What next? Specialized agency chiefs look ahead

The Food and Agriculture Organization

The right to food is the most fundamental of human rights. Throughout history chronic hunger, whether caused by war, drought, poverty or natural disaster, has led to widespread suffering, and freedom from hunger remains a long-cherished goal. Alongside peace, hunger is the most pressing of all issues.

There must be two principal components in any strategy to eradicate hunger. One is to increase food production in order to feed an expanding world population. The second is to alleviate poverty at least to the point where every person has access to the food they need for a healthy life.

While the Food and Agriculture Organization concentrates on helping to ensure sustainable expansion of agricultural production and productivity, we also promote the concept that, where feasible, a greater emphasis by developing nations on the agriculture sector can make a powerful contribution to combating poverty. This follows from the fact that the majority of the poor in most developing countries depend on agriculture for employment and incomes. As long as this dependence continues, the growth of food production and of agricultural productivity in the countries with high concentrations of rural poverty will continue to be among the principal means of alleviating poverty and improving nutrition.

The dimensions of the hunger problem are great. In the developing countries 800 million people are chronically undernourished. Among them, 192 million children under the age of five suffer from acute or chronic protein and energy deficiencies. Hundreds of millions more suffer ailments such as retarded growth, blindness and impaired vision or goitre because their diets lack essential vitamins and minerals.

Progress has been made, both in absolute and per caput terms. For example, the figure of 800 million undernourished people mentioned above is down from 893 million in 1969-1971. It is projected to drop further to 730 million in 2010, a figure which still represents an appalling level of suffering and wasted human potential. Happily, the number of undernourished people as a percentage of total population has declined appreciably over the last two decades and is expected to continue to drop.

At present, 88 nations fall into the category of low-income food-deficit countries. Forty-four of these are in Africa, 19 in Asia and the Pacific, nine in Latin America, four in the Near East and 12 in the states of the former Soviet Union. The net food deficits of the developing countries are expected to continue to grow, and the developing countries as a whole will soon turn from being net agricultural exporters into net importers. These are alarming prospects given the difficult balance of payments situation and the unfavourable economic prospects for many developing countries.

Nothing short of a significant upgrading of the overall development performance of the lagging economies, with emphasis on a more equitable sharing of the benefits, will free the world of the most pressing food insecurity problems. The only feasible option for an early and sustainable improvement in food security is the enhancement of the productivity and production of food. The key to such gains is efficient technology, applied to the commodities that can make a difference.

The basic goal of food security is one that peoples, governments and the international community have no alternative but to address. Yet certain trends are not encouraging. Developmental commitment from bilateral and multilateral sources to developing country agriculture is declining. Between 1981 and 1992, overall amounts dropped from $12.3 billion to $8.5 billion, in constant 1980 U.S. dollars. During this period, agriculture's share of total development assistance fell from 25 per cent to 17 per cent.

I believe that now is the time to raise public awareness and to promote political commitment at the highest level for a global campaign to provide food security for all. The Food and Agriculture Organization will host a World Food Summit in November 1996 to pursue this commitment. Only a combination of faster, poverty-reducing development and appropriate public policy, both national and international, will ultimately improve access to food by the poor and eliminate chronic undernutrition.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

IAEA's activities are directly relevant to a number of areas that are vital to the future of our planet: the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, energy, the environment and development assistance.

The number of states acceding to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has grown significantly in recent years, For example, several republics of the former Soviet Union - notably Ukraine - along with South Africa and, quite recently, Algeria have joined the 169 countries which had already signed the Treaty. This has led to the broadening of the nuclear materials safeguards system, which now covers more than 1,000 installations all over the world. To perform this field work, IAEA has a team of 200 inspectors and an annual budget of some $68 million. It is currently envisaging the introduction of new technical methods to increase the effectiveness of monitoring operations.

On two occasions in recent years, this fundamental activity has come up against major difficulties - in Iraq and in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. However, IAEA remains resolutely optimistic regarding its ability to contribute substantially to the efforts deployed to circumscribe the danger which nuclear weapons can still represent for world security, in spite of the end of the Cold War.

With regard to the environment, the energy sources chosen by all of us will continue to play a fundamental role if we wish to halt the process of degradation that is already well under way. The choice of a viable form of electricity production in the coming decades will chiefly lie between "polluting" fuels, such as coal, oil and gas (above all from carbon dioxide), and nuclear energy, from which the emanations are negligible.

It is up to every country to make its own choice. Some 30 of our member countries have adopted nuclear energy to provide at least part of their electricity supply, and 17 per cent of world electricity production is now nuclear-generated. Some countries are opposed to its use as an energy source, but all are agreed that nuclear energy should be exploited under the best possible safety conditions. It is from this standpoint that IAEA is devoting considerable efforts to enhancing the safety of nuclear installations, in particular at the request of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe, wishing to obtain the Agency's opinion and support in regard to the operation of their nuclear power stations. Last year, the first International Convention on Safety laid down standards in this area, to which some 50 countries have already signified their assent.

Lastly, IAEA is also endeavouring to transfer peaceful nuclear techniques in a number of fields to its developing member countries. These include the eradication of the tsetse fly and the fruit fly by the sterile insect technique, the production by radiation of mutant cultivated plants that are more capable of withstanding crop-devastating organisms or difficult climatic conditions, the use of radioactive isotope tracers to detect water resources, and the use of radiation in combating cancer. IAEA attaches the utmost importance to these transfers, which are a key feature of its work programme.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

The shortage of resources for development caused by the world crisis which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union makes it essential that these resources should be rationally and effectively managed.

With this in view, a number of innovations have been introduced into the project cycle of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), in order to make these projects less costly and more suited to the real needs of the Fund's clients. The resulting savings will be used to strengthen operations in priority sectors.

IFAD is devoting increased attention to technical assistance. A lasting reduction in poverty requires technologies of a new type that will be both intrinsically suited to. the purpose and financially affordable. IFAD has applied itself to persuading international research institutes to shift their priorities and strategies and to give prominence in their schedules to the needs of small farmers and other disadvantaged people living in rural areas. This preoccupation is at the root of the Fund's efforts to foster partnerships between national agricultural research systems in the developing countries and international research institutions.

IFAD also attaches special importance to the elaboration of joint strategies and alliances with other financing and development agencies. Such collaboration has to go beyond the co-financing of projects. IFAD's vast experience could be used to advantage on a broader front in connection with joint approaches to combating poverty in rural areas. The idea is to establish a package of programmes, centred on an IFAD-type project, which would benefit from substantial funding from other international financing agencies. IFAD's grassroots projects could then be reproduced on a larger scale, which would considerably increase their impact.

IFAD and the World Environment Fund (WEF) are currently examining ways and means of strengthening their collaboration in contending with the interdependent problems of poverty and the environment. Breaking the vicious circle of rural poverty and the degradation of the environment has long been at the heart of IFAD'S concerns, especially in connection with the Special Programme for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Through innovative projects and specialized studies carried out under this programme, new ways have been found of helping small farmers to protect the environment by practising ecologically sustainable agriculture. IFAD is intent on making the most of this experience in the framework both of concerted action with WEF and of the International Convention to Combat Desertification and Drought.

The coming years are likely to be difficult ones. Resources will be limited, while needs will keep on growing. It is imperative therefore that every dollar at our disposal should be used as effectively as possible. Success in banishing hunger in twenty years, thirty years or a century will depend on the sense of commitment of the donor and beneficiary countries and on the international institutions. IFAD, in its modest and positive fashion, is paving the way.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)

In the last 50 years, many changes have taken place in the world economy, all of which have had an impact on the work of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These changes have included the emergence and growth of the developing countries - today there are almost 130 of them among the IMF's 179 members; the trend toward greater symmetry in economic size among the industrial countries; the increased international mobility of goods, capital, and labour, and the associated international integration of markets; the trend towards regional integration; and the integration of the formerly centrally planned economies into the world market economic system and the IMF itself.

But the influence has not been only one-way: some of the changes can be attributed to a significant extent to the work of the IMF. Over the years the IMF has come to see more clearly that macroeconomic policies need to be conducted within a medium-term framework of monetary stability and fiscal rectitude and have to be supported by structural, cost-effective social and environmental policies; that restrictions on capital flows are generally not to be recommended as an instrument of policy; that the requirements of maintaining pegged exchange rates, especially in the face of increasingly voluminous and agile international capital markets, as revealed by the Mexican crisis, are demanding.

These developments have been reflected in each of the IMF's three major areas of activity.

First, in the provision of financial assistance: one major change is the concentration of the IMF's financing operations in recent years on developing countries and countries in transition and the introduction of new financing facilities operating in a more flexible framework. These adaptations have enabled the IMF to continue serving the needs of countries in balance of payments difficulties, to play its role in resolving the debt crisis and recent systemic crisis in Mexico, to make its contribution to growth-oriented adjustment in the developing countries, and to play its full role in Russia and the other transition economies.

Second, the IMF has adapted its role in the exchange rate system. It has responsibility for exercising "firm surveillance" over the exchange rate policies of members, which involves surveillance over all policies impinging on exchange rates. IMF surveillance is conducted through regular - usually annual - consultations with individual member countries, and through consideration of policy issues in a global context. This has been and remains the IMF's principal means of promoting exchange stability.

The third main area of IMF activity is the provision of technical assistance to member governments in its areas of expertise, including fiscal policy, central banking and monetary policy, and economic statistics. There has been a dramatic growth in demand for these services in recent years, especially to help with institution-building in the countries in transition.

The International Labour Organisation

Promoting social justice in the closing years of the 20th century, marked as they are by globalization and the triumph of the market economy, entails taking a firm stand on principles that are deemed to be essential and adopting imaginative strategies. What values should be defended? What changes should be made?

Tripartism is both the cornerstone of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the feature that makes it fundamentally different from the other United Nations organizations. By associating representatives of governments, employers and workers in all its deliberations and decision-making, ILO ensures that its action is relevant, topical and effective with regard both to the setting of standards and their practical application. However, while ILO is intent on remaining the social conscience of the world, it will also have to study ways and means of gathering round it the other intermediary groups working for the promotion of social justice.

Setting international labour standards and monitoring their application continues to be the prime function of ILO. All the views expressed on the occasion of the Organisation's 75th anniversary in 1994 culminated in reaffirming their usefulness and universal value. However, an effort has to be made to adapt their contents to present-day realities and improve their effectiveness in practical terms. The ILO's Governing Body has embarked on this process. It will endeavour in particular to draw up a conceptual framework for the revision of existing standards and the adoption of new ones. At the same time, ILO will set out to promote wider acceptance and greater respect for the standards through its monitoring system and the direct assistance it provides to its membership.

However, at a time when unemployment has become the major social blight in most economies, worker protection cannot be dissociated from job promotion. In other words, it is necessary to deal with both labour law and the right to work.

In this perspective, ILO has just published the first volume of its World Labour Report, which presents a global analysis of the situation in this field, together with proposals aimed at shifting the emphasis of national and international policies in a direction more conducive to employment and social justice.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization

Urgent, practical, solutions are crucial if the world is to cope with the demands of its expanding population. The role of industrialization is central to confronting the causes and effects of this human explosion as well as to ensuring a better life for the three quarters of humankind who live in developing countries.

A complex range of development problems have to be tackled in most of these countries, from the provision of basic necessities to the creation of jobs, raising income levels and using non-renewable resources efficiently.

Industrialization offers a number of answers to this growing human and economic dilemma. Slow industrial and economic growth, which goes hand-in-hand with poverty, is as much a cause of rapid population growth as an effect. To break this vicious circle, a comprehensive programme is needed, combining socio-economic and industrial development.

In the highly competitive international environment that has come to prevail throughout the world, especially in the aftermath of the Uruguay Round of trade agreements,(1) industrial and technological growth is more crucial than ever for the economic survival of the South. As new challenges emerge for developing nations and economies in transition, the demand for industrial services is increasingly at the forefront of development issues.

The future of UNIDO lies in providing the services essential to meet the demands of industrialization today and into the next century. Responding to the recent dramatic changes in the world's economic environment, the Organization has just undergone a major transformation, making it more responsive to the needs of developing countries and economies in transition.

In 1993, UNIDO's Member States adopted the Yaounde Declaration calling for a series of far-reaching reforms of the Organization. The aim was to build on the strengths gained from more than two decades of experience in serving the needs of the developing world. These strengths include the Organization's impartial, non-profit status, its multidisciplinary capabilities and the industrial expertise of its staff, as well as its experience in technical co-operation at policy, institutional and enterprise levels and its broad knowledge of industrial development issues.

Five development priorities were set to guide the Organization's new course: industrial and technological growth and competitiveness; human resource development; equitable development through industrialization; environmentally sustainable industrial development; international co-operation in industrial investment and technology.

With a streamlined management structure and refocused priorities, the Organization is now in a better position than ever to meet the development challenges of the 1990s and beyond.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) by Thomas E. Leavey

Spectacular though they are, the changes that have taken place on the communications market in recent years appear only to be the precursors of even greater upheavals.

It is in preparation for these upheavals that the Universal Postal Union has equipped itself with two new Councils separating the governmental function (the Council of Administration) from the operational function (the Postal Operations Council). In addition, the development of strategic planning and programme budgeting now makes it possible for UPU to define its objectives more clearly and to make a more accurate assessment of the resources necessary for their fulfilment.

UPU's current strategy, which was adopted at its Congress held in Seoul in 1994, is aimed at two essential points: improving the quality of services and securing greater management autonomy.

In the first place, UPU is intent on ensuring that postal administrations set satisfactory distribution standards, take steps to ensure that their customers are properly informed and then watch over the strict application of those standards. UPU's International Bureau measures the global quality of services and informs the postal administrations concerned of any departures from the norm, so that steps can be taken to remedy them.

The International Bureau has also designed and set up a world Electronic Data Interchange project (EDI), which connects postal exchange offices at the points of origin, transit and destination, surface and air transport companies and customs authorities to a standardized electronic communications network. EDI technologies will also help improve and speed up accounting procedures, the compilation of statistics on volumes of mail by categories and destinations, and the monitoring of quality of service. The goal is to ensure that the largest possible number of developing countries will be able to benefit from EDI at the earliest opportunity.

Since they are obliged to offer universal services at affordable prices, postal administrations are subjected to considerable economic pressures connected with competition and technological progress. The demands of the international market have accordingly compelled them to transform their legal status. In order to make sure that deregulation and liberalization will be effective, it is essential for governments to allow postal administrations sufficient autonomy over their human and financial resources. Government-controlled postal administrations are therefore being converted into independent or semi-independent public companies that are progressively adapting to a competitive international market.

In this new economic and technological environment, UPU is continuing to be the main channel of co-operation between postal services and is thereby contributing to the maintenance of a worldwide network of modern products and services.

1 The eighth round of international trade negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which ended with the approval of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round at a meeting in Marrakesh (Morocco) in April 1994.

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