areas at country level where UNDP can have the most desirable impact’.68 The report noted that: Eradicating poverty requires cross-sectoral policy approaches that simultaneously promote equitable economic growth, gender equality, basic social services, employment and livelihoods, and environmental regeneration, all targeted to the needs of the poor. Building on the creativity and resourcefulness of people living in poverty is central to the UNDP approach. UNDP also announced that it would start to prepare regular poverty reports and responded with two documents titled Overcoming Human Poverty in 199869 and 200070 that set out not only to examine the follow-up to the WSSD but to provide examples of what works in the fight against poverty at the country level. By the end of the 1990s, the PRSP with its promise of the World Bank and IMF resources dominated the approach to planning for poverty reduction. It also provided UNDP in many countries an organizational framework within which to engage and also a policy framework against which to provide alternative policies and choices. The PRSPs also specifically addressed what had been lacking in many, if not most, earlier poverty reduction strategies, a link to the budget and the macro economy. It supplanted the work undertaken by the PSI and in some cases built upon it and initially presented UNDP with the challenge of identifying its role in the PRSP process. Thus by the end of the 1990s and the start of the period covered by this evaluation, UNDP had a very clear focus on poverty reduction. Although compared to some other multilateral development organizations, notably the World Bank, it had shorter experience with poverty reduction; it had nonetheless rapidly developed expertise and experience in the
area, specifically in the framework of human development. The remainder of the chapter will take the story from 2000 and examine how UNDP’s strategic position and intent in relation to poverty reduction changed. First, to set the framework, the following section will look at how UNDP is organized and its approach to development.
3.2 HOW UNDP IS ORGANIZED AND ITS APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENT Although poverty reduction is the priority of UNDP, the organization has focused its work on a number of areas that all contribute to sustainable human development. At the same time, it incorporates a number of cross-cutting programming principles that guide its work. This section will examine the broader UNDP and see how it is structured to support its goal of poverty reduction. As a first step, it is important to set out the key strategic planning documents that UNDP used during the period being examined by the evaluations, as these set the framework for corporate policy described in the rest of this section. The introduction of the 2000-2003 Multi-year Funding Framework (MYFF) represented the latest stage in a process started in the mid-1990s71 to move UNDP towards being a more focused and result-oriented organization. It was followed by a second version covering the period 2004-2007. In turn the MYFF was replaced by a Strategic Plan, originally planned to cover 2008 to 2011 but later extended to 2013. UNDP’s areas of focus: In the period covered by the evaluation UNDP has had a largely consistent focus on the four thematic areas set out in Table 3. The four areas are the same in the MYFF (20042007) as in the Strategic Plan. The only difference is that a goal of responding to HIV/AIDS was
68. UNDP, ‘Narrowing the Focus’, DP/1998/5.
69. UNDP, Overcoming Human Poverty, UNDP Poverty Report 1998, New York, 1998. 70. UNDP, Overcoming Human Poverty, UNDP Poverty Report 2000, New York, 2000.
71. UNDP introduced its first corporate plan in 1995 (noted in UNDP, ‘Initiatives for Change: Follow-up to Decision 95/22’, DP/1996/2)
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C hapter 3 . U N D P ’ S S T R A T E G I C R E S P O N S E T O T H E G L O B A L P O V E R T Y C O N T E X T