The UN's global development network

In the run-up to the February 2006 elections in Haiti, United Nations Volunteer (UNV) Alejandro Philion of Mexico distributed pamphlets on voter registration to help ensure that eligible voters in rural communities were included on the electoral roll.

Working at the heart of the UN system, and on the ground in 166 countries around the world, UNDP plays a unique role in global development. At the country level, we are often the "partner of choice" for governments grappling with national and global development challenges. This is because UNDP does not represent any one approach to development; rather, our commitment is to assist partner governments in finding their own approaches, according to their own unique national circumstances. It is also because UNDP, with a long-term presence in almost all developing countries, and extensive networks at the national, regional and global levels, is by its very nature an impartial broker, convenor and facilitator. In particular, we often play a pivotal role in helping countries to access development assistance and other forms of support, and to form strategic linkages, including, for example, with the global private sector.

UNDP also has a special set of responsibilities within the UN family, where it is charged with a coordinating role in the wider group of UN entities involved in development, via the UN Development Group (UNDG). At the country level, this means that the UNDP Resident Representative is at the same time the UN Resident Coordinator, with responsibility for promoting coherence among the various parts of the UN development system operating in any given country. This is a difficult task, especially in countries with large or complex UN programmes and given the essential autonomy of UN funds and programmes as well as specialized agencies. In 2005, the importance of this challenge came to the fore in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit South Asia in early October, in planning for the recovery phase in tsunami-affected countries, and in coping with the spread of avian flu. At present, UNDP is leading efforts to create joint UN offices, to strengthen the role of the Resident Coordinator, to bring more overall coherence to the work of country teams, and to promote knowledge networking within the wider UN system. All these issues are being addressed by the High- Level Panel on UN System-Wide Coherence, of which the UNDP Administrator is an ex-officio member.

Hand in hand with its brokering and coordinating functions—within the UN system, on behalf of partner governments—is UNDP's advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the concept of human development, the need to empower women, the critical role of the private sector and civil society, and other important development issues. UNDP advocates for equitable growth and sustainability at the global, regional and national levels, including through its series of global, regional and country-focused Human Development Reports.

At the same time, UNDP is also the UN development system's largest operational agency, focused on strengthening the capacities of its national partners. Development requires both "hardware"—the ports, roads, irrigation systems and production facilities that are essential to economic growth and development—as well as "software"—trained civil servants, effective electoral processes and parliaments, appropriate environmental and energy policies and other elements of national capacity that are financed and supported by UNDP and others. UNDP understands that countries must guide their own development, which is why developing national capacity is at the heart of our mission and the unifying thread that runs through everything we do.

UNDP's commitment to developing national capacity finds expression in its interconnected development practices: democratic governance, poverty reduction, crisis prevention and recovery, energy and environment, and HIV/AIDS. The largest of these is democratic governance, accounting for 47 percent of our operational activities in 2005, followed by poverty reduction (25 percent) and crisis prevention and recovery (12 percent). These practices are not objectives in themselves but rather conduits for UNDP's work in capacity development. They are, of course, interrelated, which means that UNDP's support helps developing countries address underlying cross-sectoral capacity constraints. This, in turn, can lead to more effective use of official development assistance and, more broadly, can help accelerate progress towards achieving the MDGs.

It is the bringing together under the same roof of these various roles—broker, coordinator and advocate, as well as on-the-ground efforts to strengthen institutions and capacities, that make UNDP such an effective partner for developing countries. In the area of trade, for example, UNDP works in global fora towards an open and development-friendly multilateral trading system, and at the country level, to help our national partners overcome institutional bottlenecks and build capacity to negotiate trade agreements. Another example is our work on the MDGs: we have been a leading advocate for the MDGs, through our support of the Millennium Project and the Millennium Campaign, as well as a host of MDG reports at the global, regional and national levels. At the same time, we are working actively to help countries anchor the MDGs in their national development strategies and strengthen capacity to ensure that their policies and budgets match the demands of meeting the goals. The following pages explain in greater detail how UNDP—at the centre of the UN system and as the trusted partner of developing countries—helps to address multi-dimensional development challenges around the world.