nextWe are no donors. We don’t implement, except perhaps in emergencies. What are we, and what are our contributions to development?
WHO knows everything and does nothing.
UNDP knows nothing and does nothing.
UNICEF knows nothing and does everything.
You have heard this before. With UN reform chugging away, I
no longer find this funny.
A development agency either gives advice, or money, or both.
If our intellectual contributions are brilliant and deal with the most urgent
national priority as confirmed by Government, we probably wouldn’t need to
provide money. In most countries, our financial contributions are negligible
compared to those of other donors. If our analysis, planning and management
advice would be great, wouldn’t many Governments take it and reshuffle their own
resources away from lower priority stuff? Perhaps donors would give money to
Governments to implement our good ideas. Would it matter who pays the bill?
But some say that we need funds to buy a seat at the national planning table,
where we can mete out our ideas. This table gets increasingly crowded with the
PRSP guys and those from the SWAPs and those from the MDG task teams. Maybe it
is time to find a better balance between the focus on fund administration, and
the generation of global experience, knowledge and best development practice[1].
So that – once we have secured our seat at the negotiation table – we know what
to say.
And – perhaps - if we are known to say something really solid, convincing and
cutting-edge, we wouldn’t need to buy a seat anymore.
[1] Do we know how much staff time and costs we spend on fund administration, in contrast to knowledge generation, processing and dispensing?
(23 May 2003)
previous
next