THREE YEARS AGO, at its forty-seventh session, the General Assembly set in motion the process of formulating an Agenda for Development. Since then, considerable effort has been devoted both at the intergovernmental level and by the Secretariat to its elaboration.
In November 1994, in a report to the General Assembly (A/49/665), I presented four principal recommendations on "An Agenda for Development" for the consideration of Member States at the forty-ninth session of the General Assembly.
These were: (a) that development should be recognized as the foremost and most far-reaching task of our time; (b) that while it must be seen in its many dimensions -- in the contexts of peace, the economy, environmental protection, social justice and democracy -- development at its core must be about improvement of human well-being, the removal of poverty, hunger, disease and ignorance, ensuring productive employment and the satisfaction of priority needs of all people in a way that can be sustained over future generations; (c) that the emerging consensus on the priority and dimensions of development should find expression in a new framework for international cooperation; and (d) that within this new framework for development cooperation, the United Nations must play a major role in both policy leadership and operations.
I further outlined the need for a new framework for world development cooperation that requires supporting actions at the national and international levels and a strong and effective multilateral system, at the centre of which would be the United Nations, with its unmatched global network at all levels. The United Nations can promote awareness, build consensus and inform policy in every dimension affecting development and can help rationalize and harmonize the multiplicity of public and private efforts worldwide. An important element in the new framework should be improved cooperation between the United Nations, its specialized agencies and the Bretton Woods institutions.
The General Assembly has primary responsibility to bring together all these aspects in an Agenda for Development. The aim should be to provide consistent policy guidance that would contribute to greater coherence and integration of the development work of the United Nations system. This implies strengthening the capacity of the Assembly to provide such harmonized policy guidance by a careful review of the working methods of its Second and Third Committees, so that the debates in those Committees could be sharply focused on key policy issues and their mutual complementarities enhanced. Secondly, a revitalized Economic and Social Council could greatly assist the Assembly by bringing to its attention recommendations leading to the adoption of harmonized and integrated policies. The relationship between those central bodies and the Bretton Woods institutions, on the one hand, and the funds and programmes and specialized agencies, on the other, could be built around shared objectives and a common purpose leading to closer cooperation and joint actions at the country level.
Recent pronouncements of the summit meeting of seven major industrialized countries, which was held at Halifax, Canada, in June 1995, as well as of the Ministerial Meeting of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Countries held at Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1995, signify a resolute willingness on the part of the international community at the political level to see a strong United Nations system working in unison for the realization of internationally agreed goals and objectives. Efforts to make United Nations operational activities more efficient and effective begin with the identification of those areas where it has special assets and strengths that can support the process of development. Given shared vision and a common purpose, coordination and integration in the Organization's operational activities can be ensured.
This issue was considered during the coordination segment of the Economic and Social Council in July 1995. At my request, the Administrator of UNDP, who assists the Secretary-General in ensuring policy coherence and the coordination of operational activities for development, initiated a process of consultation among senior United Nations officials on coordination mechanisms that can be instituted on conference follow-up at the inter-agency level, thus mobilizing the United Nations system as a whole through thematic inter-agency task forces at the national, regional and headquarters levels.
During the forty-ninth session of the General Assembly, Member States decided to establish an open-ended working group to elaborate further an action-oriented comprehensive agenda for development, taking into account the reports and recommendations presented by the Secretary-General pursuant to Assembly resolutions 47/181 of 22 December 1992 and 48/166 of 21 December 1993, the outcome of the high-level segment of the 1994 substantive session of the Economic and Social Council, the views expressed by representatives in the high-level debate held during the forty-ninth session of the Assembly, as well as the summary of the World Hearings on Development and proposals presented by Member States and other parties.
The Working Group was required to submit a report on the progress of its work to the General Assembly before the conclusion of its fiftieth session. A compendium containing the goals, targets and commitments of major United Nations conferences held and agreements signed since 1990, as well as an assessment of the status of their implementation, was submitted by the Secretariat to the Working Group following its first session. That document was a complement to the background information already identified in Assembly resolution 49/126 of 19 December 1994.
At the Working Group's second session, held from 15 to 26 May 1995, Governments presented their views on the structure and content of the Agenda for Development during the formal meetings, which were preceded and followed by inter-sessional consultations. The Working Group reached a consensus on the structure of the Agenda and defined modalities for developing its text during the third and final session, yet to be held. A tentative comprehensive structure was adopted, consisting of three chapters, the first devoted to setting goals and objectives; the second representing the bulk of the Agenda, providing a policy framework and identifying priority actions for development, together with means of implementation; and the third dealing with institutional issues and follow-up.
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