Statement by German Ambassador Berger at the Joint Board Meeting on QCPR

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Feb 4, 2013

 

Joint Meeting of the UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS, UNICEF, UN Women and WFP Executive Board on Operationalization of the decisions of the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review On February 4th, 2013

"Mr. President,

Deputy Secretary General, Heads of Agencies,

Germany highly appreciates this timely opportunity to discuss the operationalization of the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review.

In our assessment, the QCPR process has shown that there is a broad desire in the UN membership to further strengthen the UN Development System by enabling it to reform and improve the way it works, both at headquarters level and in the field.

Mr. President,

For today's meeting, I am going to focus my remarks and questions on the following elements, to which we attach special importance:

The first element is the need for agencies to improve the way they work together. The development of the next strategic plans provides an opportunity to sharpen the focus of the respective agencies and to ensure that the UN system is organized in a way that brings out the comparative advantages of the individual agencies and ensures complementarity while reducing duplication. 

I would appreciate to hear from the respective heads of agencies about the mechanisms you use in order to align the next strategic plans among agencies.

This brings me to my second point, the request for a better results orientation of the UN development system. This includes the call for the development of results frameworks which contain complete results chains with indicators at the output, outcome and impact level when developing the next strategic plans. It will be important that the frameworks currently under development will ensure a comparability among UN agencies. 

Thirdly, let me emphasize the importance we attach to the decisions taken with regard to institutionalizing and strengthening the Delivering as One approach. In our opinion, Delivering as One is clearly the way we expect the UN to follow in the future. We therefore attach high importance to the development of the standard operation procedures for the implementation of Delivering as One in countries which decide to join the approach in the future. I would appreciate to hear from the Heads of Agencies where the process of developing these standard operation procedures stands at the moment. 

Fourthly, the QCPR contains a strong call for a further harmonization of business practices. If implemented properly, this should allow the UN development system to reduce the costs of doing business and free much needed resources for programme activities. In this context, I would be interested to hear from the Heads of Agencies, in which areas and when your are expecting the realization of first efficiency gains? Lastly, let me underline the importance we attach to continued attention of the entire UN Development System to gender equality and women's empowerment. In this regard, we strongly encourage Heads of Agencies to :

- ensure full and swift implementation of the UN System-wide action plan on gender equality and the empowerment of women,

- to increase investment in and focus on outcomes and outputs relating to gender equality and the empowerment of women and

- to make full use of gender scorecards and gender markers.

Thank you, Mr President."

Development Aid in Afghanistan: - The Country Where Hope Goes to Die

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Western aid workers have long been deeply involved in Afghanistan, putting their lives at risk and fighting for funding back home. Still, they have accomplished little or have seen much of their work destroyed. Many will be leaving the country in disappointment.

Hanz Sayami discusses the work he did in Afghanistan in a halting voice. He talks about the school for boys that he built six years ago in Char Gul Tepa, a town in the northern part of Kunduz province, after painstakingly gathering funding. "The place means 'Four Flower Hill,'" he says. A girl's school went up a year later there, though this time with the help of German development aid funds. Everything was going well, with Sayami and his assistants paying regular visits to the schools.

But, a few months ago, they dissolved their "Schools for Afghanistan" initiative. "The situation on the ground doesn't allow us to visit the projects anymore," Sayami says. "So we can no longer ask donors in good conscience for money because we can't monitor expenditures in person."

Sayami, 52, has an Afghan father and a German mother. His main occupation is working as an art director for SPIEGEL ONLINE. Shortly after his birth, his family left Germany for Kabul, where Sayami spent his childhood. "I wanted to do something for Afghanistan after the war broke out there," he says.

For years, Sayami has been living in Hamburg, but over the last several years he has regularly spent vacations in Afghanistan. He is pained by the end of his work there. "But," he says, "the current situation makes it impossible to keep going."

Growing Fear and Despair

Sayami is one of the few aid workers who will openly discuss such matters for fear of attracting the attention of extremists. For this reason, organizations such as GIZ, the German development organization, forbid their employees from speaking with the press. But overwhelming frustration still compels some to vent their frustrations to journalists, albeit anonymously.

Indeed, little has been accomplished since the beginning of the war against the Taliban, and what has been achieved is now in danger. Once Western troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the country is at risk of falling under the control of extremists.

"Everything is at stake," says Heinz,* who works for an education-related project for the GIZ. "When we're gone, you can pretty much assume that the establishments we helped set up will sooner or later be closed," he says. "There is no lobby for education here, and those who benefit from our work will not dare to stand up for us in public." The development worker will not name his location for fear of attacks. "The Taliban's growing strength has been perceptible for three years," he says. "Since then, we've been working as inconspicuously as possible."

Another GIZ employee, Claudia,* reports that, behind closed doors, some thought has been given to abandoning its projects there. "At the latest, the discussion got into full swing after the deaths of two German aid workers in Parwan province," she says, referring to the two German men who disappeared in August and were found shot to death a few weeks later. Claudia also says that the security situation has gotten "creepingly" worse in recent years and that, more than anything, there has been a "dramatic increase" in fears of falling victim to attacks on Westerners, of being kidnapped or robbed.

Misery Unaltered by Billions in Funding

Since 2002, Germany's federal government has been supporting Afghanistan through economic cooperation aimed at improving the living conditions of average people. Each month, almost €40 million ($55 million) in development aid is channeled to Afghanistan, though that is still only about 5 percent of what the government spends for its military deployment there. Due to worries about corruption, not all of that money is paid out, though. Experts believe that millions have disappeared into dark channels in recent years.

Claudia, who helped rebuild Afghanistan's public administration, believes that development aid has been successful in some places. For example, she notes that there is electricity, clean drinking water and new streets, bridges, schools and hospitals. But, all things considered, nothing has changed in terms of the Afghans' basic living conditions. "There continues to be a small upper class that is super-rich and corrupt," she explains. "The normal population is poor."

Still, Claudia believes that it isn't just a paucity of funds that is keeping aid efforts from being successful over the long term. She also thinks it's too hard to find people in Germany with the right training who are willing to live in Afghanistan for extended periods of time. Many of them can only be attracted by large paychecks -- but, given their relatively meager budgets, that just isn't feasible for many aid organizations. "American aid organizations already pay young aid workers $20,000 a month," Claudia says. "No German organization can afford that."

The Biggest Mistakes

Claudia also admits that she's given some thought to quitting and returning to Germany. "We are hardly allowed to move," she says. "I've seen practically nothing of this country except for my office and my small apartment."

For its part, the GIZ will not respond to questions regarding planned changes to the work it does in Afghanistan or even whether it will be withdrawing from the country. "But we will naturally reflect on the situation after an incident such as the death of a GIZ employee and see which conclusions we draw from it," says Anja Tomic, a spokeswoman at GIZ headquarters near Frankfurt. However, Tomic did say that GIZ safety regulations would remain unchanged, as they have so far been found adequate.

These are the exactly the regulations that Robert,* an energy expert who has been in Afghanistan for five years, finds fault with. "The regulations enormously limit aid workers' freedom of movement," he says. "I'm not even allowed to go shopping at the bazaar. We are losing our sense of the country, of the people, of life here."

As Robert sees it, the aid workers' sense of estrangement is also part of the problem. The more the Afghans believe that neither foreign troops nor development workers can help them, Robert explains, the more they're convinced that weapons are the only means of effecting change. "The biggest mistake was linking development aid with military assistance," he says. "Aid workers and soldiers would occasionally make joint appearances. But this civilian-military collaboration is an absolute taboo-breaker that hurt our reputation among the Afghan population."

Hoping from a Distance

The last time Hanz Sayami visited Afghanistan was almost a year ago. And he isn't planning more trips to the Hindu Kush any time soon. "At the moment that would hardly be responsible," he says. Still, he does hope that the bleak predictions being made about the country do not come true and that, at some point in the future, he'll be able to continue work on his school project.

*Name changed to protect source anonymity

A Cloud Over Turkish Candidate’s Chances to Lead I.M.F.

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By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

Published: May 19, 2011

LONDON — On paper Kemal Dervis would seem to be the perfect candidate to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as leader of theInternational Monetary Fund.

Currently a vice president at the Brookings Institution, he was Turkey’s economy minister from 2001 to 2002 and was widely credited with bringing Turkey out of a severe financial crisis by privatizing state assets and slashing budget deficits amid fierce political opposition.

He speaks fluent French, German and English and is a veteran of I.M.F.-style bureaucracies like the World Bank and the United Nations. Earlier this week, London bookmakers were giving Mr. Dervis the second-best chance to get the I.M.F. job after Christine Lagarde, the finance minister of France.

But, Mr. Dervis, it turns out, has a secret that could disqualify him from being considered for the job. Years ago, while a senior executive at the World Bank, he had an affair with a female subordinate who now works at the I.M.F., according to a person with direct knowledge of the affair.

This person’s account was confirmed by Stanislas Balcerac, a former World Bank staff economist who worked on the same floor with Mr. Dervis and the woman.

In a brief interview Thursday, Mr. Dervis declined to discuss the details of his personal life. But after Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s departure over allegations of a sexual assault, questions of past impropriety could be enough to hurt a candidate’s chance.

On Friday, after word of the affair was reported, Mr. Dervis issued a statement through Brookings saying, in part, “I have not been, and will not be, a candidate” for the I.M.F. job.

Mr. Dervis, 62, was not married at the time of the affair, but the woman was, according Mr. Balcerac, who says he bears no ill will toward either person. In fact, he praises Mr. Dervis as one of the brightest, most adept and bureaucracy-beating executives at the World Bank at the time.

“He was not your standard bureaucrat,” he said. He made “decisions quickly and was extremely dynamic.”

Indeed, the professional talents of Mr. Dervis are a reason he has been widely mentioned this week as a possible candidate for the top job at the I.M.F. He would represent a potential bridge between the European establishment from which the I.M.F. chief has traditionally been chosen, and the emerging-economy countries that are now demanding to play a bigger role in global financial institutions. Turkey, with its 9 percent growth rate last year and its ambition to become a major regional actor in the Middle East, would certainly fit that bill.

Most intriguingly, perhaps, Mr. Dervis is a close friend of George Papandreou, the prime minister of Greece, whom he has been informally advising over the last two years.

The two men became acquainted in 2001 when Mr. Dervis was in charge of the Turkish economy and Mr. Papandreou was foreign minister for his government. Since then, Mr. Dervis has provided counsel in a variety of ways.

He has been an active participant in Mr. Papandreou’s annual summer ideas conference held on different Greek islands each year. He has huddled with him at the Brookings Institution in Washington. And he has, insiders say, shared many late-night phone calls with the Greek prime minister.

And Mr. Dervis has many professional admirers.

“He is the man for the job,” said Dani Rodrik, an expert on globalization and development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. “He would be a truly meritocratic appointment.”

But Mr. Dervis said on Thursday that he was in no way prepared for this sudden burst of publicity. “Look, I have not put my name forward, nor has anyone called me about the job,” Mr. Dervis said. “I am flattered, of course, but that is all I can say at the moment.”

In his Friday statement, indicating he would not be a candidate for the I.M.F. post, Mr. Dervis said, “I am fully engaged in, happy with, and focused on my global work at the Brookings Institution and look forward to continuing my research and policy work, including work on Turkey.”

No doubt, the affair in question is very old news. Mr. Balcerac points out that years ago the culture at the World Bank was looser and it was not uncommon for senior executives to have affairs with those working for them.

All of this changed in 2007, when the World Bank had its own, more minor scandal: Its president at the time, Paul D. Wolfowitz, promoted a woman he was involved with.

The I.M.F. has not said publicly who it is considering to succeed Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

John Lipsky, an American, has taken control as acting managing director and while there had been an expectation that Mr. Strauss-Kahn would leave before his term ended in October 2012 to run for the French presidency, it is not clear what type of short list, if any, the fund board has drawn up.

Manhattan Rooftop Dining Attracts UN Insiders

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By Irwin Arieff | May 10, 2011

The German mission to the UN offers a fashionable lunch with the right views.

Let's face it, the United Nations cafeteria is looking a bit forlorn these days.

With a years-long renovation of UN headquarters under way, the cafeteria, which is located on the ground floor of the Secretariat complex at the south end of the UN compound, is pretty thoroughly boxed in by construction that includes asbestos removal.

The once-mobbed and highly popular cafeteria must also be feeling somewhat unloved, with many Secretariat workers temporarily assigned to commercial Manhattan office buildings blocks away. Most UN staffers seem to be checking out the corner cafe in their new neighborhoods, rather than walking the half-mile to the mother ship, to sip a cappuccino, toss off a salad or choke down a sandwich.

How lucky, then, that in-the-know UN aides and V.I.P.s can stroll uptown to 49th Street to German House, inside the German mission to the UN and the German Consulate, for a stylish lunch at its top-floor restaurant.

The German House dining room, on the 23rd floor, is comfortable and casual, offering striking views of northern Manhattan and the East River through the oversize windows lining two sides of the room. The food ranges from generic to Germanic, from fulfilling to frilly, from straightforward to quite ambitious. Accompaniments include Bitburger beer and wine, a pastry of the day and a very decent espresso.

Recent daily menu items, mostly $10 to $12, included a hearty soup, panini with soup and salad, beef goulash with spätzle, gnocchi with julienne vegetables, wiener schnitzel with potato salad and mixed greens and grilled fish with fusilli pasta and pumpkin sauce. The servings are ample.

Irwin Arieff

At Germany's mission to the UN, the top floor is the setting for German House, a luncheon restaurant catering to diners with a UN pass.

Because of its diplomatic roots, there is no sales tax, and because it is mostly self-service, tipping is not in evidence. The dress ranges from T-shirt and jeans to diplomatically dark business suit. The entire establishment can accommodate only about 70 diners, and the seating is widely spaced, so you are unlikely to overhear the highly classified conversation that might be going on at the next table.

You order at the bar, pay up front, and walk your own drinks, water glass and silverware to the table of your choice. In short order, a server delivers your food and cleans up the table after you eat. The main drawback, as with many UN-related sites, is security. Just as it is difficult for tourists to go beyond the UN gift shop, visitors to German House must run a gauntlet of identity testing.

First, at least one member of your party must have a UN photo ID. If you plan to lunch there regularly, you must go to German House ahead and pick up a form in the lobby applying for a restaurant pass. Once you fill out and turn in the form, it can take two to three months to get the pass, according to a German UN mission administrator.

In a pinch, you can call the restaurant and ask if they can accommodate you by sending an escort to the lobby to usher you past the security barriers and up the elevator. If the staff agrees to let you in, you must leave behind your UN badge at the front desk as a safeguard.

Irwin Arieff

Outside the German mission to the UN.

The restaurant is run by Elderberry Catering, a New York City firm whose classically trained executive chefs, Wolfgang Ban, Eduard Frauneder and Werner Tschiedel, actually hail from Austria. Their specialty, the firm boasts, is "European cuisine with a modern flair." Elderberry also runs two other restaurants in Manhattan, Edi & the Wolf and Seasonal Restaurant and Weinbar.

German House is located at 871 United Nations Plaza, on the west side of First Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets. The rooftop restaurant is on the 23rd floor and is open from about 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. For information or to arrange for an escort, call 212-610-9552.