Economic and Social Council

 

38th plenary meeting
23 July 1999

 1999/5 - Poverty eradication and capacity­building

The Economic and Social Council,

Recalling General Assembly resolutions 51/178 of 16 December 1996 on the First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty and 53/192 of 15 December 1998 on the triennial policy review of operational activities for development of the United Nations system,

1. Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;

2. Recognizes that investment in human resources and domestic and international policies supportive of economic and social development are essential prerequisites for the eradication of poverty;

3. Calls upon the programmes, funds and agencies of the United Nations system to continue to give priority and to further enhance support to developing countries in their efforts to eradicate poverty;

4. Recognizes that formulating, coordinating, implementing, monitoring and assessing integrated poverty eradication strategies, including through capacity-building initiatives, is the primary responsibility of the Governments of recipient countries and calls upon the United Nations system to support these efforts upon the request of national Governments;

5. Also calls upon the United Nations development system organizations to support the strengthening of the capacity of Governments to establish data banks and to carry out poverty assessments at the country level;

6. Further calls upon the United Nations system, upon the request of Governments, to support policy analysis activities at the national and international levels, in particular regarding indicators relating to poverty eradication and human development strategies;

7. Requests the organizations of the United Nations system to continue to support, in a coherent and coordinated manner, national efforts to empower people living in poverty, in particular women, through, inter alia, education, sustainable livelihoods, health services, in particular health care, and employment­creation policies;

8. Reaffirms the importance of mainstreaming gender perspectives into all poverty eradication policies, including through gender­impact analyses, as women constitute the majority of persons living in poverty;

9. Stresses that national Governments have the primary responsibility for their country’s development and for coordinating development assistance, as well as enhancing its effectiveness;

10. Urges, in this context, further progress in harmonizing United Nations system support to national poverty eradication programmes through mechanisms such as the common country assessment and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, fully consistent with and in support of national priorities as expressed in the country strategy notes or relevant national development plans, as appropriate, as well as full use of thematic groups and other coordination mechanisms within the Resident Coordinator system, in order to provide an integrated, coordinated and collaborative response by the United Nations system to national priorities for poverty eradication;

11. Calls upon the United Nations system to strengthen cooperation with all development partners in supporting national development priorities and policies, reflecting the cross-cutting nature of poverty eradication and capacity-building, including by increased collaboration with multilateral financial institutions, particularly the World Bank, taking note of its new initiatives, the International Monetary Fund, regional banks, as well as other donors, the private sector and other civil society organizations, as appropriate;

12. Encourages the United Nations system to take further steps to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and impact of its support to poverty eradication programmes, including by undertaking impartial, transparent and independent joint evaluations under the overall leadership and with the full and effective involvement of the Government;

13. Underlines the importance of the interdependence and the interlinkage between development assistance and national capacity-building;

14. Stresses that the United Nations system should adopt flexible responses to specific capacity-building needs as articulated by the recipient countries in accordance with their national development plans and priorities;

15. Takes note of the steps being taken to implement General Assembly resolution 53/192, paragraph 37, dealing with capacity-building, particularly the development of United Nations system guidance on capacity-building, with a view to making it an explicit objective of programmes and projects supported by the system, within the context of the 1998 triennial comprehensive policy review, including by revising, inter alia, relevant programming guidelines of the United Nations programmes and funds;

16. Encourages the Governments of recipient countries to work towards ensuring that all programmes have capacity-building components;

17. Calls upon the United Nations system to take further steps to collect and disseminate relevant information on capacity-building, including best practices;

18. Stresses the need to address the subject of sustainability and adaptability of capacity-building in different development contexts and in response to a range of sectoral, cross-sectoral and technical requirements of recipient countries, and in particular to take appropriate steps to ensure the sustainability of capacity-building created in priority areas;

19. Requests the Secretary-General, in preparing documentation on resources for the operational activities for development segment of the Council’s substantive session of 2000, as stated in paragraph 5 of its resolution 1999/6 of 23 July 1999 on the implementation of General Assembly resolution 53/192, to give consideration to the effect of the declining trend in core resources for operational activities on the capacity of the United Nations system to implement effective development programmes that support poverty eradication and capacity-building.

Date last posted:15 May 2000 14:54:59
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