Bold gambit for disjointed UN: oneness

Launched this year in 8 countries, the 'One UN' pilot aims to improve coordination between agencies.

from the June 28, 2007 edition

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Tirana, Albania - On the streets of this colorful Balkans city, the distinctive white four-by-fours of the United Nations (UN) are a frequent sight: the UN Children's Fund, the World Health Organization, the UN Population Fund, the UN Refugee Agency, and the UN Development Program all have a permanent presence here.

While the agencies all fall under the broad UN tent, they're located in different buildings and, until recently, there was little coordination between them. Employees bumped into each other applying for the same donor funds and projects overlapped.

But now, in a bold attempt to try to reform the institutional culture of the UN, Albania and seven other countries – Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay, and Vietnam – are hoping to show that the huge and often inefficient UN, which often rewards employees for being loyal to a specific agency rather than to the system as a whole, can work together more efficiently.

"The idea is that we'll have a collective voice, collective action while respecting the specific strengths of each agency," says Gülden Türköz-Cosslett, the UN representative in Albania, who is leading the reform there.

Launched this year, the "One UN" pilot project faces signficant challenges. Each agency is eager to protect its funding and turf, and there remains stiff resistance in some sectors to any reform that is perceived as demanding sacrifices for the good of the whole. On a political level, the "One UN" project is tangled in a larger, bitter debate about UN reforms – which include discussions over the makeup of the Security Council and the amount of aid poor countries should receive – and the future of the institution.

"It's really hard because member states themselves are not in agreement," says Sally Fegan-Wyles, director of the office that's coordinating the project from New York. "What we're trying to do is get the agencies at the country level to make the decision, but it would be better if this was happening at the headquarters."

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