How a once-in-a-century pandemic is shaping partners’ efforts toward the effectiveness principles, and how the UN system can respond

With the 2020-21 session of the General Assembly, we mark 75 years of unprecedented global cooperation. Yet one of its greatest outcomes – the global effort to drive human development – is facing profound headwinds, from growing inequality to a global pandemic. Only collective action, multilateral and multi-stakeholder, will see us through these challenges.

This imperative on collective action is what makes how we partner and work together – based on shared principles and led by evidence – so important to achieving the 2030 Agenda. The effectiveness principles, and our efforts to monitor progress toward them, provide a shared basis for working better together. And it is in this spirit, of mutual learning and principle-based action, that we are pleased to share experiences from different types of development stakeholders on what they are learning from COVID-19, and how the UN system can help:

  • Mr. Shreekrishna Nepal, Joint Secretary at the Finance Ministry in Nepal, talks about the importance of data-sharing to country ownership, and the role the UN can play in coordinating and convening data at country level.
  • Ms. Carin Jämtin, Director General of Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), describes how their effort to focus on results has been supported by flexible funding models, and how subsidiarity and flexibility can help UNCTs deliver. 
  • Ms. Beverly Longid, Co-chair at the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness, makes the case for inclusive partnerships, and the role the UN can play in supporting these; a cause now more important than ever as the most vulnerable are hardest hit by the pandemic. 
  • Ms. Ulrika Modeer, Director of External Relations & Advocacy at UNDP highlights the role of mutual accountability, and how the ‘Funding Compact’ can play a central role in sustaining trust & partnerships through the current challenges.
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