Papua New Guinea UN Country Fund

Overview

The United Nations has a special contribution to make to the achievement of Papua New Guinea’s growth and development outcomes. This contribution is not primarily financial. It is as standard-setter, policy adviser, capacity developer, implementation supporter, coordination specialist, and catalyst – including of new approaches at the grass roots level that can lead to systemic and national change. In response to the many challenges and opportunities facing the UN in PNG, the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) in PNG has pro-actively taken up the challenges of the UN Reform, resulting in new innovative approaches to programme and operational design and delivery.

In an effort to consolidate and focus further innovations at the country level, the UNCT has agreed to consolidate the reform with the ultimate objective to establish ‘One UN’ based on 5 components as reflected in the Joint UN Country Strategy:

• UN Programme (PNG UN Country programme 2008-2012);
• UN Operations (harmonizing and aligning UN business practices);
• UN Communications and Advocacy (providing a joint UN communication framework);
• UN Country Fund supported by an integrated UN resource mobilization strategy; and
• UN Haus (creating single country presence of UN agencies).

The development and implementation of the 5 elements is supported by a results based management approach and change management activities in support of the ongoing transition of the agency based service delivery model towards the “integrated UN delivery model”.

The PNG UN Country Fund is governed by its Terms of References and allows the UN System in PNG to move towards a single financing mechanism for development, with the majority of UN development funds being managed by the PNG UN Country Fund. The PNG UN Country Fund provides therefore a means for further consolidation of UN funding mechanisms in PNG and coherent mobilization, allocation and disbursement of donor resources in support of the five Delivery as One elements of the Joint UN Country Strategy. All additional resources mobilized through the joint UN resource mobilization efforts and an increasing amount of agency non-core/other resources will be managed through the PNG UN Country Fund. Agencies core/regular resources remain outside the PNG UN Country Fund.

The PNG UN Country Fund is administered by the Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in accordance with its financial regulations and rules.