of a deeper malaise – a drift away from financial support for UN development cooperation itself.

“There is a long way to go before a truly adequate funding base for the operational arms of the United Nations can be secured,” he argued.

While there was a modest rise in Official Development Assistance (ODA) this year, that overall trend in funding for development cooperation was not evident for the United Nations or the UNDP.

“The real achievements of UN development cooperation are being jeopardised by a lack of high-level support, and UNDP is threatened by political and financial neglect,” he warned.

Malloch Brown said that the implicit social compact that underpinned the global legitimacy of the United Nations required an effective system of UN multilateral development cooperation.

“For most people,” he said, “this is the area in which UN activities most closely touch their lives. It is the indispensable addition of the political, peacekeeping and humanitarian roles of the Organisation.”

Speaking on behalf of the 133 developing nations of the Group of 77, George Talbot of Guyana told delegates there was already a General Assembly resolution on new funding modalities.

But that resolution also reflected agreement on the need for substantial increases in resources to fund development activities, and the need to intensify efforts to mobilise political will.

Furthermore, the Assembly recognised the urgent need to fulfil the agreed target of 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) of donor nations going for ODA, Talbot said.

The target was set by the General Assembly back in 1970 but, so far, it had been met or exceeded by only four countries – Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Talbot said the Group of 77 was very concerned that the funding objectives remained largely unfulfilled and, therefore, viewed with concern the calls for the abolition of the pledging conference.

Although it was legitimate to call for a review of the pledging conference to see how it could best serve the purpose intended, the review of funding modalities contemplated in the Assembly resolution had not yet taken place, he added.

“The future of the pledging conference should be considered with care and broad consultation,” Talbot noted.

“It was premature to call for its abolition, since the diagnostic process had not yet been exhausted. A careful review of funding modalities was needed.”

Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, told delegates that the pledging conference was taking place at a time when the United Nations was being asked to do more while faced with stagnating and declining core resources.

Despite major reforms in the UN system, he said, the resources needed to meet the requirements of operational activities for development were shrinking, and recent figures on ODA showed that contributions fell to a record low level of 48.3 billion dollars in 1997 – about four percent lower than the year before.

But initial indications were that this negative trend might be reversed in 1998, he added.

At the end of this week’s conference, only 36 out of 188 member states had announced pledges for next year. The deadline for additional pledges, however, is June 2000.

The countries making pledges mostly were from the developing world, including Thailand, India, Malaysia, China, Oman, Russia, Poland, Egypt, Bangaldesh, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Cameroon, Laos, Vietnam and Malawi.