2007/05/02

Social Watch participation at the first lunch of the new UN Deputy Secretary General with NGOs

Social Watch

On 2 May, 2007, sixteen representatives of Civil Society Organizations, including NGOs, met with the Deputy Secretary-General (DSG) of the United Nations, Ms. Ashe Rose Migiro at a luncheon co-hosted by the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES). The purpose of the meeting was to give an opportunity to NGOs to express their views on the report of the High-level Panel on UN System-Wide Coherence (“Delivering as one”). Cecilia Alemany (SW Secretariat) participated on behalf of Social Watch addressing some key questions from a Southern perspective.

During the last phase of the Kofi Annan’s mandate, a High Level Panel was composed to elaborate recommendations for the coherence of the UN. This panel presented its report the 9th November 2006, titled: “Delivering as One”.
Read the full Report at: http://www.un.org/events/panel/resources/pdfs/HLP-SWC-FinalReport.pdf

The new Secretary General ratified the panel recommendations informally and a formal note was published the 3th April 2007. Now the governments have to react and give their visions and recommendations around the One UN reform. The proposal today is not being rejected but put on a halt. On 2 May, 2007, sixteen representatives of Civil Society Organizations, including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) met with the Deputy Secretary-General (DSG) of the United Nations, Ms. Ashe Rose Migiro at a luncheon co-hosted by the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES). The purpose of the meeting was to give an opportunity to NGOs to express their views to the Deputy Secretary-General on the “Report of the Secretary General on the recommendations contained in the report of the High-level Panel on United Nations System-Wide Coherence.

Considering that one of the main political objectives of the current SW strategy is to strengthen the multilateralism, our concerns were based on this commitment. Cecilia Alemany took part on the meeting on behalf of Social Watch. In her presentation she addresses some weakness, concerns and questions related to the process.- From a Southern perspective the Coherence Panel agenda is in some way a donor driven agenda, with the same principles of the OECD-DAC and the Paris Declaration (harmonization, coordination, accountability, aid effectiveness and country ownership). And maybe part of the scepticism from the G77 countries is based on this assumption.

- One of the concerns is that most of the implications of the One UN reform are for the developing countries and the implications for the developed countries are not clear: it is just about increase ODA? This is a commitment than isn’t achieved in spite of Monterrey, and it is a real need. However, a reform of the UN has to be for the entire world and the commitments to evaluate it in the developed countries have to be clear and they have to be accountable in this sense too.

-The role of civil society is crucial in all these issues.

- Another central concept of the One UN reform is the national ownership, but there no concrete contents in the report to ensure it. There are some references to the PRSPs and the development plans but there are countries that don’t have PRSPs or even development plans; and if they have plans there are not always based in a multi-stakeholder process.

So, how can we evaluate if the One UN reform is aligned with the national ownership in these cases? How are they planning to monitor and evaluate the reform (comparing the pilot countries with themselves, with other, with what kind of timeline, looking at which agencies)? And what kind of role are they thinking for national civil society participation in the pilot countries?

- SW is going to follow up the process and what happen in the pilot countries, but also what happen in other countries that are not implementing the reform, and we are open to deepen the debate in these issues and send concrete recommendations to the DSG.

These questions were answered, saying that the evaluation is a real challenge and the need to define how they are going to do it is one of the key issues (assuming that they don’t know how to do it). In sum, another answer was that the country ownership is a responsibility of the governments, and the role of the civil society is very important but the CSOs have to be proactive and not wait to be invited, etc. This luncheon was the first of what is expected to become series of regular meetings with the DSG in her capacity for overseeing and supporting the implementation of the system-wide coherence reform agenda, a role given to her by the Secretary-General.