U.N. agencies unite to coordinate policies

It seems like common sense but when it comes to large international organisations that quality is not always so common. Today the various United Nations bodies working in Belize signed onto a new working relationship with the government of Belize. It’s called the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, UNDAF for short, and what it hopes to do is better coordinate efforts on poverty, AIDS and sustainable development.

Miriam de Figueroa, Resident Coordinator for Belize and El Salvador, United Nations
?The most important thing is that having this UNDAF as a framework for the U.N. system to work together and prepare the programmes of cooperation to assist the government, and to assist the needs of the Belizean population, is the most important coming out of this UNDAF.?

?In the past, we used to have each of our U.N. agencies working in the same country having its own program of cooperation. So then by now with the U.N. reform, what is expected that we are going to be more efficient in responding to the needs of the countries. We are going to use in a more effective way, the resources that we are bringing to the country to support initiatives and programmes in the countries where we have a presence.?

On Tuesday the Inter-American Development Bank announced a similar focus on direct assistance to those most in need.