ISLAMABAD, Feb 23: The United Nations has embarked on a major reform process under the ‘One UN’ pilot project in Pakistan, putting together all its entities, though maintaining their separate identities, into five core groups.

The groups are: health, education, HIV and AIDS, poverty reduction and disaster management.

Currently, some 18 UN entities are operating in the country with different mandates, different sets of global priorities and different operational, managerial and delivery systems.

Once implemented, the UN would be having one programme, one budgetary framework and an enhanced role for the UN resident coordinator.

To be officially launched by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in March, the project would be completed by the end of 2008 and it is likely to bring about a major change in the manner UN system operates in the country.

The government will be leading the process to ensure that all relevant departments fully support and engage in the UN reform and its programmes matched national priorities of the country.

Pakistan and seven other countries -- Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay and Vietnam -- had volunteered to undertake the `One UN’ pilot project to transform the UN entities, once dubbed by donors as highly incompetent, into an efficient organisation.