ECOSOC 20TH JULY 2007

General Segment


Morning Session
Introductory remarks on the annual overview report of the UN Chief Executives Board (CEB) for coordination for 2006/2007
By Mr. Adnan Amin, Director, CEB Secretariat

The report highlights the major developments in inter-agency cooperation within the framework of CEB and its High-Level Committees on Programmes (HLCP) and Management (HLCM) during the period covering the fall 2006 and spring 2007 sessions of CEB.
The CEB’s work over the reporting period was characterized by a renewed sense of urgency and a strong sense of common purpose enabling the Board to take a more ambitious approach to both policy development and implementation to enhance the strategic contribution of CEB to addressing the global challenges that the international community is facing.
Major topics addressed included the new mandate entrusted to ECOSOC, the evolution of concept of the one UN at the country level, mainstreaming the employment and decent work agenda, aid-for-trade and the Brussels Programme of Action for Last Developing Countries.
The new mandate of ECOSOC provided new opportunities for a more meaningful policy dialogue between the Council and the UN system on system-wide coordination and policy coherence that will be further developed over time.
CEB member organizations underscored the need for better ways of engaging the UN system in a real dialogue with Council’s members across all the ECOSOC segments.
With regard to the One UN at the country level, the CEB recognised that the principal determinant of the perceived effectiveness of the UN system among both donor and developing countries was the effectiveness of its work at the country level.
In the implementation of the pilot approach, the Board recognized the crucial role of Resident Coordinators and resolved to ensure that clear and coherent direction was provided to them and an appropriate framework developed for managing their work.
The Board endorsed the establishment of an evaluation process for the pilot projects to benefit from a well defined laerning process.
The CEB’s considerationof employment and decent work provides a good example of the increasing importance of developing system-wide responses in CEB to key intergovernmental mandates.
Moreover, the CEB’s discussion on Aid-for-Trade was aimed at developing a common understanding among its members and to ensure a full involvment of the UN system to support the objective for the Aid-for-Trade initiative that arose from the Doha development round.
The challenge to the system was to maximize the productive aspects of trade liberalization while also dealing with negative impacts.
A consistent theme of the CEB has been the need to substantially improve its functioning in light of an increased sense of opportunity and expectation for a more effective response to major global issues, and to ensure that all the analytical and operational capacities in the system are brought to bear on meeting those challenges and maximising the System’s resonsiveness to the needs of member states and the international community.
The Board agreed that the key issue central to the functionig of CEB included the harmonization of business practices, systems and procedures across the system, effective responses to global policies issues, and country level operation.


Introduction of the Report of the ECOSOC Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haïti, by the delegation of Canada

The ad hoc advisory group on Haiti is composed of the Permanent Representatives of Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Haiti, Spain and Trinidad and Tobago to the UN.Its mandate has been extended to the purpose of following closely and providing advice on Haiti’s long-term development strategy to promote socio-economic recovery and stability.

Ø Economic and social development of Haiti: status and prospects
· Macroeconomic performance
The group note the positive and sustained progress made in the field since the transitional government of 2004, leading to an increased growth rate of 2.5 per cent expected for fiscal year 2006 and a dicrease in the inflation rate from 38% in 2003 to 8.6% in February 2007.
These are the results of important reform efforts carried out in the field of economic governance.
Haiti has started to realize the dividends of those efforts, which were acknoledged by most donors at the International Conference for the Economic and Social Development of Haiti, held in Madrid in November 2006.
But, despite thi situation, it should be borne in mind that Haiti’s economic governance structures are extremely limitated.
· Persistence of negative social indicators
Social indicators for Haiti remain persistently low or in decline, particularly in Health.
Poverty remains endemic. In fact, Haiti is not in a position to reach any of the MDGs by 2015.
During its visit in 2007, the group witnessed the extend of both urban and rural poverty.
In addition to these difficluties, some continuing socio-economic trends in Haiti will have long-terme consequences for the capacity of the coutry to emerge from widespread poverty, in particular:
- the continued increase in Haiti’s population
- the living conditions of children and youth
- the feminization of poverty
- the increase in violence and organized crime
- continued environmental degradation
· Prospects for long-term development: the engines of growth
The ad hoc advisory group identified three sectors with just that potential, which the government is willing to promote: tourism, agriculture and the textile/assembly industry.
The geographic situation of Haiti makes it a natural destination for large-scale tourism, a sector that declines over the years with repeated political turmoil and the consequent degradation of tourism infrastrucutre.
Because Haiti is primarly an agriculture country, promotion of this sector is a necessary stage of its development.
Haiti has also development potential in the industrial sector because of the low cost of manpower and the potential to generate many jobs.

Ø Need for institutional capacity-building in Haiti
· Weakness of state institutions
The Haiti public sector is characterized by the scarcity of civil servants and their concentration in the capital, Port au Prince.
The President and the Government, supported by UNDP, have established mechanisms to launch a reform of the civil service, to improve the management of human resources in the public sector and to harmonize the methods of work among ministries.
Among public institutions, those in charge of enforcinfg the law while ensuring respect for the rule of law deserve specific attention.
The strenghtening of law enforcement institutions requires concomitantly an improved justice system which, compared to the police force, has not received a similar level of support from the international community.
The Parliament, which was duly elected, last year, has a decisive role to play in the processes of institutional reform that require new legislation.
The Group therefore supports the idea of the Parliament receiving appropriate support from development partners, including through the strenghtening of “parlementary unit” within MINUSTAH.
· Consequences for aid management and delivery
Since 2004, international development partners have resumed a strong involvement in Haiti, aware of the fact that political stability and development are interconnected and that the situation in the country will remain fragile as long as basic socio-economic development concerns are not properly addressed.
It is important to define immediate short, medium and long terme action and to start with easily achievable goals.
Thus, one of the most visible consequences of the weakeness od State institutions is a large number of non-governmental organizations active in Haiti.
Continuing to invest in the capacity-building of Haitian institutions is essential and that is true for the three branches (executive, legislative and judicial) and for the various levels of government (central, deconcentrated and decentralized).

Ø Recommandations
· The group is encouraged by the evolution of the situation, including in the security sector in haiti and calls on all national stakeholders to continue reforms for the long-terme development of the country
· The group also calls on international stakeholders to stay the course and to consider increasing their suppot for Haiti
· It is imperative that Haiti remain on the international agenda and that appropriate support be given to the country, in particular by means of a strong UN presence on the ground through MINUSTAH.


Introduction of the draft report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group of Guinea-Bissau, by the delegation of South-Africa

The report describes the situation in Guinea-Bissau and provides highlights of the work of the group over the last year.
The country has been affected by tensions among the major political parties.
A new crisis erupted on March 2007 when a new coalition of parties within the Parliament passed a motion of non-confidence against the Prime Minister. On April 2007, Martinho Dafa Cabi was appointed by President Viera as the new Prime Minister. The group is hopeful that this new start will be used by all national stakeholders as an opportunity to achieve political and institutional stability.
A new issue of concern to the advisory group is a marked increase in drug trafficking.

Economic and social situation
The economic and social situation in the country has continued to deteriorate.
The recent pace of economic growth has not been sufficient to slow the deterioration of living conditions. The cause of this phenomenon was attributed by IMF to deteriorating terms of trade resulting from a dramatic rise in oil prices and a significant drop in the export of cashew nuts.
The government has been unable to generate adequate revenues owing to lower-than-expected taxes on cashews export and fees from fishing licenses.

International donor support to Guinea-Bissau
International donor support continues to remain critical in helping the government of Guinea-Bissau to meet its short-terms priorities.
The Government presented its poverty reduction strategy paper, its security sector reform plan and its 2006 and 2007 draft budget, which, combined, totaled for around $540 million.
The security reform plan is based on the following strategies:
· resizing the defence and security sector to bring it in line with the country’s needs
· modernizing the sector in line with its role
· clarifying the status of former national freedom fighters
· strengthening the participation of the sector in consolidating sub regional security
· building capacities in the justice sector
· involving civil society in the implementation of reform in this sector

Donors contributed a total of $262.5 million (48% of the fund request, including $233.1 million to support the implementation of the poverty reduction strategy papers), and $29.5 million for budgetary support for 2006 and 2007.

However, Guinea-Bissau has been unable to clear its fiscal gap for 2007.
Another key factor affecting the disbursement of pledges was the difficult political climate in the country.

The UN system continues to provide support to Guinea-Bissau in several areas, as education, health or food security.

The group stressed the importance of an orderly political evolution in the country, in accordance with the procedures and requirements contained in the Constitution.

Short-term priorities and medium-term prospects
The most urgent need is the disbursement of funds pledges at the 2006 donor round-table conference.
The group welcomes the formation of the new Government and its emphasis on national reconciliation and believes that this is an opportunity to strengthen political and institutional stability.
The report of the group in 2006 pointed to the need for short-term solutions to help the country manage its unsustainable debt.
Another critical short-term need is the implementation of security sector reform.
Progress over the medium-term requires that fund pledges for the implementation of the national poverty reduction plan be disbursed.
The Group once again stressed that putting Guinea-Bissau on a path of internally driven, sustainable development will require a comprehensive economic diversification strategy, supported by the international community, including the UN system.
Another critical challenge has been poor management in public administration.

Conclusions and recommendations
Guinea-Bissau continues to face serious challenges, which should be addressed on an urgent basis if violent conflict is to be avoided.
In the light of recent difficult circumstances, the Group is of the view that is would be useful to continue to monitor the situation, in particular the close link between emergency economic needs and political instability.
The Group also believes that there is room to further expand its interaction with national authorities and its collaboration with other organizations in support of Guinea-Bissau.
In conclusion, the advisory group would like to draw the attention of the Council to the importance of a coherent international response to countries in crisis.

Afternoon Session

This session of the ECOSOC was devoted to the issues of non governmental organizations (NGOs). The Council had first to deal with the recommendations of the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, which recommended 92 applications for consultative status in its regular session of January 2007 and 89 applications in its regular session of May 2007. The Consultative status was actually granted to all the NGOs recommended by the Committee, including the Geneva International Model of United Nations (GIMUN) – a student run NGO seeking to promote the aims and purpose of the UN - in the application of which the author of this report has been deeply involved.

Two questions in particular were debated and deserve to be mentioned here: on the one hand, two NGOs concerning gay and lesbian issues (the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights and the Coalition gaie et lesbienne du Québec) had seen - as usual for the NGO dealing with this kind of topics - their application being refused by the Committee on NGO. But the question was here put into voting thanks to the western countries (Canada and Portugal in the name of the EU), which were deploring a kind of discrimination by the Committee, and in both cases the recommendation of the Committee was reversed. A first resolution was adopted with respect to the Coalition gaie et lesbienne du Québec the Consultative and as second one was also adopted with respect to the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights the status. These resolutions actually do not grant the Status to the NGOs, they just mean that their applications will be discussed in another session of the ECOSOC. On the other hand, the Council has to deal with a problem caused by an NGO called “Liberal International” (LI), whose representative supported the accession of Taiwan to the WHO during the Human Rights Council session of Mars 2007. China first wanted to withdraw the Consultative status of Liberal International and definitely exclude the NGO from the ECOSOC fora, but a compromise was finally found and the Consultative status of LI will just be suspended for one year. Many western countries deplored this decision, arguing that no fault had been committed by LI. The Agenda of the 2008 session of the Committee on NGO was finally adopted.