The most recent Partners to Fight Poverty 2001 Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) bears deeper scrutiny. I believe it is important that concerned human beings and civil society in general be made aware of the inadequacies that this Report brings to light. The additional details of the Report ( 70 pages on the net) point out more glaringly the significant problems not outlined in the summary document.

I acknowledge my bias with the Secretary General’s Millennium Declaration which in my opinion did not go far enough, fast enough for the disenfranchised of the world. It strikes me this Report does little more than allow the UNDP to seek to validate its existence. This Report may explain in part why the Secretary General did not go further in his Millennium Declaration.

The Report brings forth the idea of six basic themes intended to encourage the reader as to the value of the UNDP. Those are: poverty reduction, democratic governance, sustainable energy and the environment, crisis prevention and recovery, the war against HIV/AIDS and the drive to harness the power of information and communications technology revolution for development.

These notions are of great importance, and in the context of the document, there is a relevance implied to the state of the world, but unfortunately such relevance is articulated as a self-serving view of the UNDP which is clearly not functioning within these areas of social responsibility.

Firstly, let us look at what is not in the Report.

Culture of Peace. While there is one mention of the Culture of Peace in this report, and it is by way of an anecdotal comment from the President of Mozambique. It is strange indeed that values for a Culture of Peace do not find their way into this Reporting Document.

Education: There was little if any mention of the value of education, and the education in values. The values inherent in a Culture of Peace touch on each and every one of the main themes and there is little if anything identified as Education in this Reporting document.

The UN Global Compact. It may be early in the process of developing the UN Global Compact certainly the UNDP ought to engage the principles in its Reporting functions and discussion. No mention was made of this important initiative. Use of Technology: Given the importance of the theme – "the drive to harness the power of information and communications technology" it is indeed strange that the Report does not contain one e-mail address.

Sec. 143. The Administrator stressed that to attract resources and to gain the political commitment needed to win the fight against poverty, it was important to engage public opinion. UNDP had been working with the Department for Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat and the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) on follow-up activities to the Millennium Summit goals. The Administrator reported that, starting in 2001, he planned to undertake a global campaign targeted at governments, parliaments and civil society to create the political momentum needed to raise adequate resources and to give priority to public policy to ensure that globalization benefited everybody.

As an organization involved in the processes suggested above we are not aware of any attempt by the UNDP to engage public opinion and support of the political agenda in its approach to poverty. We are aware of the expressed commitment to raise $10 B for AIDS, however the reality of the funding discussion for this is not addressed, nor is the development of a funding strategy.

This Report does nothing to attract public investment, and in fact may have the opposite effect. The summary document and detail documents indicate financial mismanagement of the UNDP from numerous perspectives. From the basic numbers which are inconsistent ( UNDP Resources – the Net Income Received in 2000 on page 18 bears no resemblance to the numbers in the full Report. Core Resources of $618M plus Co-financing of $263 Total $881M. A soothsayer may be required to determine the relevance in the report which consistently refers to $2 Billion dollars of activity. Within the context of this above total, it is also interesting to note that only two countries of twenty leverage their Core Resources by a multiple of greater than one. (Italy and Australia) The contributions of the other eighteen countries reported are Co-financed between 10% and 40 % of Funding. The total budget, if taken as the primary development budget of Civil Society through its Nation State activity is an insult both to the United Nations, its founding principles and to the people of the planet.

It was anticipated when the UN reorganized itself that the position of Resident Coordinator would be an important function of the UN framework. This Report seems to indicate that no training was done in this important area, nor does there appear to be a specific training program with this intention. Certainly none of this discussion found its way into the details of the Report. This may be an incorrect observation but I am relying on the Report to make this observation. Additionally, there does not appear to be Co-operation with other agencies /UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, etc.

It is unclear from reading the details of the Report whether any co-operation exists between the various UN Agencies as the Resident co-ordinator function did not appear operational (my perspective). It was thought when the UN was reorganized several years ago that the position of Resident Co-ordinator of UN activities would have positive effect of making the local offices more effective. The details in the report (sec VI Internal Audit and Oversight 85-102) do little to set aside past stories of gross mismanagement of funding programs.

Overall perspective: The good thing about this report is the bad thing about this report: The UNDP is not adequately funded. There does not appear to be any efforts being made in the community to change this to the level required. I say this is a good thing because adequate systems do not appear to be in place even if the funding were available.

In short, the UNDP Report serves as a document that incriminates the United Nations Systems – the exact opposite of what the document is intended to accomplish.

Let us look at why this is our reality, and let us discuss this openly on the world stage.

Why is it that the UNDP has less than 1B dollars to work with? What is wrong with the collective intelligence of the Nation States that would allow this to be? Why are other activities of the UN not incorporated into the UNDP? The concepts of Culture of Peace and the UN Global Compact are not ideas that are separate form the activity of the UNDP but rather ought to be integrated into its very thinking.

The question is: Who is looking at the over-all picture of the budgets of UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO, UNIFEM, and others? Are we as civil society to consider this piece meal approach the "right way"?

The Chief Administrator has done an excellent job in putting the Report together in such a way that the true picture is not perceived by the reader. This may make the people he reports to happy, but does nothing for those of us that expect more from the UNDP and its activities.

It is clear from this report, that the UN will continue to be a failure until a larger perspective be brought the funding of global initiatives for the service of humankind. It is indeed ironic that the man who was charged with reorganizing the United Nations is quoted in this Report as saying: "The world Community has still not made the fundamental transition to a development pathway that will provide the human community with a sustainable and secure future". Was he referring to the Report?

And in my opinion, you do not have to look very far to know why we are in this mess. But thankfully there is a way out.

May the readers of this document consider wisely how the Culture of Peace Program as developed by the International Association of Educators for World Peace could alleviate the problems identified both in the Summary document and in this critique of that Report. Please visit www.hompelanet.org to understand the concluding observation.

Peace.

Mitchell Gold G.A.

Program Director

Culture of Peace