OPENING REMARKS BY THE UN RESIDENT COORDINATOR AT THE UNDAF STRATEGIC PLANNING RETREAT FOR THE LESOTHO UN SYSTEM, GOVERNMENT AND DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS

Honourable Dr. Timothy Thahane, Minister for Finance & Dev. Planning,

Distinguished Participants from Government and Development Partner Agencies,

Distinguished Colleague UN Agency Heads,

Fellow UN Staff of Agencies in and outside Lesotho,

Colleague Resource Persons and Workshop Facilitators,

Ladies and Gentlemen:


I am very delighted to welcome you all to this Strategic Planning Retreat on the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) process. I am particularly delighted that our colleagues representing non-resident UN Agencies with programmes in Lesotho have been able to make time to come over to brainstorm with us, the Lesotho-based UN Country Team, as we embark on this UNDAF process, which is critical to our UN Common Country Programming Process. While I have already done so informally, I wish to take this opportunity, once again, to formally welcome our very distinguished Team of Facilitators and Resource Persons. Let me also thank the Coordinator’s of this Workshop for giving me this opportunity to make a few remarks.

As we are all familiar with the country context and the development challenges facing Lesotho, I will skip any review of these in this opening remark, especially since we shall be reviewing these in the process of this Retreat. Meanwhile, permit me to give a quick background to this Strategic Planning event, as well as an indication of my expectations from the UNCT as well as our Government and our other development partner counterparts, during as well as after this Workshop.

A. Background

Some of my UNCT colleagues will recall that on the 9th of May 2006, during the visit to Lesotho by our colleagues from the Regional Support Team (RDT) and the UN Development Group Office (UNDGO), discussions were held with the UNCT. On that occasion, questions were raised about the appropriate timing of preparatory activities related to Lesotho’s development of a new MDG-based UNDAF (2007), as part of the framework documents required for the UN Common Country Programme Process (CCPP) for the synchronized cycle 2008-2012.


During the subsequent UNCT Meeting of 23 May 2006, which reviewed all the required conditions for the successful design of the said UNDAF (2007) for Lesotho, it was unanimously agreed by the Country Team that Lesotho should commence the UN CCPP from mid-2006, as earlier planned. Several factors were cited in support of this decision. At the risk of repetition, and for the sake of our counterpart participants, permit me to outline some of these factors, if only to remind ourselves and to underscore the critical importance of embarking on and following through with this UNDAF process:


First, we anticipated that the review, revision and rolling forward of the current Lesotho Poverty Reduction Strategy (2004/05-2006/07) will not entail major modifications, as most of the activities in the related PRS Implementation Matrix will not have been implemented by its expected completion date of 31 March 2007. Therefore, the country’s priority challenges identified in the PRS would still be relevant as the National Planning Framework on which to base our new UNDAF.

Second, deriving an MDG-focused set of PRS Outcomes (and related activities) from the current PRS, appropriately updated and projected over a longer (say, 5-year) time horizon, should be feasible (indeed, desirable) before end-December 2006. In fact, subsequent to the May 2006 UNCT meeting, a UN-supported PRS-focused documentation for a Donor Round Table Conference has been put together by Government, which outlines Lesotho’s updated priority challenges, as well as the five-year strategy and programme of action for responding to these challenges.


Third, the new country assistance (budget support) programming cycles for almost all of Lesotho’s other major development partners (European Union, World Bank, DfID, Irish Aid and GTZ) will commence in 2008. This suggests that the period mid-2006 through end-2007 is the ideal time frame for coordinated country cooperation strategy planning in Lesotho. Consequently, a new UNDAF preparation process and other related UN Common Country Programme Process activities stand a better chance to explore synergies and reap benefits from consultation, coordination and collaboration with Lesotho’s other development partners during this period of concurrent country programme strategy preparation and mutually beneficial consultations.


Finally, if the UNDAF process were to be deferred, the alternative of developing UN agency-specific bridging programmes will disrupt the synchronization of programming cycles by 2008 for all UN agencies in Lesotho.

It was against the backdrop of these considerations that the UNCT decided to embark on the new UNDAF process this year. Once that decision was unanimously made, the UN System began preparations to equip its staff for this day’s event, as well as the related subsequent Common Country Programming Process activities.

B. Results of Orientation Training for the UN System in Lesotho

In anticipation of our extensive use of the Results-Based Management (RBM) approach to programming, two Orientation Training Workshops were held, the first for the Senior UN Programme Staff in June 2006, and the second for the entire resident as well as non-resident UN Country Team in July 2006.

The Outcome at the end of these Workshops is a UN Country Team and senior Programme Staff fully acquainted with the latest developments on the UN Reform and fairly equipped with the major concepts and tools for a Human Rights-based, Gender-conscious MDG-focused, Results-based UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) preparation process, within the context of the broader UN Common Country Programming Process.


Contributing to this broader Outcome were a number of outputs, which derived from the presentations, discussions and practical exercises that our Resource Persons assisted us to generate during those Workshops. More specifically, the key Outputs included a fairly good understanding by each UNCT member and participating Programme Staff of the following concepts and tools:


(a) The new UN Common Country Programme Process (CCPP) in Support of National Plans and Priorities, within the context of the UN Reform.

(b) Recent developments on the UN Reform (especially its links with the September 2005 MD+5 World Summit Outcome, Implications for the UN of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, ExCom Coordination initiatives, RC System capacity and UN Country Team accountability issues).

(c) Results Based Management (RBM) as the key approach to the new UN CCPP.

(d) The key building blocks of an UNDAF (especially formulating MDG-based UNDAF Outcomes, Country Programme Outputs, Country Programme Activities, UNDAF Results Matrix, UNDAF Monitoring and Evaluation Framework).

(e) Major cross-cutting issues and approaches critical to good UNDAFs (e.g., Human Rights-based Approach to Programming and Gender-Mainstreaming in Programming).

(f) The process of participating in a successful UNDAF Strategic Planning Retreat (SPR), and the validation of the draft Work Plan for the Way Forward on the UN CCPP for Lesotho.


C. My Expectations During and After this Strategic Planning Retreat

Before I conclude my opening remarks, let me say a few words about what I expect from this retreat. First, I am expecting that all participants, from UN, Government and other development partner agencies, will stay fully engaged, and contribute actively and constructively to the brainstorming exercise that the Facilitators will lead us through. Second, it is my expectation that by the end of today, we would have agreed on about three or four well-formulated, MDG-based UNDAF Outcomes, which will form the context of the UN System’s Country Cooperation activities in Lesotho during the 2008-2012 programming cycle.


Third, it is also my expectation that the Lesotho Country Team will continue to support our remaining Milestone Activities, as outlined in the Critical Path Matrix, with the same amount of enthusiasm and in the same cooperative spirit it has been displaying since the start of our Common Country Programming Process in June this year. It is because all Agency Heads permitted the full, uninterrupted participation of their designated Programme and Operations staff for the full three-day Orientation Training event, as the UNCT had earlier agreed to do, that we now have a very capable Common Country Programme Strategy Team that will lead the discussion at this Multi-Stakeholder Strategic Planning Retreat, and subsequently draft the details of the UNDAF Matrix after the Retreat.

Furthermore, I am expecting that the UNCT will continue to be directly involved in the quality assurance processes preceding the clearance of the UNDAF by the Regional Support Team for signature. In addition, as our individual Country Programmes, based on the impending UNDAF document, will involve some Joint Programmes, I will implore all my UNCT colleagues to exhibit the same cooperative spirit by encouraging our Common Country Programme Strategy Team to think more in terms of “collaborative” and “joint” programming opportunities, as we embark upon the design of our individual, Agency-specific Country Programmes (CPDs) early next year, as well as our Country Programme Action Plans (CPAPs) and Annual Work Plans (AWPs) late next year.

Let us always remember that, in the rapidly changing UN environment for country cooperation, we as UNCT will be held jointly accountable for the extent to which we have fully embraced and are implementing those elements of the UN Secretary-General’s Reform Agenda that are relevant to our work in Lesotho.

Finally, it is my expectation that, in the spirit of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and in furtherance of the goals of mutual information-sharing among the Development Partners Coordination Forum (DPCF) members, our development partner colleagues will take note of strategic areas of intervention that will readily provide opportunities for programme collaboration among us. We in the UN intend to engage in further consultations with your individual agencies, during the course of elaborating our UNDAF Results Matrix, over the next three or four weeks. It is my hope that you will be readily forthcoming with the required information about such potential opportunities for collaborative programming during those consultations.

With these few remarks, Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is now my singular honour and pleasure to (invite the Honourable Minister of Finance and Development Planning to) declare this UNDAF Strategic Planning Retreat formally open.

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR TIME AND ATTENTION.