Statement by

H.E. Ambassador Le Hoai Trung

Permanent Representative of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam to the United Nations

on behalf of the Association of the South East Asian Nations

 

Agenda Item 25: Operational activities for development of the Second Committee

67^th Session of the United Nations General Assembly

                                                (New York, October 15, 2012)

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Mr. Chairman,

 

I have the honour of delivering this statement on behalf of the ten member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely  Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

            ASEAN associates itself with the statement made by the distinguished representative of Algeria on behalf of the Group 77 and China.

Mr. Chairman,

 

ASEAN attaches great importance to development cooperation which constitutes as one of the main pillars of work of the UN today. As developing countries that have gone through different stages of development, ASEAN members have benefited greatly and highly appreciate the assistance provided by the UN through its operational activities for development. In particular, ASEAN wishes to express its appreciation to UN-ESCAP for the constructive role in supporting ASEAN Community building through promoting regional connectivity, building resilience and bridging development gaps among countries in the region. We also look forward to continued support and co-operation of the UN with ASEAN countries in various fields in the time ahead. In this connection, as the Secretary-General reaffirmed during the ASEAN-United Nations Ministerial Meeting on 28 September 2012 the readiness of the UN to work closely with ASEAN on concrete collaborative activities under the framework of the ASEAN-United Nations Comprehensive Partnership, ASEAN invites the UN development system to engage closely with ASEAN with a view to implementing the Comprehensive Partnership as a matter of priority.

ASEAN commends efforts made by the Secretary General, the leadership and staff of the UN development system and by member states to promote UN development co-operation in many respects and make elaborate preparations for the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review process. We welcome the Secretary General’s report which detailed many concrete recommendations.

First of all, ASEAN believes it is important to reiterate that the nature of development co-operation derives from and is based on the Charter of the United Nations, which stipulates that the main purpose of the UN includes international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character (Article 1 and 55 of the Charter). As asserted many times by member states in important UN resolutions and documents, development is one of the main areas of work of the UN and instrumental to the efforts by the international community to maintain peace, security and promote human rights. In reality, development co-operation and operational activities have expanded remarkably and brought about tangible and significant results to the socio-economic development process in many countries.

For this reason, ASEAN holds the role of the UN development system in high regard and acknowledges the comparative advantages of the different UN funds, programs and specialised agencies. We share the view that there have been developments in the international arena and at the national level that create new opportunities as well as challenges. The changing architecture of the global development cooperation indeed requires the UN development system to remain able to deliver optimum results and most importantly to better reflect the changes in the international development cooperation into its system.  In this respect, the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review also holds the key in initiating discourse on reforming the governance within the UN development system particularly with the aim of promoting a more balanced geographic and gender representation.

At the same time, the fundamental characteristics and principles for UN operational activities for development must be ensured and should remain, inter alia, their universal, voluntary and grant nature, their neutrality and their multilateralism, as well as their ability to respond to the development needs of programme countries in a flexible manner. Operational activities carried out must be for the benefit of programme countries, at the request of those countries and in accordance with their own policies and priorities for development.

Secondly, ASEAN shares the common concern of the developing countries that resources for development activities are in serious decline and in this regard calls donor countries to honour their commitment of financial assistance for UN operational activities, in particular to narrow the enormous imbalance between core and non-core resources. In ensuring stable and predictable funding, development partners could consider multi-year financing frameworks or other appropriate modalities. We support the recommendation by the Secretary General that the General Assembly, Executive Boards of UN development system organs and member states could further discuss this issue in the near future.

While priorities should be given to countries most in need, in particular LDCs and LLDCs, in order to realize the internationally agreed development goals, ASEAN would also wish to highlight the need for development assistance from middle income countries, especially the demand for greater capacity-building, as they face new and numerous challenges that are specific to MICs.

Thirdly, ASEAN strongly supports efforts to reform the UN development system with a view to enhancing greater coherence, effectiveness and efficiency at all levels and improving the UN’s mandate of operational activities for development. It is important to emphasize that strong government ownership is critical to this process. In this regard, Delivering as One is an example of such efforts. Based on actual implementation of the initiative across countries and on existing evaluation and assessment reports, it is recommended that the UN development system promote success stories and address the outstanding issues. On the other hand, the principle of “no one size fits all” approach should be reiterated and the implementation of Delivering as One and/or other modalities, if necessary, has to accommodate the specific characteristics and requirements of each particular country.

Mr. Chairman,

The growing role of South-South co-operation underscores the fact that it is an important modality to realise internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, due to the many common economic, geographical, regional and social characteristics that these countries share, thus further facilitating the process of expertise and resource sharing at relatively low cost. It is however, not to be considered as substitute but rather a complement to North-South co-operation. To this end, the UN with its central role for development should make greater effort to mobilise support for promoting South-South cooperation and we encourage development partners to scale up knowledge sharing, technology transfer and peer-learning, strengthening of policy and institutional frameworks.

Looking forward to the future, ASEAN believes that the priorities for the UN development system should focus on continuing the implementation of action plans, outcomes and goals agreed by member states in international conferences on development, including the MDGs, as well as those set out beyond the 2015 timeframe and in accordance with the UN sustainable development agenda and addressing the new emerging challenges posed to the development process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

           

 

Thùy Minh