Vietnam is concerned about the decline in funding for UN operational activities for development, which poses challenges to the operation of the UN development system, especially at the country level where programming activities in development take place.

Vietnam ’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Le Hoai Trung made the statement at the UN General Assembly’s debate on October 15 on operational activities for development of the Second Committee.

“We urge that development partners would continue their commitment to ODA pledge to promote the realisation of internationally agreed development goals,” he said.

The ambassador stressed that Vietnam believes that strengthening and intensifying development cooperation is in the interest of all countries and critical to the attainment of other purposes of the United Nations.

He affirmed that Vietnam is strongly committed to enhancing coherence, efficiency and effectiveness of the UN development system.

"Vietnam volunteered to be one of the 8 pilot countries of “Delivering as One” (DAO). It is the continuation of the “One UN” reform in Vietnam which was in fact initiated before DAO. The “One UN” primarily stemmed from Vietnam ’s policy of making the most efficient use of all resources, in line with our view that internal resources are decisive and external resources are important,” he said.

According to the ambassador, while the Government of Vietnam highly appreciates the comparative advantages of UN organisations, which contributed significantly to the country’s socio-economic development throughout the post-war reconstruction and reform periods and in our course of international integration, the Government of Viet Nam, the UN Country Team and many development partners believe that to be relevant, efficient, effective and given the limited resources, UN development cooperation activities in Vietnam need to be more coherent in purpose, more coordinated and focused in action and more harmonised in management.

He went on to say that the important factors in the promotion of the One UN-DAO in Vietnam are the Government ownership, active participation of UN organisations, especially the Country Team, support from development partners and hard efforts to deal with various technical issues.

“Now the One UN-DAO in Vietnam has passed the stage of setting in process and moved into the stage of working more for results. It has put in place a framework for the possible reforms towards effective and efficiency in Vietnam-UN development cooperation. However there remain considerable challenges, including those related to the shortage of resources and effective implementation of what has been agreed upon. It thus requires further support from headquarters of UN organisations and development partners,” the ambassador said.

In conclusion, the Vietnamese representative emphasised that efforts to promote the effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of UN development operational activities cannot substitute the greatly needed resources and must not alter the principles guiding UN development cooperation.

“These efforts are needed to enhance development cooperation, which can have both immediate and profound impact on lives and rights of people but at the same time regrettably has not always attracted the level of attention it deserves in the work of the United Nations,” Trung said, adding that the delegation of Vietnam looks forward fruitful discussions on the various aspects of UN development cooperation.-VNA