From left to right: Dr. Luis Almagro, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay; Ms. Asha-Rose Migiro, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General; Mr. José Mujica, President of Uruguay; Ms. Helen Clark, Chief of the United Nations Development Group and UNDP Administrator; Mr. Le Luong Minh, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam
International authorities share experiences and results on the UN reform process aimed at improving cooperation for development
Montevideo, November 9th 2011. Representatives of 30 governments, experts and multilateral cooperation authorities started yesterday in Montevideo the IV High Level Intergovernmental Conference on Delivering as One. The Conference aims to exchange experiences and evaluate the results of the UN reform process Delivering as One, which started in 2007.
During the opening session, messages were delivered by Uruguayan President José Mujica, UN Deputy Secretary-General, Asha-Rose Migiro, Viet Nam Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Luong Minh, Norway International Cooperation Vice Minister Ingrid Fiskaa and Uruguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis Almagro.
In opening the session, Uruguayan President, Mr. José Mujica affirmed that “globalization does not look for justice or equity and this is why we have to empower the UN, since its work focuses on vulnerable populations and achieving better levels of equality”. Mujica thanked the UN cooperation efforts in Uruguay, stressing that “a lot has been done, but there is still a lot, a lot, to be accomplished in order to improve the situation of poor people”. The Uruguayan President noted that “the need to bring food to poor people but also provide them with capacities in order to enable them to improve their situation”. Mujica remarked that “Latin America is the most unequal continent on the face of the Earth, in spite of having many natural resources, a common culture and almost a same language; this is because the continent has not lived searching its real possibilities”.
The UN Deputy Secretary-General, Ms. Asha-Rose Migiro mentioned that the coming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Río+20), to be held next year in Rio de Janeiro, is a unique chance “to set the world on a more prosperous, more equitable and more sustainable and greener course”. She stressed that it is our challenge “to turn agreements into concrete actions”. Making reference to the current world economic “tough times”, Ms. Migiro underlined that “we cannot let the world’s poor be left even farther behind”. She underscored that experiences from the eight pilot countries in Delivering as One have shown that results “are reflected in far more than savings”, and “can also be measured by national ownership and leadership”. Ms. Migiro added that “there is no going back to the way we operated before Delivering as One”.
The Viet Nam Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Le Luong Minh –whose country hosted the Third High Level Meeting on Delivering as One- stressed that this new way of working has obtained substantial results, adding that Delivering as One may is a great contribution to increase the UN impact trough greater coherence in its development programmes. Mr. Minh underlined that is crucial “fuller involvement of headquarters in resources management and harmonization of business practices”.
The Vice minister of International Cooperation of Norway, Ms. Ingrid Fiskaa, said that there is no return in the working process of Delivering as One. And she added that the different evaluations which are being carried out have shown that results have been achieved, specially its alignment with national government priorities.
Since 2007, eight pilot countries (Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay and Vietnam) are part of the Delivering as One initiative, whose goal is to improve the coordination and efficiency of the cooperation among the several agencies, funds, programmes and commissions of the UN. During the last years, more than 20 countries have started a similar work based on the Delivering as One initiative

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