Home    About SIA   Programmes   SIA News   Publications    Lead Agencies

July 1995

Informal Minutes of the Third Meeting of the Steering Committee

As in the past meeting of the Steering Committee, the Secretariat is anxious to furnish informal minutes to members as quickly as possible. These notes will be the only ones circulated on the Third Meeting of the Committee. They will be followed on or about end of July with the Co-Chairmen=s draft document for the ACC which will take into full consideration the points made in the 7 July meeting of the Committee.

The meeting was hosted by the ILO in Geneva. Opening remarks were made by Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse. The meeting was chaired by Mr. James Gustave Speth with Mr. K.Y. Amoako in the chair for the last segment. Participants at the meeting are listed in the attachment.

The Chairman started the meeting by covering the main purposes of the meeting, the schedule, good prospects of the exercise, the encouraging results to date of the work of the working Groups, and the need for prioritizing substantive and implementation proposals. Mr. Speth mentioned that the Co-Chairmen would be presenting proposals to the Secretary-General on the political mobilization aspects of the Initiative; he invited members of the Steering Committee to forward to the Co-Chairmen ideas for this submission.

Following a detailed discussion on the aforementioned issues, the key points of the 7 July meeting were as follows :

Selection Criteria

The meeting agreed that the selection criteria for priorities to be included in the Initiative would be :

• Economic and social importance in relation to people-centered sustainable development;
• Political appeal and dramatization potential;
• Doability/feasibility/practicability;
• Affordability/resource mobilization potential;
• UN synergy, setting, comparative advantage, and experience;
• Early visible impact;
• Leverage, especially on sustainability and broadening potential of the impacts; and
• Empowerment of Africans themselves by unleashing creativity and energy.

It was emphasized that the Initiative would include both specific new interventions and proposals aimed at invigorting existing initiatives and mechanisms. It was understood that all of the priorities in the Initiative would be predominantly oriented to the country level.

2. Priorities of the Initiative

The Committee discussed the proposed priorities in the sequence in which they were presented in the annotated agenda for the meeting. The following broad consensus emerged :

• A consensus emerged in the discussion on the priorities to be included in the Initiative. The Co-Chairman and the Secretariat were entrusted with incorporating them into a cohesive and balanced proposal.
• The proposal will be sent by the Co-Chairmen on or abouth 1 August for comment by the members of the Committee due back to the Co-Chairman on 15 August.
• There was consensus that the number of substantive priorities should be limited to a manageable number to enhance their impact and political visibility and marketability of the exercise;
• At the same time, the Initiative should include, in a complementary category, actions to improve and enhance the ability of the UN system and donors to implement the substantive priorities in particular and their shared development programmes and consultation modalities in general;
• There was clear consensus that priorities such as Peacemaking and Peacebuilding (for which UNDP indicated it would provide catalytic financial support), and basic education for all (noting the UNFPA Task Force) were particularly important. There was consensus also that the debt initiative should focus on both multilateral and bilateral debt and should include advocacy, monitoring, debt swap, and building capacity for debt management;
• It was agreed that both comprehensive health care and malaria would be incorporated in the draft document.
• There was strong support for priorities of expanding the space for and capabilities of civil society (to which ECA will provide initial support);
• A number of priorities needed to be broadened/integrated and reformulated, including (a) networking science & technology, and linking S&T with national development policies; (b) assessing poverty; (c) enhancing the informal sector, incentives for domestic savings and investment, and capacity building for employment policy; (d) water and food security, giving consideration to key themes in this area, the need to integrate water priorities, the recently submitted FAO proposed priorities, and concerns of UNIDO on post harvest issues, and (e) employment policies in the context of macro finance policies;
• New emphases to be added will include : (a) south-south cooperation and transfer of expertise, including its promotion through trilateral cooperation (on which Mr. Desai will send Mr. Speth a note); (b) taking advantage of the new trade arrangements, building capacities to work on trade policy, and making Africa=s voice heard at WTO; (c) science & technology as a way to leapfrog development problems;
• Opportunities to enhance the roles, development potential and well being of women will be reflected throughout the priorities;
• Capacity building will be emphasized in a number of ways. It will be seen as a key aspect of almost all the priorities. In addition, the Chairman called upon UNDP to develop further ideas on capacity building in governance;
• It was indicated that the Secretariat will call upon working groups for additional information, as needed. Further, special task forces will be established, as feasible and appropriate, to develop proposals to include the following areas : (a) south-south cooperation (to be established by ECA); informal sector and access by the poor to productive assets and credit (to be developed by the Secretariat on the basis of further inputs by the World Bank, OSCAL/DPCSD, UNIDO, IFAD, ILO, ECA, FAO integrating the results with the priority on domestic savings and investment); science and technology-related priorities (to be organized by ECA taking note of ITU initiatives);
• It was felt important that the presentation to ACC and the implementation of the Initiative needed to be in tandem with the integrated approach to the implementation of the outcomes of key UN conferences, also to be presented to the ACC in October 1995.

3. The Chapeau was briefly discussed. It was agreed that the chapeau would be oriented around embracing themes such as unleashing the energies and creativity of Africans themselves. The vibrancy of Africa should be mentioned, e.g., its cultural strengths and influence.

4. It was agreed that the Initiative should have built-in monitoring component.

Attachment : Participants List

Top of the page