Statement of the Republic of Slovenia on behalf of the European Union at the 17th session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
Thank you, Mr. Chairman
1. I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union (EU). The Candidate Countries Croatia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey, the Countries of the Stabilization and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, the EFTA country Norway, member of the European Economic Area, as well as Moldova and Ukraine, associate themselves with this statement.
2. The EU welcomes the report of the Executive Director on the activities of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and welcomes UNODC's ongoing commitment to streamline its operations and activities within the framework of an integrated, horizontal approach on drugs and crime and recognises that transnational organised crime, corruption and terrorism are a major concern for everybody which must be addressed in a coordinated manner.
3. The EU attaches importance to the current UN reform process and to the recommendations of the High-level Panel's report “Delivering as one”. In this respect, strengthened coordination in the framework of UNODC's partnerships with other United Nations entities can positively contribute to UN system wide coherence.
4. We acknowledge the ongoing commitment of the Executive Director to continue the process of management and operational reform within the Office. Let me express our general support to efforts aiming to promote efficiency and improve coordination between the drug and the crime programme as well as efforts to strengthen the cooperation between the various divisions and units. We now look forward to more information on the planned reform of UNODC's field office structure. Management-related decisions that are not technical but reflect a change in policy direction or having serious impact on the work of the Office, need to receive adequate guidance from all Member States.
5. The EU takes note of the report of the Executive Director on ways and means of improving the financial situation of UNODC. We concur with the view that the continuous overall growth of contributions for programmes and projects reflects the ongoing support provided by Member States to the work of UNODC. By providing more than 60% of those contributions, the EU as a whole constitutes the biggest donor (more than 50 million EURO in 2007). We therefore have a keen interest in a sound and transparent financial basis for the Office.
6. The EU remains committed towards the goal to enhance stability and predictability of funding. In order to consider improving the ratio between earmarked and unearmarked funds it is, however, indispensable that the Office provides donors with clear and transparent information on the use of funds and results attained. Moreover, in line with the functioning of multilateral organisations, the role of the Member States is to give clear policy directives, including on the use of resources. The questions of funding structure and governance arrangements are invariably linked.
7. Apart from its role as functional commission of the ECOSOC, the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice is tasked to give policy guidance to the crime programme of UNODC and to monitor its activities, including administrative, strategic management and budgetary questions. However, in the past, both the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs had difficulties to fulfil their role as governing bodies of UNODC.
8. Mr. Chairman, the EU therefore welcomes the decision taken by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs on 14 March 2008 to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group to improve governance and the financial situation of the UNODC. The EU looks forward to participating actively in the forthcoming discussions on how to improve the governance structure, ensure political ownership of Member States and on how to improve the financial situation of UNODC. The EU would support and welcome if a similar decision could be taken this week by the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice – in order to endorse the working group and to extend its mandate to cover also matters under the auspices of the CCPCJ. Sound and effective governance is necessary in order to achieve sustainable results, but also to promote ownership of all of UNODC's activities.
9. In this regard, the EU recalls the approval of the UNODC strategy for the period 2008-2011 by the Economic and Social Council in its resolution 2007/19. The consolidated biannual budget which was adopted at the reconvened 16th session of the CCPCJ is based upon Strategy, incorporating it into the United Nations Strategic Framework and aligning the resources with objectives set in the Strategy. However, we are still looking forward to the implementation plan to illustrate clearly how,
including by which projects, each concrete result specified in the Strategy will be achieved and what performance indicators will be established to measure its achievement within clearly defined time frames.
10. At this point, the EU would also like to express its appreciation for the efforts of the Independent Evaluation Unit in helping UNODC identify its strengths and areas for development. In addition to various thematic evaluations undertaken in the period under consideration, the annual evaluation report 2006 is particularly useful in identifying cross-cutting areas of improvement and reviewing the implementation of previous recommendations, thus encouraging the development of a new evaluation culture. The EU supports the major findings of the report, including the need for UNODC to further improve knowledge management, to enhance coordination and cooperation within the office, to strengthen partnerships and to continue to implement project cycle management which will contribute greatly to the improvement of results-based project design, monitoring and implementation. The EU believes that in line with the established norms and standards for evaluation in the UN system, the Independent Evaluation Unit should have operational independence in order to guarantee objectivity and impartiality of the evaluation findings. To this end we welcome new arrangements allowing the Independent Evaluation Unit to report directly to the Executive Director. At the same time we note its challenges in human resources constraints.
11. Mr. Chairman, we appreciate the reforms that have been implemented to date and we are looking forward to our ongoing engagement with the Office to ensure the success of our common efforts.
Thank you Mr Chairman.
