Global perspective Human stories

Top UN development official visits Bolivia en route to Monterrey

Top UN development official visits Bolivia en route to Monterrey

Mark Malloch Brown
The head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Mark Malloch Brown, today began a two-day visit to Bolivia before heading to Mexico to participate in the upcoming International Conference on Financing for Development.

The head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Mark Malloch Brown, today began a two-day visit to Bolivia before heading to Mexico to participate in the upcoming International Conference on Financing for Development.

This morning, Mr. Malloch Brown, together with Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga, launched the 2002 National Human Development Report in La Paz. Tomorrow, the UNDP Administrator is expected to travel to Santa Cruz for a high-level meeting on capacity building for development.

From Bolivia, Mr. Malloch Brown is scheduled to continue to Monterrey, Mexico, for the global Conference, which will get under way on 18 March.

Meanwhile, in Vienna, the UNDP Regional Support Centre noted that the Monterrey Conference would call attention to the dramatic changes over the past decade in development cooperation assistance, including support for several Central European countries that previously were not targets of UNDP and donor assistance.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, lending and policy advice to support the post-communist transition to democratic, market-based societies became key priorities, the agency said in a statement. Today, countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia have begun to make the transition from recipients to providers of aid.

In addition to helping countries construct their own development cooperation strategies, UNDP was also exploring new collaborative financing mechanisms that would enable them to use the agency’s financial and programmatic infrastructure to realize their plans.

“Innovative forms of financial and other partnerships must be used to promote development,” UNDP said, stressing that development actors must increasingly supplement their own financial resources with funds coming from other sources.