The UN development system comprises 30 agencies and organizations created over a period of more than 100 years, starting with the International Telecommunication Union in 1865. It has grown by accretion with no deliberate architecture. Not surprisingly, there is duplication within the system, but also some gaps which are not adequately filled.

The project, starting in September 2009, has arisen from a recognition that the 30 agencies of the UN Development System have lived through several decades of a fast-changing global environment and will need to adapt to the new realities, including resurgent developing countries in Asia and Latin America, the threats and opportunities posed by globalisation, the retreat of statism and the recognition that human
activities everywhere are driven mainly by private interests.

The two main objectives of the FUNDS Project are:

• To assess the capacity of the current UN development system agencies to address the evolving major development challenges and
• To deliver a blueprint for 2020 and beyond outlining the nature and scope of ‘a (renewed) UN development system’.

The project will be linked to research institutions in New York and Geneva, the two main seats of the UN development system, as well as to centres of excellence in countries of the South. The intended methodology of the project is therefore to involve a very wide constituency of stakeholders and interested parties – including and especially the intended beneficiaries of the UN’s development efforts – in creating a new UN development system architecture for 2020 and beyond.

Forty years after the Jackson Report on the capacity of the UN Development System, this project thus looks beyond recent attempts at reform by projecting 10 years forward and looking outside, rather than within the system, for future direction.

A FUNDS Advisory Council comprising eminent persons from developed and developing countries is in formation.

View the project presentation