Report of the UN Secretary-General on the Re positioning of the UN Development System
In the runup to Christmas, I have to admit my priorities were elsewhere than reading the second report on the ‘Repositioning of the UN Development Agenda’ which the Secretary-General had published. I am sure I was not the only one focusing on the holidays. The new year is now with us and so I thought I had better catch up. Background to this report and its predecessor is that the UN needs to reorganize around the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement and to retool to help accelerate implementation. In addition, with the Trump Administration cutting back on its financial commitments being an urgent driver for change. This has been made perhaps easier because of the changing leadership at the UN in the last couple of years. Not only do we have a new Secretary General – a former head of state – but also a Deputy Secretary General who played a significant role in the development of the Sustainable Development Goals. In the Agencies and Programmes we also have new heads at U...