16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

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16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the United Nations System and Host Country Agencies
49. He emphasized that if a balance sheet would have to be drawn of the accomplishments
of the Meetings of Senior Fellowships Officers over the past 32 years, it would
show that no fellowship issue had remained unaddressed and the results were quite
tangible – policies and procedures on Fellowships, Study Tours and Group Training
were in place. Fellowships issues had been fully harmonized without affecting the
specific nature and the peculiarities of the Fellowships programmes of the agencies.
Stipend rates had been established for most of the countries and were reviewed on a
case by case basis. Furthermore, agencies were applying those rates across the board.
Consensus had been reached on the definitions of a Fellowship, a Study Tour and a
Group Training in the United Nations system. The administrative charges levied on
the different UN Fellowships programmes by the national placement and supervising
agencies were uniform. Last but not least, UN/DESA had constructed a Fellowships
Website which served all the agencies.
50. Mr. Thern-Svanberg subsequently evoked the status of the recommendations of the
past two meetings of Senior Fellowships Officers. He understood that for the past
few years it had been unclear how to endorse the recommendations of the biennial
meetings of Senior Fellowships Officers. He admitted that the meetings would not
make much sense if the Senior Fellowships Officers would meet for the sake of meeting
and their recommendations remained unapproved. He emphasized the need to
remedy the situation. In his opinion, it was not a matter of finger-pointing but a
matter of chain of command, namely, who did what and how. Therefore, the CEB
Secretariat felt that its presence at the current meeting was important.
51. He informed that during the last joint Session of the High Level Committee on
Management and the High Level Committee on Programme (HLCM/HLCP) held
in Rome on 30 September 2006, the agenda covered four issues which were to be
published in the report very soon. For confidential reasons, Mr. Thern-Svanberg
could not bring up all the issues but, at least, one issue that had been the work of
the Secretariat’s High Level Panel was Coherence. He added that a centerpiece of the
Panel’s recommendations would be a more coordinated and integrated presence by
the United Nations system at the country level, fully reflecting the “One United Nations”
concept. Therefore, the CEB Secretariat was willing to establish a procedure
through which the conclusions and the recommendations of the Meeting of Senior
Fellowships Officers would be brought for consideration and for action to the Human
Resources network and to the attention of the Finance and Budget network
if financial implications would occur. This would, in turn, ensure the appropriate
positioning of the fellowships matters within the HLCM structure.
52. Mr. Thern-Svanberg further explained that such a procedure would be put in place
by the CEB Secretariat with the assumption that the position expressed by the participants
in the meetings of Senior Fellowships Officers would already have obtained
Op. cit.