By IANS,
United Nations : India has stressed that the UNDP should focus on “decimating poverty” and that UN development systems need to be “firmly rooted in its core focus area” of only development-related work in order to be successful.
Hardeep Puri, India’s permanent representative to the UN, said the Rio+20 outlined the imperative of poverty eradication as the greatest global challenge, and laid down the roadmap for the “future we want”.
He said UNDP “must ensure that effective implementation mechanisms and the means that developing countries need to achieve it are followed up, and provided for, by the multilateral system”, according to an official statement Tuesday.
Puri said Monday that India, “as a country that has one of the longest relationships with UNDP and is the biggest contributor to its core budget among developing countries” has an abiding interest in UNDP’s success and its efforts in the global development agenda.
He said for the first time ever, a resolution adopted by the UN general assembly has a section dedicated exclusively to poverty eradication, in which the UNDP has been given the mandate by 193 member states to “assign the highest priority to poverty eradication”, which is the “greatest global challenge”.
Puri said while preparing the next strategic plan for 2014-2017, “it is absolutely imperative that all the actionables that the UN Development System and its agencies have been called upon by member states to pursue are not just incorporated but also implemented as part of the strategic plan being so developed”.
He said India, along with Brazil and South Africa has partnered in the IBSA Trust Fund Initiative, which has been a flagship project under the overall canvas of South South cooperation.
The initiative has concluded several key developmental projects including rural electrification through solar energy systems in Guinea Bissau, improving the health infrastructure services for children in Cambodia among others.
He said India reaffirms its steadfast commitment and support to UNDP and is willing to walk the extra mile in helping the organization achieve the mandate of poverty eradication.