Georgia Tech Model United Nations Conference

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is the primary UN organ that concerns itself with all aspects of global development. The UNDP is one of the UN’s international organizations with offices in 166 nations, and its role involves being an international network for all aspects of development. Its primary aim is to help improve the lives of people in all the world’s nations, through providing countries with the necessary knowledge, experience and resources needed to bring about changes. For instance, the UNDP’s work involves helping countries in reducing poverty rates, fighting hunger, and combating illnesses, in order to help such nations’ citizens and enable them to live better lives. For it is usually the case in many lesser developed countries that the government is unable to fully satisfy its people’s needs, and that is where the UNDP’s role comes in to further assist these people. The UNDP’s efforts are focused mainly in the areas of democratic governance, poverty reduction, crisis prevention and recovery, energy and the environment, and HIV/AIDS, all the while stressing upon the importance of the empowerment of women. Such goals are achieved through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are 8 goals that were set at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, to be achieved by 2015 in all member nations of the UN. The MDGs lie mainly in areas of democratic governance, poverty reduction, the environment, HIV/AIDS, and gender equality. Also in 2000 in the same summit, the Millennium Declaration was adopted by the UN’s General Assembly. The Declaration consists of eight chapters relating to peace, human rights, needs in Africa, the role of the United Nations and various other issues. The MDGs were in fact developed out of the chapters of the declaration. The UNDP is the primary organization concerned with the implementation of these goals, and thus, they will be the focus of the topics and discussions at the conference. These will serve as the spine of our committee, and so I expect all delegates to familiarize themselves with them. Specifically, the UNDP’s work on these MDGs lies in four areas. First, campaigning, where in cooperation with other organizations it helps spread awareness about the MDGs. Second, analytical, through its research and evaluation of various strategies that are to be implemented in order to achieve the MDGs. Third, helping countries in monitoring their progress and advancements in these goals, and finally, providing assistance, financial, humanitarian and otherwise, to governments in achieving their MDGs, while dealing with any obstacles in the way. While progress has been made in almost all areas of the goals, much effort is still needed in order to fully achieve the goals. We are now at the mid- point of these goals, but unfortunately, the amount of progress achieved thus far is insufficient to meet the goals by 2015. There is plenty of information regarding this in the UN’s MDGs Report for 2007. For this reason, the work of our committee becomes all the more important, as delegates need to come together to decide how these goals could be achieved on time with respect to the committee’s topics. Obviously, the UNDP also focuses highly on international cooperation, a vital strategy in achieving development, as the majority of nations needing to achieve these goals are economically less developed and face various obstacles to their development, such as instability or corruption.