United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to the Chairman, Committee on

Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate

April 1997 INTERNATIONAL

ORGANIZATIONS

U.S. Participation in

the United Nations

Development Program

GAO/NSIAD-97-8

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

National Security and

International Affairs Division

B-270949 

April 17, 1997

The Honorable Jesse A. Helms

Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations

United States Senate

Dear Mr. Chairman:

This report responds to your request that we conduct a follow-up to our 1990 review of U.S.

participation in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). As agreed with your office,

this report provides an assessment of the progress that UNDP has made in reducing its

administrative costs and improving its ability to coordinate and assess the impact of U.N.

development assistance activities.

We are sending copies of this report to the Administrator of UNDP, the Secretary of State, the

Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and appropriate congressional

committees. We will also send copies to other interested parties upon request.

This report was prepared under the direction of Benjamin F. Nelson, Director, International

Relations and Trade Issues. He can be reached at (202) 512-4128 if you or your staff have any

questions concerning this report. Other major contributors to this report are listed in 

appendix VI.

Sincerely yours,

Henry L. Hinton, Jr.

Assistant Comptroller General
Executive Summary

Purpose The United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) core mission is to help

countries achieve sustainable human development. It is the central

financing and coordinating mechanism for development assistance within

the U.N. system. UNDP works to achieve its mission by providing advisory

services, training, and equipment across a variety of sectors, including

agriculture and international trade, to developing countries.

In 1990, GAO reported on (1) weaknesses in UNDP’s coordination of U.N.

development assistance at the country level, (2) problems with UNDP’s

evaluation of project results, and (3) deficiencies in the level of resources

UNDP focused on the priority needs of the least developed countries.1 In

addition, the U.N. Board of Auditors and donor nations have raised

concerns over these issues and others such as the cost of UNDP

administrative operations and the adequacy of UNDP’s internal audit

organization. GAO’s specific objectives in this report were to provide

information and analysis of (1) actions taken in response to

recommendations in our 1990 report to improve coordination, project

evaluation, and the allocation of resources; (2) the amounts and sources of

UNDP budget support; (3) the cost of administering UNDP’s headquarters and

overseas operations and the extent to which UNDP has reduced these costs,

including a comparison of UNDP and U.S. Agency for International

Development (USAID) compensation expenditures; (4) the system of audit

and internal control UNDP employs to oversee its operations; (5) the

criteria UNDP employs to graduate recipient countries from assistance; and

(6) the extent to which UNDP projects coincide with U.S. national security

and foreign policy objectives.

(711168)

1

See United Nations: U.S. Participation in the U.N. Development Program (GAO/NSIAD-90-64, Feb. 22,

1990).

Page 2 GAO/NSIAD-97-8 International Organizations
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