A One United Nations for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations (UN) is arguably the world’s most enduring and all-encompassing “global public good.” In fact, the recent UN Summit for the Future, where 193 UN Member States co-signed a Pact for the Future, reaffirmed that the UN’s original mandates of peace and security, sustainable development and human rights remain relevant and critical in the current global conjuncture.
The 56 commitments agreed in the Pact for the Future also underscored that the three pillars of peace and security, sustainable development and human rights are interwoven: one cannot have peace and security without development, or development without peace and security, and neither will be possible without human rights.
Today, as the consequences of climate change become ever more clear, the pillar of sustainable development is absolutely vital – particularly as progress on the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda remains off track. To achieve the SDGs, reform for an effective and efficient One UN architecture – spanning global, regional and country levels – should be the UN’s highest priority.
The One UN approach was the essence of Secretary-General António Guterres’ UN Development System (UNDS) Reform Agenda, implemented in January 2019 but born out of the legacy of the 2006 UN “Delivering as One” pilot, which took place in seven geographically distributed countries around the world. While the UNDS Reform Agenda has made some progress in the last five years, it needs urgent reinforcement if Agenda 2030 is to be achieved.
The One UN at Country Level: The Case of Vietnam
Arguably, no level is more important than the country level for the delivery of the SDGs. Many agencies work and engage at the country level in the same mandate area but from different vantage points. For example, the UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and many others work on challenges presented by climate change. On the one hand, a One UN approach will inevitably help create positive multiplier effects because of synergistic implementation of these institutions’ different mandates and the cooperation, coordination and pooling together of technical and policy expertise. On the other, it will help avoid or even eliminate inconsistencies, bureaucratic inefficiencies and duplication. This will also allow the increasingly limited financial and human resources of the UN to be used much more effectively and efficiently.
Vietnam, where I represented the UN Secretary-General from 2017-2021, presents an excellent case study of the One UN approach, with demonstrable results in achieving all the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) early as well as progress on the SDGs.
There is broad consensus that Vietnam has been the world leader of the One UN at country level for the almost 20 years since it joined the UN’s Delivering as One (DAO) initiative in 2006. There has been a singular strategic partnership between the UN and Vietnam, allowing for programmatic synergy, coordination and consistency under the UN Resident Coordinator and, ultimately, a One UN Program that delivers maximum impact.
The “Delivering as One” pilot phase, the precursor to the global 2019 UNDS Reform, led to the creation of the One UN Communications Team at the UN in Vietnam 17 years ago in 2007. This team has been essential in conveying a consistent “One UN” message in the country since then. From the time of the move to the Green One UN House in 2015, there has also been a One Common Back Office (CBO) Team servicing all UN agencies within Vietnam.
An even bigger step taken by the UN in Vietnam, well before the latest January 2019 reforms were implemented, was to get almost all UN Agency Program staff to physically sit and work together, not by Agency, but by what strategic areas they substantively worked on in terms of the priorities of the One UN Strategic Plan 2017-2021. In practice, this meant that everyone in the Green One UN House was grouped and sat in Program Clusters under the Plan’s four substantive strategic areas: Inclusive Social Development, Inclusive Growth, Climate Change, and Governance and Access to Justice. Staff working in functional areas such as Communications and Finance had already been part of Operational Clusters from 2015.
This was truly revolutionary for the UN both in Vietnam and globally, and it was essential for breaking down institutional barriers between different UN agencies and a step towards working creatively and synergistically together to help Vietnam achieve Agenda 2030.
Key Lessons
A key lesson from Vietnam’s experience is the importance of the government leading the One UN on the ground. Without this leadership, progress on achieving the SDGs will be slower than what it would otherwise have been.
Another set of challenges surround the fact that, even though the Resident Coordinator, since 2019, is officially acknowledged by all parties as the full-time Representative of the UN Secretary-General at country level, and while all 193 UN Member States have endorsed the SDGs which are human rights-based, most of these same Member States do not accept the Resident Coordinator’s role on human rights and peace and security issues.
A “One UN” cannot be effective, and Agenda 2030 cannot be achieved at the country level, unless the “One UN” at the country level is comprehensive and includes the implementation of programs under all three indivisible UN pillars under the leadership and responsibility of both the UN Resident Coordinator and UN Country Team (UNCT).
The Government of Vietnam effectively did that during my tenure there. This positively impacted not just their domestic objectives and progress towards the achievement of Agenda 2030 in Vietnam, but it also contributed to their global contributions to the UN and the world. For example, as Resident Coordinator, I was able to help them on significantly increasing Vietnam’s military, police and health sector contributions to global peacekeeping in South Sudan as well as in New York. Some of their politically sensitive human rights concerns were also directly conveyed to the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
At a broader global level, the UNDS Reform Agenda’s full implementation is stymied by at least five limitations in my view. First, there is inconsistent buy-in of all Members States and some specialized and non-resident agencies of the “One UN” concept. These include but are not limited to the Bretton Woods institutions and some specialized UN Agencies, some of whom predate the UN’s founding. Some of them, on both sides, still contest the overall leadership role of the UN Resident Coordinator. Second, there is a lack of critical reform of global corporate policies at headquarters level, including human resources and procurement. There is also a lack of commitment and communications by the top leadership of some UN organizations to their Representatives and staff at regional and local levels. Third, there are tensions in the co-leadership roles of the “One UN” at the regional level between the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the UN Regional Economic Commissions (RECs). Fourth, there are inadequate core and other resources following inadequate commitment by many UN Member States in providing their increased and timely UN core “assessed contributions” to support the new UNDS Reform architecture at global, regional and national levels. Finally, Member States and other donors earmark 80 percent of the UN’s development funds, which means donors can cherry-pick which SDGs they want to support. This is contrary to the true spirit of multilateralism. Core resources are vital for the UN’s country analysis and country-level Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework.
Agenda 2030, for most countries, is in serious peril of not being achieved by its target year. Heightened commitment to the achievement of the “One UN” at all levels, but especially the country level, can help the UN and the international community make much faster, irreversible progress towards the achievement of Agenda 2030 and the SDGs.
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