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Programme Effectiveness |
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| Coordination and Collaboration | |||
| Introduction
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During the year, UNFPA expanded partnerships, both within and outside of the United Nations. The Fund worked especially closely with UNAIDS, coordinating its HIV/AIDS-prevention activities through UNAIDS theme groups and serving as chair of the groups in 13 countries. Stepping up its cooperation with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNFPA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with that organization. The Fund expanded its collaboration with a number of other partners as well, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; the International Organization for Migration (IOM); the International Planned Parenthood Federation; the Commonwealth Secretariat; and Rotary International. To facilitate implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action, efforts were made to expand cooperation with the European Union. UNFPA also enhanced its cooperation with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), with which it signed a Memorandum of Understanding. UNPFA and the OIC agreed to initiate cooperative activities and to explore the possibility of convening high-level meetings aimed at identifying specific areas for technical cooperation, such as reproductive health, family life education and population censuses and surveys. UNFPA Country Support Teams, it was agreed, would provide technical support to help the OIC General-Secretariat strengthen its capacity to formulate population-related policies and undertake relevant data compilation, processing and analysis. Cooperating with United Nations reforms at the country, regional and global levels, UNFPA participated in the relevant efforts of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) and its Executive Committee. The Fund's commitment to the reform process paralleled its resolve to ensure that coordination is pursued as a means to more effective programmes and better and more timely service delivery. UNFPA participated in the efforts of UNDG to implement the Action Plan of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), producing, among other things, guidelines for the Common Country Assessment (CCA) and UNDAF. Moreover, the Fund served on the inter-agency team that carried out the assessment of the pilot phase of UNDAF. UNFPA also simplified its own programming processes and produced new programme guidelines to avoid duplications with those processes being put into place under the Secretary-General's reform initiative. In July, UNFPA participated in the first meeting ever of the WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA Coordinating Committee on Health, which was held at WHO headquarters in Geneva. The committee reviewed the status of programming in such areas as the reduction of maternal mortality, vitamin A deficiency and adolescent reproductive health, and agreed on actions aimed at accelerating programming in these areas. Specifically, the three organizations agreed to work together, on the basis of a recently finalized WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA/World Bank joint statement on maternal mortality, to reduce maternal mortality within the context of a reproductive health approach. They also agreed that, given the diverse nature of the issues concerning adolescent reproductive health, multi-agency involvement in this area was especially important at the country level. Moreover, better inter-agency collaboration and the pooling of technical resources were urgently needed at the regional level. The common agenda agreed to by WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA would serve as the basis for action. The committee also called for close cooperation with the World Bank and welcomed the Bank's informal participation on specific agenda items in future committee meetings. During 1998, there was increasing collaboration between UNFPA and the World Bank, both at the headquarters and field levels. The annual meeting of senior officials from the two institutions reviewed cooperation to date and identified areas for future collaboration. The World Bank Vice President for the Human Development Network and the UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme) addressed operational and sectoral collaboration and advocacy initiatives that would be pursued in the coming years. UNFPA's geographical divisions and their regional counter-parts in the World Bank consult on a regular basis. When UNFPA Country Representatives come to headquarters, they visit the World Bank to discuss programme issues at the country level. In the field, UNFPA Representatives regularly consult with their World Bank counterparts, giving particular attention to collaborative opportunities in the context of the Bank's Country Assistance Strategy and the Fund's Country Population Assessment. In November 1998, the Africa Division of UNFPA and the Africa Region of the World Bank met at World Bank headquarters to share information on recent or upcoming activities and to identify countries for UNFPA-World Bank collaborative efforts. The participants selected Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea and Uganda as priority countries for concerted collaboration, and they identified three priority issues: maternal mortality reduction, adolescent reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. They agreed to strengthen collaboration in these areas by improving the use of communications technologies; enhancing and sharing databases, including indicators; collaborating on financing censuses; sharing knowledge on thematic issues; carrying out extended missions to share technical capacity; maintaining contact between the World Bank and UNFPA Country Support Teams; increasing technical discussions, including on procurement, at the headquarters level; exploring field-level collaboration in such areas as financing the development of health infrastructure; and concentrating on capacity-building, sustainability and health-sector reform. The Fund's Africa Division and Asia and Pacific Division consulted during the year with the regional development banks in their respective regions. Moreover, the Bretton Woods Institutions and regional development banks have taken part in the ICPD+5 process. The World Bank participated in a number of UNFPA-supported technical meetings and in The Hague Forum, and the Inter-American Development Bank participated in the Symposium on Population Change and Economic Development held in Bellagio, Italy. In terms of common initiatives, UNFPA and the World Bank work closely on a number of activities (e.g., Global Initiative on Contraceptive Requirements and Logistics Management; Partners in Population and Development). The two organizations cooperated, for example, in the area of logistics and procurement. The World Bank has called upon the Fund to procure contraceptives and medical supplies for several countries, and UNFPA has assumed responsibility for logistics and supplies in the Bank's sectoral missions. The two institutions accord high priority to implementing the Safe Motherhood Initiative, which is key to the attainment of mortality goals set by the ICPD Programme of Action. Nineteen ninety-eight marked the initiative's 10th anniversary, and both the Fund and the Bank participated in meetings that reviewed the decade of experience and charted new directions. The World Bank and UNFPA also consult regularly on policy matters. There have been frequent exchanges pertaining to health-sector reform, particularly with respect to sector-wide approaches. UNFPA drew on the Bank's experience with such approaches, and the Bank provided valuable comments on early drafts of the report on this topic that UNFPA submitted to the Executive Board at its second regular session in April 1999. Both organizations are working to strengthen country-level capacity in the area of population and reproductive health. To this end, UNFPA is a co-sponsor of a World Bank's training programme. The Bank's Economic Development Institute has taken the lead, in concert with other donors, in designing a training programme geared towards meeting country-level concerns in the implementation of the reproductive health approach. Participants include programme officials and representatives of civil society. The seminars focus on practical, operational concerns and draw extensively on country experiences. UNFPA has helped develop the programme's curriculum, underscoring the need to integrate gender concerns into the training protocol. Two training seminars took place during the past year — one in April in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and one in September in Nairobi, Kenya. Another seminar, for francophone African countries, was scheduled to take place in Dakar, Senegal, in May 1999. UNFPA, which has provided support for participants from developing countries to attend these training sessions, has been pleased with the positive response.
UNFPA participates in the World Bank Human Development Week, which provides a forum for Bank staff and representatives from population and development organizations to share experiences about work in the social sector. UNFPA took part in the event and provided suggestions for the 1999 session, which will offer a module on Health, Nutrition and Population focusing on health promotion; equity and health-sector reform; adolescent health; and poverty, equity and health. In January 1999, the Fund participated in a regional meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, on the social implications of the Asian financial crisis. The meeting, organized by the World Bank, was attended by more than 200 senior-level delegates. The meeting aimed to promote a deeper understanding of the social impact of the crisis; to identify new initiatives to advance social development; and to consider issues related to operational coordination and partnerships. UNFPA participated in the plenary discussion as well as in the Working Group on Maintaining Basic Social Services. The Working Group addressed such issues as the content of basic social services; the impact of crises on social services and how those crises should be addressed; the effective targeting of interventions; the maintaining and improving of funding for social services; and the importance of successful partnerships in designing and implementing social services. Advocacy was a major focus of the 1998 meeting between senior officials of the World Bank and UNFPA. It was agreed that the Bank would act as an advocate for population issues and linkages, both within the organization itself and in its external policy statements. As UNFPA pointed out at the meeting, the inclusion of population messages in World Bank statements to the economic and financial community would heighten awareness of population-related concerns. For its part, UNFPA agreed to craft population messages to make them more responsive to the needs and interests of economists. A significant step in this direction was the Symposium on Population Change and Economic Development, held in Bellagio, Italy, in November 1998. The World Bank took an active role in this meeting, which examined the effects of fertility decline and other demographic changes on poverty and inequality as well as the effects of population growth on the sustainability of natural resources. The report of this meeting is being widely circulated to audiences concerned with population and/or economic development. In 1998, the World Bank continued to participate in the Task Force for Basic Social Services for All (BSSA) and in the ICPD+5 review process. With the World Bank in the lead role, the BSSA Task Force issued its final output, a monograph entitled Coordinating External Assistance to the Social Sector: Lessons from Bangladesh, Kenya and Peru. This review seeks to derive lessons from past experiences and to spotlight the best, most successful practices, with a view towards enhancing donor collaboration in health, education and other social sector activities. Within the United Nations Development Group (UNDG), UNFPA participates in the Task Force on the Bretton Woods Institutions, which seeks to strengthen sectoral and operational collaboration and to nurture greater cooperation in the area of knowledge management. |
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