FAO COUNCIL DISCUSSIONS: COMPREHENSIVE INDEPENDENT

UNCLAS ROME 004296

SIPDIS


STATE FOR IO DAS MILLER, IO/EDA RICH BEHREND AND SHARON
KOTOK, IO/S ABRAHAMS, OES/E, E, EB;
USDA FAS FOR JBUTLER, MCHAMBLISS, LREICH, RHUGHES;
AID FOR EGAT, DCHA/OFDA, DCHA/FFP

FROM THE U.S. MISSION TO THE UN AGENCIES IN ROME

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: AORC EAGR EAID SENV KUNR KPAO FAO
SUBJECT: FAO COUNCIL DISCUSSIONS: COMPREHENSIVE INDEPENDENT
EXTERNAL EVALUATION



1. Summary. Over the past several months one of this
Mission's highest priorities has been to achieve Permrep and
Secretariat agreement to launch a comprehensive independent

SIPDIS
external evaluation of the UN's Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO). Through such an evaluation, we hope to
rejuvenate this large UN organization that spans a range of
important rural development issues, but which often suffers
from inchoate priorities and disparate member state
expectations. We have succeeded in getting relatively broad
support for this initiative: from the Director General, from
the Regional Groups, and from the Independent Chair of the
Council. Our objective for the 127th Council of FAO will be
to achieve a mandate for the evaluation and the creation of
a committee empowered to make decisions necessary to get the
process immediately underway.


2. The consensus for the project is still delicate.
Achieving this important goal will continue to require
continued diplomacy, lobbying, and advocacy. The tone of our
approach should emphasize the common interest all members
share in making the organization a better one. End
Summary.


3. FAO's current structure is the remnants of a severe
downsizing process that cut its regular program budget by
over 24 percent in real terms, and its staff by 29 percent
between 1994 and 2004. As we know from our own Department's
experience in the Nineties, incremental downsizing is
usually a sub-optimal way to organize a bureaucratic agency.
This was especially true for FAO, which otherwise suffered
from weak leadership and was torn between the conflicting
interests of our politicized multilateral world. In face of
the budget cuts, FAO navigated through the spending cuts in
a way that tried to spread the pain equally rather than
identify comparative advantage and maximize impact. The
result was hardly the consolidated, more objectively focused
institution we hoped to achieve through budget stringency.


4. Today, few countries are satisfied with FAO, although
many G77 countries are slow to admit it to us. Through a lot
of hard work and tough diplomacy over the past several
months, we have succeeded in breaking through the G77's
facade to find common ground - and mutual interest in taking
a zero-based look at the organization. Even Director General
Diouf has come to reluctantly agree that a thorough
independent evaluation might enhance the organization's
impact and effectiveness. The Council's independent chair,
Moroccan Ambassador to Washington Mekouar, calls the
evaluation "essential." And all regional groups have now
publicly told us that they accept the need for an
evaluation.


5. In order to move the initiative into an official channel,
Canada joined us in sending a request from the North America
Group to add an item entitled "Comprehensive External
Evaluation" to the November 2004 Council agenda. A week
later, on October 28, the North America Group provided the
Secretariat a background paper and draft resolution that

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would launch an evaluation (copies of the paper and
resolution have been forwarded to IO by e-mail). Over a
dinner the DCM hosted that same day, we presented the paper
to representatives of the regional groups, all of whom
expressed support for an evaluation. They asked for time to
discuss our paper before considering it in substance in a
broader discussion. We will resume discussions with regional
groups in mid-November with the aim of working an agreement
on the resolution before the Council meets.


6. Rather than sink into details, the proposed resolution
consists of a simple decision by the Council to: (1) mandate
an evaluation to be funded by extra budgetary contributions,
and (2) to establish and empower a "Committee of the
Council" to work out terms of reference and modalities, and
to oversee the fund-raising and evaluator selection
processes. To the extent possible, we will want to avoid
discussion on modalities now and in the Council. There will
be an obvious tendency to politicize any initiative as broad
as this one in a Council debate. Nevertheless, a US non-
paper that outlined purpose and modalities, as we saw them,
has been widely circulated among most permanent
representations in Rome. A tacit agreement to enable smooth
Council consideration by assigning disQussions on modalities
to a Committee establised for this purpose now exists among
most member delegations.


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POINT: The US delegation should seek to shift discussions on
modality details to the Committee of the Council rather than
engage them on the Council floor.
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7. If we wish to use evaluation findings in the strategic
framework review now scheduled for 2007, something that
would be valuable, we will need them by the November 2006
Council. Working the timeline backwards, we will want the
evaluation underway by summer 2005. We should allow 12-18
months for the evaluation. That leaves only six months for
the Committee of the Council to work out terms of reference
(TOR) and other modalities, to raise funds, to budget, and
to tender/select the evaluators. That's a big bill and will
require much Committee work within a labor and time-
intensive multilateral framework. If the Committee has to
return to the June 2005 Council to approve TORs, everything
will shift by another several months. Moreover, it is in the
interest of efficiency and effectiveness that the TOR be
worked out in the Committee rather than debated on the
Council floor. We need to empower the Committee to make
decisions, and this may be controversial among the always-
conservative G77 membership.

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POINT: The US delegation should seek Council empowerment for
the Committee to make necessary decisions without returning
for subsequent Council approval.
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8. The deal breaker in getting broad and adequate regional
support for an evaluation is any perception that (1) there
is a US and/or OECD Group political agenda behind our
initiative, (2) our goal is to criticize the organization in
an effort to justify even further funding cuts for the
future, and/or (3) the evaluation process will not be
independent of the Secretariat and/or member state and
regional group political interests. On the other hand, all
regional groups already support (1) an evaluation that is a
quality first class piece of work, (2) an evaluation that
produces an objective set of constructive findings, and (3)
an evaluation that results in visible improvements in the
way the organization does its work, i.e., one that could
justify greater resources from donor capitals. [Comment: on
this latter point we have informally stressed the difficulty
FAO faces due to its low profile when the UN organization
budget pie is cut in major donor capitals such as our own.
More specifically, we have stressed the flip-side: that
without an evaluation that produces reform, it will be even
harder for us to justify resources for the organization in
the future. End comment] "Credibility," or the FAO's lack
thereof, is a negative buzz-word among many G77 colleagues.
They accept our point about FAO's "low profile," however,
and understand exactly what we mean.

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POINT: The US delegation should keep a positive spin on the
value of doing the evaluation, avoiding a focus on the
organization's weaknesses, and stressing our desire to make
FAO better.
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9. We will continue to lobby and do advocacy with the perm
delegates in Rome. Ideally, the Resolution could pass with
little or no floor debate, but we know that in FAO's world,
what is "ideal" happens too rarely. Nevertheless, the larger
set of details must be assigned to Committee of the Council
deliberations where we will set up a structure and process
that produces effective results. Between now and the Council
meeting we will organize discussions with other regional
groups to see how far we can agree on the resolution we have
now tabled. We will keep the Department briefed on these
talks and will elaborate on our progress further when our
delegation to the Council arrives in Rome.

HALL


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2004ROME04296 - Classification: UNCLASSIFIED