May 26, 2006	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 27, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, May 25: United Nations, as an institution, is too fragmented to be effective, said Ms Ruth Jacoby, member UN secretary general’s high level panel on UN system wide coherence and director general for Development Cooperation of Sweden on Thursday.

Talking to Dawn about the discussions at the panel’s regional level consultation, she said institutional and funding fragmentation in the UN is leading to overlap of roles and services.

“We are seeing sub-optimal results and sub-optimal coordination because of this fragmentation,” she opined and added that differences in procedures and rules.

Ms Jacoby said we were primarily asking ourselves if the UN system could be organised more effectively and logically.

Replying to a question about one of the panel’s working groups remarks that the UN was losing the unique edge it had with respect of competence, she said the question is more of whether the competence is at the right place at the right time and if its use was right.

Countries, she warned, may turn elsewhere for advice and assistance if the situation doesn’t improve.

Analysing the situation, a working group of the panel noted in its observation that the global body faced a coordination crisis and is finding it difficult to focus on where it could make difference. Besides, it said globally UN’s image has been tarnished.

Earlier speaking at the press conference Hina Rabbani Khar, minister of state for Economic Affairs Division said Pakistan had provided some valuable inputs on entire process of humanitarian assistance and some suggestions on how to make it better and a more effective process.

Josette Shiner, Under-Secretary for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, US Department of State said we were here to learn form Pakistan experience and to bring their wisdom through our deliberations in to the UN.

Robert Greenhill, President of the Canadian International Development Agency said experience coming out of the tragedy of the earthquake and extraordinary response from the people of Pakistan and international community, along with the number of best practices such as the cluster approach that was tried for the first time here in Pakistan for coordinating humanitarian assistance in disaster response has a lot to offer for others to learn from it.