Brussels, 25/10/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Secretary General of a group of ACP states (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific), Jean-Robert Goulongana, signed two cooperation framework agreements in Brussels on Monday morning, one with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the other with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). This kind of agreement illustrates the policy of openness endorsed by the ACP Heads of State and Government since their second summit in Santo Domingo in 1999 and reaffirmed last June in Maputo at their fourth summit. Without challenging the privileged partnership with the EU, this framework agreements aim to improve international aid to the most vulnerable layers of each society. "These international organisations have highly effective expert cells in each of these areas", said a member of the Secretariat General of the ACP group, Neville Bissember.
Speaking on behalf of her organisation, UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid welcomed the reinforcement of relations this framework agreement will allow. The UNFPA is the largest international source of funding for programmes to assist populations. Among the very many forms of cooperation proposed by this framework agreement, this partnership will allow sexual and reproductive health and poverty reduction programmes to be set up.
As for the second framework agreement, the director of UN-HABITAT, Rolf Wichmann, said that he hoped to highlight an area which is often neglected: the urban situation. "Donors talk water, cleansing (…), but you cannot talk about access to drinking water without decent accommodation", explained Rolf Wichmann. UN-HABITAT and the ACP Secretariat share the same objectives at the service of sustainable social development. Among its main objectives, UN-HABITAT has set itself that of improving living conditions for at least 100 million people living in shanty towns by 2020- an objective laid down in the Millennium Declaration, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000.
Rolf Wichmann, who welcomed the signing of this framework agreement with the ACP group, added: "We hope that this cooperation agreement will allow us to develop joint projects, which could be financed by the European Development Fund (EDF)". In order to ensure that policies are followed up in the countries in question and to be able eventually to tackle the powers that be within them if not, UN-HABITAT will formally put together a request for observer status at the ACP group.