The UN and Development: From Aid to Cooperation

12. Evolving Priorities, Patterns, and Trends, 1982–2005

twelve Evolving Priorities, Patterns, and Trends, 1982–2005 n Overall Profile of UN Technical Cooperation: Major Patterns n UNDP 1982–2005: Overall Goals and Evolving Funding and Programming Structures n Bringing in Governments as Executing Agencies n Coordinator of System-Wide Technical Development Cooperation? n Some Concluding Observations The UNDP’s formative years have been described and analyzed in chapter 7. This chapter will bring forward this descriptive analysis and emphasize changing trends. The analysis will focus on developments within a few policy areas that have been given particular importance by the UNDP and have become part of its identity, namely its roles as: n Guardian of the sovereignty of member states in the asymmetrical development cooperation relationship n Coordinator of technical assistance within the UN system n Facilitator of the poverty orientation of aid n Champion of the social and human dimensions of development What changes, if any, took place within these policy areas during the two final decades of the past century? What were the main drivers of the evolving policy? Overall Profile of UN Technical Cooperation: Major Patterns In 1982, total operational development assistance to developing countries by the United Nations system amounted to $4.5 billion. This assistance included expenditures and disbursements from all organizations, 366 n The Lost Decade and a New Beginning including the IDA, IFAD, and UNEP, and assistance to refugees, humanitarian assistance, and related activities. It did not include cost-sharing or expenditures for administration and program support. Of this amount, $2.1 billion was provided as grants. The total amount accounted for about 13 percent of the total development assistance received by developing countries that year. In 1984, the amount increased to $4.8 billion, of which $2.3 billion was provided in grants (exclusive of humanitarian aid) and $2.5 billion in concessional loans.1 The resources the UN system spent on operational development activities continued to grow for the rest of the decade. In 1990, it spent $7.6 billion on grants and concessional lending (divided equally). The amount increased in the early 1990s, reaching $9.5 billion in 1994, again divided fairly equally between grants and loans. The UN system provided an additional $1.2 billion in humanitarian and relief aid that year. Grant expenditure by the UN system on development activities (excluding IDA and IFAD concessional loans and humanitarian assistance) amounted to $4.86 billion in 1995, reaching $6.5 billion in 2000 and $9.7 billion in 2003.2 The regional distribution of system-wide grant assistance is given in table 12.1. Africa has been the largest recipient of grant assistance all along, but its share has decreased somewhat since the mid-1990s. Asia and the Pacific followed as the second largest recipient until the mid-1990s, but in subsequent years, Latin America and the Arab states, at differing times, came second. Table 12.2 shows the sectoral distribution of UN technical assistance. The distribution was influenced both by the source of funding (regular or extra-budgetary) and the organizations involved. The health sector tended to dominate regular budget-financed technical assistance, not least because of the size of the WHO’s regular budget and its concentration on technical assistance. UNDP expenditures financed by indicative planning figures, in contrast, reflected developing-country priorities and tended to be concentrated in such sectors as agriculture, forestry and fisheries, natural resources, and general development issues. Social sectors other than health (including education, employment, population, and social conditions ) generally absorbed a fairly large share. During the 1980s and early 1990s, important changes took place in the composition of multilateral technical cooperation in response to changes in the international environment. The most dramatic change involved the growth in humanitarian aid from next to nothing in 1982 (0.1 percent) to Table 12.1. UN Development Grants by Region, Selected Years, 1982–2003 (by percent and in billions of U.S. dollars)1 1982 1991 1995 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 Africa 42.5 47.6 42.0 34.4 33.4 26.7 25.1 28.2 Asia and the Pacific 38.8 39.4 26.2 24.3 21.0 21.8 23.1 17.2 The Americas2 10.5 8.2 21.3 30.4 20.3 19.8 19.0 15.6 Arab states3 6.2 4.0 5.3 7.5 13.0 15.5 17.0 27.5 Europe (and the CIS)4...