UN agencies sign country plans worth US $411

Four United Nations agencies signed their Country Programme Action Plans (CPAP) with the government of Pakistan on Tuesday, pledging to undertake development work worth US $411 million over a five-year period stretching till the end of 2008. The Action Plans contribute to an overall UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), which was approved by the government in April 2003, and are intended to help Pakistan achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The four agencies - the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) - will use a common format in partnership with the government for the first time. “The CPAPs identify what will be the actions that will be taken to transfer and convert the UNDAF in a country programme into concrete actions and identify partnerships within the UN agencies to achieve these common outcomes,” Farhan Sabih, the head of the governance unit at UNDP in Pakistan, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. “In that sense, when we are able to work together, this will contribute to a higher impact in the UN programmes in the country and they are mandated by the direction that is coming from the corporate level,” he maintained. Onder Yucer, the UN’s Resident Coordinator in Pakistan, said, at the signing ceremony, that the plans were “in accordance with the reforms of the UN introduced by the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.” “The reforms aim at simplification and harmonisation of procedures in development cooperation in order to attain maximum benefit for member states,” he added. The government would find it easier to coordinate all UN development agencies because of this step, Sabih said. “I think, for the government, it makes it easy to coordinate all UN development agencies because it’s all now within that framework and they can then ensure that all UN agencies are contributing towards that framework and supporting national initiatives like poverty and governance issues and other things that are highlighted,” he explained.