Joint Statement at the Executive Board of UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS

Madam President,

I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the following countries: Andorra, Austria, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Greece, the Republic of Korea, Luxembourg, Malawi, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, The United Kingdom, the United States of America and my own country Sweden.

First, let me start by thanking the UNCDF team for the informative and inclusive process of drafting the new strategic framework. The framework correctly builds on existing work and past experiences, while it also develops relevant new thematic areas. We welcome particularly ongoing work for (digital) financial inclusion and the additional focus on women’s economic empowerment, the explicit intention to further engage with the UN Development System and that biodiversity finance is now included in the framework. We also welcome the development of the Investment Platform.

Finding ways to leverage available resources has rarely been more important in light of the setbacks we are facing in our joint quest of implementing the Agenda 2030. We expect UNCDF to continue its work supporting governments and other public authorities in the LDCs, to achieve the SDGs, and with a strong gender lens applied to all activities. Filling the gap in the development financing architecture, particularly with respect to the world’s most challenging markets, leveraging ODA and financial inclusion are key components.

UNDCF is particularly well positioned to make sure that local actions are supported by sub-national finance that connect local actors to national markets. This requires the ability to take well designed pilot projects to scale, a natural next step while serving as the UN flagship for catalytic transformative financing of the LDCs.

The new strategy is broader than the previous one, with three new, additional “flagship areas”. While this is representative of UNCDF’s ambitions, we recommend a certain degree of caution for the implementation, in light of the uncertain funding scenarios to be able to maintain its ability to be a leading partner for the LDCs.

Madam President,

We strongly encourage other UN agencies to seek partnership with UNCDF and take advantage and learn from its rich expertise in innovative finance rather than risk duplication by creating their own instruments. UNCDF should be an entry point for the UN’s work with financial instruments and innovations, both with public and private entities. With this said may I ask if there is a a pathway to where private investors can be incentivized to contribute to non-core or flexible non-core resources at a larger scale?

Integrated solutions where each UN entity not only fulfills its respective mandate but does so in coherence and alignment with the UN Development system at large, are important components in the implementation of the UNDS reform. There needs to be clarity on where synergies and trade-offs between the different SDGs and agencies lie and how they are leveraged at country level for efficient UN Country Teams to stand with the Resident Coordinators.

In conclusion we encourage UNCDF to:

• Cooperate closely with other UN Agencies and International Financial Institutions.
• Continue efforts to support (digital) financial inclusion.
• Continue to provide “last mile financing”, deploy instruments where financing sources are scarce or unavailable in LDCs.
• Maintain efforts to support partners in strengthening national governance capacities to promote an environment for increased development financing.
• Continue to push forward gender mainstreaming in the organization and women economic empowerment in LDCs.
• Focus on its core strengths, as also recommended by the evaluation, and make use of its comparative advantage.

Lastly, an enabling condition for UNCDF to deliver effectively on its mandate is predictable, flexible and adequate funding, even more so with the new strategic framework that aims at scaling. We therefore continue to stress the importance of increasing access to core funding and we warmly encourage countries to consider a possible support to UNCDF’s core resources – even modest contributions make a significant impact on UNCDF’s work at country level in LDCs. 

Thank you for your attention.