With its unique multilateral assets, the United Nations Development System (UNDS) should be playing a key role in assisting governments and other stakeholders with their implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. But this requires change. Despite improvements in recent...

In July 2016, Member States of the United Nations (UN) concluded the ‘ECOSOC Dialogue on the longer-term positioning of the UN Development System’ in which they had discussed options for reforming the UNDS for nearly two years. The next step in the reform process will be intergovernmental...

With its, on average, 18 entities in every developing country, the United Nations (UN) faces an enormous challenge in coordinating its development activities. Under the 2030 Agenda and its complex set of Sustainable Development Goals, coordination has become even more urgent. The UN...

This paper discusses the role of sector-specific ministries as development cooperation providers. These actors have the potential to contribute assets such as funding, expertise, or access to networks for global development efforts. However they may also present challenges for development...

A variety of governmental actors within OECD-DAC donor countries oversee funding distributed to developing countries. This paper examines the role of diverse bureaucracies within the development policy systems of Germany and the United States and highlights core questions that their...

This discussion paper analyses the European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD) by reviewing its main features, outlining key debates surrounding its establishment and exploring the fund’s prospects at the country level with illustrations from Ghana and Senegal. The paper builds on...

European Union (EU) funding for United Nations (UN) organisations has expanded significantly over the last two decades. The EU's partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is an important example of EU-UN cooperation, and UNDP was the fourth-largest UN recipient of European...