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

Administrative Issues 47
160. WHO pointed out that neither its short-term, nor its long-term fellows faced difficulties
with bank accounts. However, fellows who went to Europe for training up to three
months did encounter difficulties. For this category of fellows WHO would have preferred
to deposit the stipends with the national placement and supervising agencies, if
possible, and have the latter make the monthly payments to the fellows. According to
WHO, advancing the whole sum in cash at the beginning of their training was not an
option. CBIE had already adopted that procedure. The UN agency had transferred the
money to CBIE’s account and upon arrival CBIE accompanied the fellows to the Bank.
The Organization of American States for its part gave debit cards to fellows to draw
money from Automatic Teller Machines (ATM).
Intervention by Ms. Marina Neuendorff, Project Manager, Internationale Weiterbildung
und Entwicklung GGMBH (InWEnt)
161. Ms. Neuendorff briefed the participants about InWEnt which had approximately fifty
five thousand participants a year. Thirty thousand of them came to Germany from
abroad. InWEnt’s training was oriented toward practical training for post-graduates.
Close ties existed with private companies, institutions and research institutes. Nine
hundred staff members worked in offices in New York, Tokyo, Manila, Pretoria and
other countries around the world. InWEnt had worked as a placement agency for
UNESCO, UNOPS and IAEA and collaborated with other UN agencies, as well.
With regard to visas, InWEnt did not encounter many problems since the organization
was working very closely with the German Government and the local offices abroad.
Programmes were set up three to five months in advance which allowed enough time
to obtain visas. Germany, unlike the Netherlands or the United Kingdom, did not
encounter problems with taxation. Insurance was part of InWEnt’s service package
for fellows. With regard to training fees InWEnt, like NUFFIC, had to cope with an
increasing numbers of institutions which charged tuition fees that strained the programme’s
budget.
Intervention by Ms. Lesley Zark, Chief of Scholarships Unit, Organization of American
States (OAS)
162. Founded in 1946, OAS was one of the oldest international organizations of the Western
hemisphere. It had a similar structure to the one of the United Nations and comparable
conditions of employment, rules and regulations. The main fields of activity covered by
the organization were good governance, promoting human rights, hemispheric security
and confronting shared problems such as poverty, terrorism, illegal drugs and corruption.
Similar to UNESCO, OAS provided long-term scholarships for the last two years
of studies leading to Master’s degrees or PhDs anywhere in the hemisphere. Short-term
training ranging from two weeks to three months was offered for professional development.
Furthermore, OAS ran a successful long-distance learning programme. Ms. Zark
emphasized that her organization had established partnerships with observer states in