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
10. The Meeting reaffirms that the visa is the responsibility of the fellows and/or their
Governments. Therefore it recommens that the Governments of beneficiary countries
be involved in obtaining their visas.
Concerning this issue the Meeting notes with satisfaction the best practices put in place
by some European hosting countries to facilitate the issuance of visas to UN System fellows.
It is suggested that UN Agencies take due consideration of the political situations
in the host and beneficiary countries at the time of placement.
11. The Meeting recommends the creation of a Task Force on Impact Assessment of Fellowships.
This Task Force will be chaired by WHO with the support of UN/DESA
as Focal Point and other Organizations (IAEA, ITTO, WB, WMO etc.) and some
National Placement and Supervising Agencies. The terms of reference will be among
others to:
a) indicate how to measure success of the Fellowship programmes and identify appropriate
related indicators (national plans, benchmarks, etc.) needed for a proper
evaluation. Some information about these indicators might be included in the Fellowship
Application/Nomination form;
b) develop an Evaluation Framework followed by an Evaluation Methodology according
to RBB (Result-Based Budgeting) or equivalent principles;
c) propose an enhanced format for Fellow‘s final reports;
d) present results at the 17th Meeting of SFOs in 2008.
12. Representatives of major National Placement and Supervising Agencies express their
willingness to assist in the resolution of issues such as visas, taxation and training fees.
13. To resolve the issue of the long-pending revision of the stipend rates due to the unresponsiveness
of some local UNDP Offices it is recommended that:
a) DESA request HLCM (High Level Committee on Management) the authorization
to delegate the compilation of cost-of-living questionnaires for Fellows to other UN
Agencies present in the field and directly involved in Fellowship programmes;
b) the UN Conditions of Service Section be requested to calculate temporary stipend
rates based on a percentage of the prevailing DSA as a temporary one-time measure
to alleviate the urgent cases with stipends not reviewed for a long time.
Furthermore it is suggested that the delegated Agency carrying out the cost-of-living
survey consider the input provided by the host institutions and/or the National Training
Institutions.
14. To ensure that the relevant recommendations of the 16th Meeting are implemented
at country level, participants request UN/DESA to transmit them to UNDP Headquarters
for the attention of its country offices.
15. Participants express their deep appreciation to UN/DESA for its commendable work in
discharging the function of Focal Point for Inter-Agency Fellowships Coordination in