Brown calls for bigger UN aid fund
Thursday, 31 August 2006 12:00 AM
Gordon Brown has today called for a significant increase in the UN's emergency assistance programme, insisting it must learn lessons from crisis in Lebanon.
At a meeting of the UN reform panel in Norway earlier today, the chancellor said the international community must be able to react faster to crises than it did this summer, saying more streamlined institutions and more money were needed.
Mr Brown called for an expansion of the central emergency response fund (Cerf), which was launched in March this year, to $1 billion to provide greater flexibility when responding to emergencies. The current fund target is just half this amount.
But he also insisted that the numerous UN bodies responsible for delivering aid must be reformed to ensure this aid was properly dispensed.
He called for the creation of a single UN body to focus on improving governance, coordination and accountability to donors and also to recipient governments.
A task force should be set up to rein back the proliferation of UN funds, programmes and specialised agencies to ensure there was no overlap in the workload.
Mr Brown also pressed for closer cooperation between the World Bank and the UN to ensure that the Global Environmental Facility, which helps developing countries' projects to protect the environment, receives sufficient funding.
"The international community needs to work together to reinvigorate and strengthen the UN's assistance and aid functions to enable them to meet new global challenges," he told the special UN meeting.
"It is time for a bold and ambitious agenda and the leadership to drive this forward."
The chancellor has been steadily increasing his international profile in anticipation of taking over from Tony Blair as prime minister, most likely within the next year, and today's trip is the latest part of that process.
It has become particularly important now that Conservative leader David Cameron is making his mark on the international stage, with a recent visit to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela and next week's planned trip to India.
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