NATIONAL INTERVENTION – INTERACTIVE DIALOGUE WITH THE UNDP ADMINISTRATOR
Agenda Item 7: Midterm Review of the UNDP Strategic Plan 2022-2025, including the Annual Report of the Administrator for 2023
Executive Board of UNDP, UNFPA, and UNOPS
Annual Session
4 June 2024
Statement by H.E. Mr James Larsen, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations
Administrator, Mister President,
UNDP continues to be instrumental to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Australia is pleased to provide multi-year core funding to UNDP, and to contribute to the UNDP Strategic Plan and its four-year trajectory.
We welcome the mid-term review of the Strategic Plan. Today my remarks reflect on this review, and will focus on two comments, and one question:
First, we commend UNDP for making gains in human rights, gender equality and for marginalised groups.
Australia fully supports, for example, UNDP’s expansion of financial services for women, people with disabilities, displaced people, and ethnic minorities.
We applaud UNDP for helping more than 60 countries fulfill their internationally agreed human rights obligations.
UNDP’s work to ensure that gender equality is a priority in national climate plans, and in public finance, is also an endeavour that Australia whole-heartedly supports.
These successful efforts show how UNDP is targeting key levers to build inclusive, resilient, and prosperous societies.
Australia agrees with the review’s point that UNDP still needs to better address intersecting forms of discrimination.
We strongly encourage UNDP to keep honing its strategic policy offer, in collaboration with sister UN agencies, on this matter.
Second, we underscore the review’s assessment that UNDP has an important role to play in bolstering market confidence.
We agree that strategic engagement with the private sector, and strengthening ties with international financial institutions, must be a focus for UNDP going forward.
This will help us boost our collective progress on achieving the 2030 Agenda and leaving no one behind.
I would like to conclude with a two-part question on UNDP’s dependency on earmarked funding: we are concerned that UNDP is witnessing a persistent concentration of earmarked resources. Meanwhile, flexible funding instruments, like pooled funds, remain under-capitalised for UNDP.
I’d welcome UNDP’s reflections on this issue.
Thank you.