  |
|
  |
|
| The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with
a staff of just over 900, is one of the world’s smaller international development
agencies. But it has a broad mandate: to raise awareness of population throughout the
world and, especially, to assist developing countries in solving their population
problems. When UNFPA became operational in 1969, population was a controversial area in international development. Yet between 1969 and 1997, UNFPA raised and transferred $4 billion to more than 160 countries. The UNFPA budget today is about $300 million a year. The recognized international leader in the population field, UNFPA is leading the drive towards the goals agreed by all the countries at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994. The key to UNFPA’s success is its careful attention and quick response to national needs and priorities, and the Fund’s close working relationship with governments and civil societies. Always carefully responding to local conditions, UNFPA relies heavily on its country offices—where 75 per cent of its staff are posted—and especially its 66 Representatives—to get the job done. To be effective, a UNFPA Representative must know a country’s strengths and needs, and how to adapt to both. UNFPA Representatives have to be experts on the various elements of population policy and programming as well as diplomats, problem solvers, dispassionate counsellors and sympathetic advocates for change. Their job requires not merely expertise, but flair, imagination and the ability to get results from working with all kinds of people, a variety of political views and a full range of policy initiatives. "Being able to read a country’s needs and match those needs with institutional capacities and funding levels is a fundamental requirement in this job," according to Abdul Muniem Abu-Nuwar, UNFPA Representative in the Syrian Arab Republic. "The first requirement is a sense of what is possible and what is not." Policies and people change, sometimes with little notice, says Pamela de Largy, UNFPA’s Representative for Eritrea. "You keep your eye on the ultimate objective, but new situations are coming up all the time. Day by day you have to adjust to keep your balance but try to be consistent over the long haul." Being a UNFPA Representative requires, more than anything else, a belief that the work is worthwhile. "We have to try to be all things to all people," says Wasim Zaman, UNFPA’s Representative for India. "We are the main international contact point for population and development assistance. We are the first to be called when anyone wants to know what is going on." This booklet outlines the day-to-day life of the UNFPA Representative, with all its varied frustrations and achievements, and presents a portrait of how UNFPA works at the country level. Five countries are featured, from four major regions: Nicaragua in Latin America and the Caribbean; Burkina Faso and Eritrea in Africa; the Syrian Arab Republic in the Arab States, and India in Asia and the Pacific. Each presents unique challenges, but together they represent a good cross-section of the developing world. |
|||
top