In September 2008, a parliamentary field visit to Tanzania undertook to examine the status of implementation of One United Nations Reform at the national level. As a follow-up to this mission, the Inter-Parliamentary Union convened a panel discussion on 19 November at UN Headquarters in New York on Progress in implementing One UN Reform: Political challenges, parliamentary perspectives. The objective of the panel was to bring to the fore the mission’s recommendations and engage in a discussion about future action.
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The panel featured UN General Assembly 62nd session’s co-Chairs on system-wide coherence, Ambassadors Augustine Mahiga of Tanzania and John Paul Kavanagh of Ireland. They were joined by Mr. Fernandez Taranco, UN Resident Coordinator in Tanzania; Dr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, the newly elected President of the IPU and Speaker of the Namibian Parliament, along with some of the prominent MPs serving on the Advisory Group of the IPU Committee on United Nations Affairs: Mr. Finn-Martin Vallersnes of Norway, Deputy Speaker Madlala Routledge of South Africa, Senator Rosario Green of Mexico, Mr. Melegué Traoré of Burkina Faso and Prof. Idris Mtulia of Tanzania.
The panellists underscored that over the past decades various UN agencies had engaged in many reform attempts, without ever before having undertaken the type of approach suggested by the UN Charter in its reference to "We the Peoples". In this connection, it was noted that Delivering as One proposes an approach which places national development priorities at the centre of all UN operations on the ground. This new paradigm, therefore, seeks to build national capacity and empower countries to exercise real ownership and leadership of their own development process. The active involvement of parliament is essential to the successful outcome of this endeavour.
The field visit to Tanzania recognized the great potential of the One UN approach to make a significant difference in the effective delivery of international assistance. It also called for parliament to play a more dynamic role in the conception, implementation and oversight of national development, which implies increased involvement in the upstream planning of the national budget. In the same vein, the IPU and its Member Parliaments welcomed the results of the Third High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, which specifically the acknowledged the need for national parliaments to play an enhanced role and bear greater responsibility in the preparation of national development plans, the integration of international development assistance into national budgets and the monitoring of development policies, strategies and performance.
The IPU is urging all national parliaments to follow this process closely. In the case of Tanzania, specific measures are already being put in place, such as the decision to include a parliamentarian on behalf of Parliament in the Joint Steering Committee for the implementation of One UN in the country. As Senator Rosario Green suggested, the current One UN reform is a "real, silent revolution" that can very well change, in a truly major way, how the United Nations conducts its work at the national level, in the service of "We the Peoples".
