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
one hundred and eleven senior officials across the United Nations system agencies,
funds and programmes with a deadline response of 5 January 2005. That message read:
“Your approval is sought for the conclusions and recommendations emanating from the 15th
Meeting of Senior Fellowship Officers of the UN System. In particular, the recommendations
concerning standardized entitlements for study tour and group training participants.
In view of the financial implications, this communication is sent to both Human Resources
and Finance and Budget Networks.”
54. The message was clear and time-bound. Nonetheless, the endorsement of the harmonized
policies and procedures by the majority of agencies remained outstanding. That
could be viewed as a test of the coordination mechanism, which was in place both among
agencies and within agencies. To ensure better coordination on inter-agency level in the
future, it might be suggested to CEB/HLCM to review and limit the list of the addressees
to only the senior managers who were directly involved in training and fellowships issues.
By all accounts, obtaining the concurrence of as many as 111 senior officials from across
a wide spectrum of United Nations system agencies would be a mission impossible. On
the agency level, it was very important to ensure a vertical flow of information from Fellowships
Services and Sections to Senior Management and vice-versa.
Recommendation 2:
Active Participation of Fellowships Officers in the Fellowships Selection Process.
55. The second recommendation was basically a reinforcement of the existing procedure
whereby Fellowships Officers participated, screened and had the final say in the selection
of candidates for fellowships awards. Generally speaking, agencies had adhered to
this recommendation. WHO Africa had always involved the Fellowships Officers in
the selection of candidates. So did the UN/DESA. Its Fellowships Officers had participated
in the screening of candidates, in the interview panels and had chaired the
meetings of the selection panel. However, experience showed that the participation of
Fellowships Officers in the selection process had been at times constrained by external
factors. Donors sometimes provided fellowships funds to agencies but not without
conditions on the selection, on policies and even entitlements. Therefore, Fellowships
Services or Sections needed to promote their fellowships programmes and policies so
that the donors and all stakeholders could understand the advantages of services provided
by the United Nations agencies in terms of the quality of the programmes and
the benefits to the fellows. The more engaged Fellowships Officers were at all stages of
the fellowship cycle, the more neutral, objective and trusted became the agencies in the
eyes of the recipient and donor countries.
Recommendation 3:
UN Agencies Develop a Quality Assurance System to Monitor Fellowships Programmes.
56. The purpose of the third recommendation was to ensure that fellowships programmes
contributed effectively to national capacity enhancement. It appeared to be a complex