Ambassador Cherith Norman Chalet
Acting Deputy Permanent Representative
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
New York, New York
May 29, 2020
AS DELIVERED
Mr. Secretary-General
Thank you for your support in creating a robust Operational Activities Segment with a diverse set of colleagues contributing global, regional, and country level perspectives. We greatly appreciate Mexico’s leadership as well and look forward to a fruitful segment.
Thank you for a very data-rich report on the QCPR, which we feel balanced updates on progress achieved with remaining challenges and areas for improvement. The country level examples and survey feedback offer preliminary evidence that the system we designed is meeting the needs of the countries it serves. We welcome and look forward to a similar approach in future reports.
We congratulate you and all of us here today for the considerable progress made in repositioning the UN development system. However, we note that much more needs to be done by leadership at all levels to generate the system wide buy-in we need to institutionalize the reforms.
The United States is pleased to announce our 2020 pledge of $23 million for the Resident Coordinator system. Our investment is a reflection of how much we value coordination and of our expectation that we continue to strive to do better, capturing increased impact, effectiveness, and efficiencies wherever possible.
In this regard, we have three expectations to share and welcome your feedback:
First, the United States and many other donor countries are investing considerable amounts of taxpayers money, particularly at a time when resources are scarce as we continue to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. We look forward to continuing discussions to ensure adequate system oversight.
Second, should Member States endorse implementation of the regional proposal, we would expect periodic updates and the flexibility to asses performance and adjust along the way, as needed.
Third, we welcome more information about the budget and expectations of the system wide evaluation office. We expect this office to be independent and not duplicate existing functions.
Thank you.
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