Guia de Estudos - Faap

INTRODUCTION
We would like to introduce to you delegates, one
of the most important issues in consideration nowadays:
Development. Besides the fact that it is a very
broad word and it can be divided in many different
fields (economic, social, political etc.), we would first
like to make you understand how development became
such an important issue to every actor in the
international system, even for the countries that are
already developed, after, we will discuss the most important
issues within development. All this learning
will be done with a goal: to understand the role of the
actors of the international system when dealing with
this subject. We will work and depict through discussions
the role of international organisms in the track
towards development.
After the Second World War countries joined up together
the idea of rebuilding a better world, over this
ideal the United Nation was created. The mean purpose
of the United Nation’s creation was to keep the
world a peaceful place. One of the United Nation’s task,
right after its creation was to gather aid from member
countries to rebuild the ones damaged by the war. By
rebuilding places, they had a consensus towards recovering
places and bringing them equality.
Equality was a key word; “equality” is a word that
comes close to the word “peace”, according to a few
scholars, as a safer world would be a more equal one.
This was understood by the end of the Second World
War, and since it was understood, “development” became
a common ideal to the world. And in November
of 1965 the United Nations Program for Development
was founded making states join forces thus strengthening
the links that already existed among them in
the international environment.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
is a committee within the United Nations, and here we
will get to know better its current role in the world.
The committee has as a main goal of “[b]ringing development
everywhere and thus eliminating poverty”.
It was created with the idea of gathering information
to be analyzed and studied by the UNDP, and it uses it
as a tool to develop resolutions to countries, as technical
assistance, so the countries can have some ownership
over their domestic problems. It acts meanly as a
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VII Fórum FAAP de Discussão Estudantil - 2011
space where actors can share information about the challenges
they have got in common, and also work together
over effective solutions. It is now composed by 166 countries
and it acts as a bound among world leaders.
But what are the problems that countries have in common?
And, how to measure the influence of this problems
in each country? By answering these questions and looking
forward to development reaching everywhere in the
world, the former secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan,
together with the UNDP, understood the world’s common
problems as: hunger, financial crises, health, global warming,
and such. And by qualifying them as responsible to
avert development, a plan was created to be followed as
a track towards development, and also as a thermometer
from which one can evaluate how far from the track a
country is, this plan is named Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs).
Accorded in the year of 2000 the MDGs consists in
eight goals created in the second millennium with the
maximum purpose of bringing development to the
world. However, we may consider that the MDGs have to
work within its deadline that goes until 2015.
It is important to stress that the UNDP does not execute
its programs, it opens a debate on key development
issues, providing new measurement tools, innovative
analyses and often controversial policy proposals.
It aids, coordinates and evaluates projects which will be
executed by others. UNPD does not only work alongside
governments, but also together with private companies
and the civil society. All these actors, but the UNDP, will be
in charge of the execution of the programs.
By now, the working process of UNDP concerns all of
you, so the task now is based in not only on the knowledge
we are providing, but on your own independent research,
for you to act as a member of the UNDP. You must
bring to every other actor information about our common
problems and information about how the actors of your
country (civil society, private sector, government, NGO’s)
are acting towards the pursuit of the MDG´s. By sharing
this information first, we after will be capable of tracing
good resolutions for all of us against our common problems,
and by winning this fight together we will achieve
strong international cooperation 1 , which is listed as the
eighth goal and it is needed first and foremost towards
achieving the other seven goals.