5. EXPERIENCE

Good experience of decentralisation of multilateral development assistance – a need to focus on the interaction between bilateral and multilateral engagement. The Danish administration of the multilateral development assistance was decentralised in 2005. The decentralisation entailed that the Danish UN missions in New York and Geneva and the embassies in Washington and Rome were given primary responsibility for the management of the part of the multilateral assistance that goes to specific organisations. The main tasks of the multilateral departments in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark were focused on overall policy and strategy development and the promotion of cross-cutting issues such as the Millennium Development Goals, UN reform and international environmental and humanitarian efforts as well as EU development assistance.

The decentralisation has led to a strengthening of the quality and effectiveness of the ongoing dialogue with the organisations. The dialogue, anchored in concrete organisation strategies, has become more specific and result-oriented. At the same time, the preliminary experience indicates that there is potential for an even greater degree of common prioritising and coordination between the multilateral and bilateral development assistance. Denmark’s bilateral engagement should be further strengthened by the multilateral experience and actions, and vice versa in relation to the multilateral engagement.

Potential for further focusing. There has been a major focusing of Denmark’s multilateral development assistance since 2001. However, there is still a significant spread in the distribution. In 2002, multilateral development assistance was disbursed to 180 organisations. In 2006 to 133 organisations. There is a predominance of small payments – about two thirds of the recipients received contributions of less than DKK five million annually.

Concentrating on the largest recipients of multilateral assistance. Table 5.1 lists the ten largest recipients of multilateral development assistance in 2007. Denmark is among the ten largest contributors in around half of these. There is only a slight variation in who is among the ten largest recipients of multilateral development assistance in the period 2001-2007. See table next page.

[the table with Denmark’s position is based in part on figures from 2006 as the 2007 figures are not yet available]

The proportion and distribution of multilateral development assistance is relatively stable. Over the period 2001-2007, the Danish multilateral development assistance amounted to between 30.4 and 36.1 per cent of total Danish development assistance. The share of assistance to the UN agencies, the World Bank Group and the regional banks, respectively, has been relatively stable, with an increase in the statutory development assistance to the EU system.