New UNDP Chief Says: 'Possibilities and Priorities Mismatched'.

The new Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) began his four-year term on 1 July with a promise to reinvent the way the organization does business.

Mr. Mark Malloch Brown, a former Vice-President of External Affairs for the World Bank, nominated for the post by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly, succeeds James Gustave Speth, who held the position for six years. In 1997, he chaired a Task Force set up by Mr. Annan to review the Organization's media and public information dissemination policies.

Speaking of the priorities he sees in his new responsibilities, the Administrator said that for UNDP to accomplish its mission, it must reach out for new forms of cooperation. He called for stronger partnerships with programme country governments, civil society and nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, the Bretton Woods institutions and regional development banks. He also called for stronger partnerships within the United Nations system itself.

Mr. Malloch Brown warned of an accelerating decline in UNDP's resource base, noting that two donors had recently indicated major cuts in contributions - one to finance relief in Kosovo, the other to conform to the Maastricht balanced budget in Europe.

Asserting that this was a moment of truth for UNDP and its Executive Board, he said that the organization would "attack its business strategy for the next nine months with a passionate sense of urgency." He pledged that, by next spring, UNDP would "define its driving goals and benchmarks, concentrate its business vision, step up efficiency, accelerate its results-orientation and strengthen its management team". Shrinking official development assistance reflected "a failure of imagination" that threatened to sap the international community's response in a time when more, not less, development cooperation is needed. "Ours is a generation with unprecedented possibilities for human betterment, yet the mismatch between those possibilities and our priorities is mind-boggling", he said.

"With just $9 billion more a year. the world could deliver safe water and sanitation to all, ending the transmission of debilitating water-borne diseases. With only $6 billion more in annual spending, we could give a basic education to every child on earth." Yet, despite the funding challenges facing UNDP and the international aid community, advances in such areas as information technologies, global communications, new drugs and vaccines offered unprecedented opportunities to improve the lives of the world's very poorest people.