Africa-Press – Lesotho. As part of preparations to roll out the second United Nations Development Assistance Plan (UNDAP) framework 2019-2023 for Lesotho, a multi stakeholder workshop was held in Maseru yesterday with the aim of discussing and validating the Common Country Analysis (CCA).
The CCA is a rights-based scientific tool that identifies the root causes of poverty and inequality among people in the world’s poorer economies and how to manage them. UNDAP is a common medium-term strategic plan of the United Nations system.
It provides a collective, coherent and integrated response by the UN system to contribute to a country’s national priorities and needs including its development plans and strategies within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other international commitments.
The UNDAP is operationalized by an action plan, which anchors the work that UN agencies do within the accountability of frameworks and legal agreements concluded between those UN agencies and the government. The workshop was between the United Nations and the Ministry of Development Planning and other stakeholders.
UN Resident Coordinator Salvator Niyonzima indicated that the UN System was implementing the Lesotho UNDAP 2013-2018 as a collective response of the UN System to Lesotho’s development challenges as articulated in the first National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP).
He said the new UNDAP 2019-2023 will be aligned to the country’s priorities through the second NSDP and orient UN programming to the 2030 Agenda for SDGs.
“The CCA has been developed to define priority development opportunities and challenges alongside their underlying causes,” he said.
He also noted that from 2000 to 2015, Lesotho’s progress in achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had shown some mixed results. “While the country has shown progress in areas of education, it showed less work in other areas like poverty,” he said.
On behalf of the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Planning Development Malefu Khanyapa indicated that the Lundap provides a collective, coherent and integrated UN system response to national priorities and needs, including equivalent national strategies.
Khanyapa also acknowledged the NSDP for mainstreaming issues of gender, children, youth, and people with disabilities, elderly and other vulnerable groups in all strategic programmes that implement the NSDP.
UN consultant Dr Okwach Abagi presented the Lesotho Country Analysis working document, which aims to identify and review the underlying root causes, gaps and challenges facing development and social progress in the country.
Abagi noted their impact on the population, especially the most vulnerable, disadvantaged individuals and groups. In the document he mentions that available reports indicate that 57.1 percent of Lesotho’s population live below the national poverty line of M138 per adult per month.
The report also shows that poverty and inequality still continue in the country. “The impact of chronic food insufficiency and hunger is grave and a major concern to the government, the UN and non-governmental organizations,” he said.
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