UNDP’s Mission in South Africa
Globally UNDP leads the advancement and evolution of development debates and formulation of new paradigms for human development, democratic governance and capacity development. In South Africa, UNDP's mission is to strengthen capacity for participatory governance and pro-poor growth based on normative and inclusive human rights principles.
UNDP’s Mandate
As the UN's global development organization, UNDP has a normative global mission, as a pro-poor development agency, to promote human rights, gender and the MDGs. As a cornerstone of its work, UNDP connects partner countries to knowledge, experience and resource networks that build capacity for pro-poor growth and human development. Further, as part of the UN Reforms process, UNDP has a mandate to lead the UN in system-wide coordination.
Principles of Engagement
The UN System in South Africa is committed to supporting the country in meeting its development objectives in alignment with the national development priorities and within the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Through the International Development Cooperation Unit (IDC) in National Treasury the Government of South Africa coordinates donor assistance with the objective of ensuring aid effectiveness within the framework of the Paris Declaration. The Government is clear that ODA to South Africa should essentially constitute a South African-driven partnership for sustainable development between the donor community and South Africa. For the UN in general and UNDP in particular, these partnership principles can be summarized as follows:
- Recognising national ownership of the country's development agenda
- Recognising the roles and responsibilities of the developmental state within context of "peoples contract" - Aligning UN support with Government's development policies, strategies and frameworks
- Working coherently with the three spheres of Government
- Harmonising UNDP programming with Government clusters and IGR principles of cooperative governance
- Mainstreaming Human Rights, Gender, HIV/AIDS, Capacity Building , Environment, Research and Monitoring and Evaluation as cross-cutting development issues
- Achieving MDGs within context of Vision 2014 and the Government Programme of Action
The Government of South Africa is keenly focused on:
- Innovative strategies to promote social cohesion;
- A comprehensive, integrated and participatory anti-poverty strategy, which will promote national unity, shared value systems and citizen identity;
- Sustainable solutions for priority and quality delivery of basic services particularly to marginalized and vulnerable groups.
In response to this, UNDP focus it's support on capacity development for pro-poor growth and in priority areas of service delivery and service access, providing:
- Inter-sectoral, specialised, participatory governance expertise
- Policy advisory services on capacity development for enhanced service delivery particularly to marginalized and vulnerable groups
- Coordination of UN System resources and expertise
UNDP in South Africa
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