G13-letter to prime minister Stoltenberg
New York, February 23, 2006
To: H.E. Mr Jens Stoltenberg
Prime Minister of Norway
Excellency,
As a group of 13 donor countries, and on behalf of our governments, we wish to congratulate you on your appointment as Co-Chair of the Panel on UN system-wide coherence in the areas of humanitarian assistance, the environment and development. With this letter we want to assure you of our strong support for your mission.
In doing so we recognize that your work represents the best opportunity for a generation to reform the UN operational system and to help the Secretary General strengthen the UN so that it is fit to tackle the 21st Century challenges on human rights, sustainable development and security agreed in the Millennium Review Summit outcome document.
The terms of reference for the Panel's work are usefully broad, allowing the Panel plenty of scope to examine the full range of issues and to formulate a new vision for the UN operational system. This vision should be shaped by consideration of the challenges facing the UN operational system including working for attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. This includes helping partner countries to absorb new and additional aid and to use this effectively to secure tangible outcomes for poor people.
Working towards a new vision, we believe the Panel has an opportunity to strengthen and accelerate the reform of UN operations at country level already underway, and to expand these to include restructuring at a regional and global level. With this in mind we would like to draw your attention to a few important principles that we believe will help to shape and underpin a new vision for the future:
- orientation towards supporting sustainable development and the achievement of the agreed international development goals, including the MDGs;
- policy and institutional coherence;
- more unified presence than today at country level with one UN country team, one country representative for the whole system and one integrated, results based plan;
- support to national priorities and processes as well as efficient and timely delivery;
- clear division of labor and effective partnerships, based on comparative advantages between the UN system, Global Funds, bilateral actors and the IFIs.
The UN operational system should also be provided with adequate and predictable multi-year funding on the basis of enhanced burden-sharing. The way in which funding is allocated should also be considered to ensure that it creates incentives to maximize the performance of the UN development system in helping partner countries to secure development outcomes through more effective aid.
These and the other issues listed in the attached annex are in our view highly relevant for the study. We believe that a focus of the study should be on development, but with due attention to the inter linkages between development, humanitarian and environment work, and peace and security. We welcome that the Panel has been asked to include in its report clear benchmarks for results to be achieved in the short and medium term. This is vital if we are to have an effective means of monitoring progress.
As stated in the terms of reference for the study, UN reform work on humanitarian assistance is progressing steadily and has already yielded significant results. The efforts to explore the possibility of a more coherent and integrated institutional framework for UN´s environment work is also underway. Progress in these areas must be taken into account by the panel.
We believe that it will be important to build a broad consensus across the membership of the UN to support the conclusions and recommendations of the panel and to ensure a successful outcome. To that end we would encourage the Panel to consult widely with all stakeholders. In particular we know that you will want to ensure that the voice of developing country partners is heard. Outreach activities, both in New York and in capitals, will no doubt be an important part of your work. You can count on our support for these activities.
Finally, we are pleased to inform you that several of us have decided to give financial support to the Panel by making a substantial contribution to its extra budgetary costs. Also we hope that you will be successful in mobilizing resources from a wider circle of UN member countries.
Yours sincerely,
- H.E. Mr Johan C Verbeke, Permanent Mission of Belgium to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Allan Rock,Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations
- H.E. Ms Ellen Margrethe Løj, Permanent mission of Denmark to the United Nations
- H.E. Ms Kirsti Lintonen, Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Jean-Marc de la Sablière, Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Gunter Pleuger, Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr David J Cooney, Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Jean-Marc Hoscheit, Permanent Mission of Luxembourg to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Franciscus Antonius Maria Majoor, Permanent Mission of Netherlands to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Johan L Løvald, Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Anders Lidén, Permanent Mission of Sweden to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr Peter Maurer, Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations
- H.E. Sir Emyr Jones Parry, Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations
cc: H.E. Ms Luisa Dias Diogo, Moçau, Prime Minister of Moçambique
H.E. Mr Shurkart Aziz, Prime Minister of Pakistan
The G13 countries are: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxemburg, the etherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom