The purpose of this brief is to inform ongoing UN80 deliberations on how the UN can do better with less. While the Mandate Implementation Review emphasised that more flexible and predictable funding is important to strengthen the delivery of mandates, this brief argues that adequate resource allocation across functions is equally critical. It shows how misaligned financial incentives, unintended effects of results monitoring, and capacity constraints shape allocation patterns and makes recommendations for improvement.
The scope of Workstream 2 includes a review of the mandate life cycle: mandate creation, mandate delivery, and mandate review. This brief focuses on mandate delivery, defined as how the UN system implements the tasks entrusted to it by Member States, from major global initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals to specific programmes and activities. Mandate delivery is the process through which agreements on key objectives are translated into tangible improvements on the ground.7
To analyse the allocation of resources within the UN system, this brief will use the core functions of the UN system as a point of departure. These functions were established through the QCPR process and include:
Integrated normative support for implementation, monitoring and reporting on global agreements, norms and standards
Integrated, evidence-based policy advice and thought leadership to support the efforts of countries to embed the Sustainable Development Goals in national and local plans and budgets
Collection and analysis of comprehensive and disaggregated data to inform evidence-based, context-specific and inclusive policy choices
Convening of stakeholders across constituencies, leveraging of partnerships and facilitation of knowledge-sharing, and South-South and triangular cooperation
Capacity development and technical assistance
Direct support and service delivery, particularly in countries in special situations, such as those affected by conflict, displacement and disasters8
These functions are deployed in different combinations to deliver mandates. Policy advice is essentially about what should be done, whereas direct support and service delivery are about the how of implementing what has been decided politically. Policy advice is often not purely technical but has a normative element.9
The analysis draws on 15 recent MOPAN assessments of UN organisations, primarily in the UN80 clusters for development (UN System), humanitarian and specialised agencies. The evidence has been extracted from the assessments’ main reports as well as the assessments’ technical annexes. Additional external documentary resources have been consulted and are referenced in footnotes. The insights presented are informed by the available evidence, which varies in depth and detail across the assessments and external studies reviewed. Annex 2 includes a summary of MOPAN evidence for each organisation.