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European Union
MEMO/12/314
Brussels, 8 May 2012
Joint Statement by EU Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and UNDP
Administrator Helen Clark
The EU and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have been
working together for 15 years, and engaged in a strategic partnership
since 2004, sharing the objective of fighting against poverty all over
the world. Our cooperation takes place at the policy, advocacy,
knowledge sharing and programmatic levels, each feeding the other.
Today, we met to review our Strategic Partnership, and to look at the
way forward. We reaffirmed our wish to develop our cooperation in areas
of common interest, and to continue working together towards the
objective of establishing solid foundations for peace, development and
recovery from the economic crisis and to promote the Millennium
Development Goals and sustainable development.
It is a fact that our two organisations play a relevant and
complementary role within the development architecture. The strength of
our partnership resides firmly at country level. We are present in more
than 150 developing and transition countries where the comparative
advantages we have developed over the years provide an important added
value in the development arena. Some of the results achieved are
illustrated in the yearly "Improving lives" reports, which highlight
the joint EU/UN efforts in more than 100 countries in support of
national development. The UNDP's development coordination role in the
UN, globally and at country level, provides an additional productive
angle to our collaboration.
The areas of governance, conflict prevention and post conflict
reconstruction will continue to be the main pillars of the partnership.
Human rights and gender play an important role as cross-cutting issues,
while cooperation also includes other relevant areas for sustainable
human development, such as environment, energy, integrated border
management, local area development and migration and development
Our cooperation in the field of electoral assistance has been showing
good results. We agreed to work together to further improve our
performance and develop our role. The different instruments such as the
Joint EC-UNDP Task Force on electoral assistance, joint trainings and
policy dialogue on emerging issues have proven their utility. Within
the Strategic Partnership's democratic governance pillar, a further
effort should now be made towards broadening electoral assistance to
deepen democracy support. This should help sustain the results of
elections, and integrate issues such as constitutional reform,
parliamentary development and rule of law.
Crisis prevention and recovery has also been an area of successful
cooperation. In recent years, EU and UNDP have both worked to further
improve their responses to situations of fragility, as we have seen in
Haiti, Sudan, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. The "New Deal" adopted in the
Aid Effectiveness Conference in Busan last year provides the
opportunity for development partners to work together to improve our
joint response in situations of conflict and fragility. During this
conference, we also endorsed the Global Partnership for Effective
Development Cooperation. We will make a shared effort to encourage all
stakeholders, including emerging economies and private sector actors,
to be actively involved in this Partnership.
Our cooperation is oriented towards the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals. It remains a priority for both organisations to
ensure that as many of the MDGs as possible, are met in as many
countries as possible, by 2015. We recognise the power that the MDG
framework has had in catalysing action on development. The importance
of issues such as inclusive green growth, food security, equity,
energy, environment and climate change, in achieving poverty
eradication, need to be better emphasised in the debate leading to the
post-2015 MDGs..
We agreed to continue to nurture our partnership in order to deliver
aid better and more efficiently. We encourage our respective country
offices to sustain and further develop their extensive on-going policy
and programmatic collaboration.
For more information
Site web EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs :
ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/piebalgs/index_en.htm
Site web of UNDP: www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home.html
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