The UN’s Global Development Network

UNDP is the UN's global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience
and resources to help people build a better life. We work in 166 countries through a network of 135 country offices
worldwide, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. UNDP does not
represent any one approach to development; rather, our commitment is to assist partner governments in finding their own
approaches, according to their own unique national circumstances.

UNDP advocates for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the concept of human development and the need to
empower women. Its series of global, regional and country-focused Human Development Reports are a powerful advocacy
tool with a focus on people-centered, inclusive, equitable and sustainable growth.

Under the overarching goal of poverty eradication UNDP focuses on five inter-connected thematic areas: poverty reduction,
democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery, environment and energy, and HIV/AIDS.

UNDP in India
UNDP is committed to help India achieve the global Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as the national
objectives articulated in consecutive Five-Year Plans. The goal of the organization is to help improve the lives of the
poorest women and men, the marginalized and the disadvantaged in India. UNDP works in the following areas: Democratic
Governance, Poverty Reduction, Crisis Prevention and Recovery, Environment and Energy, and HIV and Development.

Who are the decision-makers (both on the UNDP side, and amongst our
partners)
The Resident Coordinator heads the UN System in India and is the Resident Representative for UNDP in India. UNDP has
appointed a Country Director who is responsible for the day-to-day work of UNDP India. Our Country Director is assisted
by two Deputies, one for Programme and one for Operations.

UNDP in India works closely with the Government of India through its designated nodal department, the  Department of
Economic Affairs (DEA) in the Ministry of Finance. All activities falling within the Country Programme Action Plan are
nationally owned. Implementation of the programme activities are being carried out by Implementing Partners, i.e.
Government Ministries, State Governments, District Authorities, Civil Society Organisation, NGOs, and UN agencies
including UNDP as appropriate, under the overall oversight by DEA.

The Current Country Programme (2008-2012)

he present country programme document for India (2008-2012) was formulated in partnership with the Department of
Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance, building on the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF)
2008-2012. The programme is in harmony with the eleventh five-year plan of the Government of India and has benefited
from wideranging stakeholder consultations, including within the United Nations system, and a comprehensive review of
lessons from past cooperation. (download Country Programme 2008-2012). View Standard Letter of Agreement between
UNDP and the Government for the Provision of Support Services.

In India, the focus is on:

 Poverty Reduction

 Democratic Governance

 Crisis Prevention and Recovery

 Environment and Energy

 HIV and Development

What We Do
UNDP is the UN's global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to
knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working
with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges.

World leaders have pledged to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including the overarching goal of
cutting poverty in half by 2015. UNDP's network links and coordinates global and national efforts to reach these Goals.

UNDP helps developing countries attract and use aid effectively. In all our activities, we encourage the protection of human
rights and the empowerment of women.

Millennium Development Goals

UNDP, as the UN's global development network, links and coordinates global and national efforts to reach the MDGs.

Developing countries are working to create their own national poverty eradication strategies based on local needs and
priorities. UNDP helps to make them effective through ensuring a greater voice for poor people, expanding access to
productive assets and economic opportunities, and linking poverty programmes with countries’ international economic and
financial policies.

Poverty Reduction
Developing countries are working to develop their own national poverty eradication strategies based on local needs and
priorities. UNDP helps to make them effective through ensuring a greater voice for poor people, expanding access to
productive assets and economic opportunities, and linking poverty programmes with countries’ international economic and
financial policies. More ...

Democratic Governance
UNDP India is working to build democratic governance. it brings people together within nations and around the world,
building partnerships and sharing ways to promote participation, accountability and effectiveness at all levels.More..

Environment & Energy

Energy and environment are essential for sustainable development. The poor are disproportionately affected by
environmental degradation and lack of access to clean, affordable energy services. These issues are also global, as climate
change, loss of biodiversity and ozone layer depletion cannot be addressed by countries acting alone. More...

Crisis Prevention & Recovery

UNDP’s approach to conflict assessment seeks to operationalise conflict prevention into strategy development and
programming. More...

HIV and Development

To prevent the spread of HIV amongst vulnerable groups and to uphold the rights for people living with HIV,  developing
countries need to mobilize all levels of government and civil society. UNDP advocates for placing HIV and Development at
the centre of national planning and budgets; helps build national capacity to manage initiatives that include people and
institutions not usually involved with public heath; and promotes decentralized responses that support community-level
action. More...

Poverty Reduction
UNDP works to improve the effectiveness of national poverty reduction and livelihood promotion programmes in
partnership with central and state governments with a focus on disadvantaged groups and regions. It promotes the design
and use of poverty reduction strategies that involve the poor, women and men from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled
Tribes groups, migrants, minorities and the displaced. UNDP fosters partnerships including the private sector to enable
disadvantaged households to improve their skills, diversify to non-farm activities and increase access to credit, financial
services and markets. It assists organizations of the poor to develop livelihood plans in areas such as agriculture, forestry,
fisheries, land resource development, rural tourism and handicrafts. Furthermore UNDP also advocates for increased
participation of the poor in design and implementation of poverty reduction programmes and policies.

UNDP has supported more than 100,000 poor women to organise themselves into self-help groups, federations,
cooperatives or producer companies to setup and manage a range of micro-enterprises. It has provided technical support
to municipal governments in 13 cities to design and implement poverty reduction strategies focussing especially on
vulnerable groups. Similar support at the state level, for example to the Rajasthan Mission on Livelihoods, has successfully
demonstrated the impact of improved design and delivery of livelihood promotion services on the lives of poor under the
ongoing government programmes and schemes. UNDP’s support to the formulation of a comprehensive national strategy
for urban poverty reduction and capacity building of national research and training institutions has helped to bring urban
poverty into the national and local development agenda and underscore the rural-urban linkages.

Democratic Governance
UNDP supports the Government of India to strengthen systems, institutions and mechanisms enabling local elected
representatives, officials and communities to perform their functions effectively, including planning, implementation and
monitoring of decentralised development programmes. While doing so, it makes human development an integral part of
planning and policy-making, and promotes formulation of State and District Human Development Reports as well as
gender-responsive budgeting. UNDP pays special attention to the needs of disadvantaged groups, especially women and
girls, and encourages them to participate in public decision making. It enhances citizens' monitoring capacities, through
the use of public disclosure tools such as social audit, governance 'report cards', the Right to Information Act, and ICT-
based systems.

Further, UNDP supports national programmes, like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(Mahatma Gandhi NREGA), which foster governance reform and accountability while providing work opportunities to people
in rural areas. In partnership with Government, UNDP strengthens delivery mechanisms of justice and empowers
communities and disadvantaged groups to demand justice. UNDP also supports initiatives to improve delivery of public
services in urban local bodies in select cities through improved planning, accounting and property-tax reforms.

Crisis Prevention & Recovery

UNDP has been supporting various social and economic development goals of the Central and State Government in India
over a decade enabling them to minimize losses due to development gains and reduce vulnerabilities to natural disasters.
The coverage of the programme includes more than 30% of the population in India. UNDP works with the Government in
nearly 200 of the most hazard-prone districts of the country through a multi stakeholder approach. It provides training,
expertise and knowledge to help state and district institutions and community members, especially women, prepare for
disasters building their resilience against risk bridging the gap between emergency relief and long-term development.

The programme so far focused on preparedness and on building the capacity of people to respond to emergencies. Gender
sensitive disaster management plans were drawn up and in around 140,000 villages local volunteers were trained on skills
required to perform various response functions. The culture of preparedness was enhanced among members of youth
organizations such as National Service Scheme (NSS) and Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS). A web-enabled database
called India Disaster Resource Network (IDRN) established under the project helps the district authorities identifying
availability and location of resources such as equipments and skilled human resources, which are required in emergency
activities. The India Knowledge Network (IDKN), another web-based portal, is developed to share information and
knowledge and to promote networking among various institutions and departments involved in Disaster Management

Crisis Prevention & Recovery

UNDP has been supporting various social and economic development goals of the Central and State Government in India
over a decade enabling them to minimize losses due to development gains and reduce vulnerabilities to natural disasters.
The coverage of the programme includes more than 30% of the population in India. UNDP works with the Government in
nearly 200 of the most hazard-prone districts of the country through a multi stakeholder approach. It provides training,
expertise and knowledge to help state and district institutions and community members, especially women, prepare for
disasters building their resilience against risk bridging the gap between emergency relief and long-term development.

The programme so far focused on preparedness and on building the capacity of people to respond to emergencies. Gender
sensitive disaster management plans were drawn up and in around 140,000 villages local volunteers were trained on skills
required to perform various response functions. The culture of preparedness was enhanced among members of youth
organizations such as National Service Scheme (NSS) and Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS). A web-enabled database
called India Disaster Resource Network (IDRN) established under the project helps the district authorities identifying
availability and location of resources such as equipments and skilled human resources, which are required in emergency
activities. The India Knowledge Network (IDKN), another web-based portal, is developed to share information and
knowledge and to promote networking among various institutions and departments involved in Disaster Management

Environment & Energy

UNDP in India is committed to protect the environment and to meet the challenges posed by climate change. UNDP works
with the Government of India to strengthen policy, legislative and regulatory mechanisms on biodiversity conservation,
while addressing land degradation, promoting clean and renewable sources of energy, and phasing out ozone-depleting
substances. The programme lays emphasis on actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts and on enhancing
awareness among marginalised communities for them to manage and reduce disaster and environment related risks. The
biodiversity conservation initiatives support communities so they are able to administer their resources in a sustainable
manner. This happens through value-addition and marketing of products based on natural resources and through the
documentation as well as the sharing of benefits that arise from traditional knowledge. The programme furthermore
supports efforts towards strategic management of chemicals, which contribute to pollution and the depletion of ozone
layer.

In the Gulf of Mannar and Sunderbans Biosphere Reserves, the introduction of alternative livelihoods and the generation of
awareness among local communities have led to prudent use of natural resources. The coral cover in Gulf of Mannar
increased by 4.5 percent in the years 2006 to 2008. In the Sundarbans an irrigation canal that was built with the help of
UNDP and lead to more diverse livelihood options, which reduced the dependence of people on fishing as a sole means of
livelihood. In Saraikellla-Kharsawan district of Jharkhand, 110 biogas plants were set up. This helped to conserve 240,900
kgs of fuel thereby reducing CO2 emissions by about 385,440 kgs each year. Communities in Tumkur district of Karnataka
have demonstrated that biomass production and power generation is sustainable and successful when the local
government, the public and the private sector work together.

HIV and Development

UNDP works with the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to respond to HIV and AIDS in India and reduce its
impact. UNDP supports the national efforts by offering knowledge, resources and technical expertise to effectively
implement the National AIDS Control Programme. For the next five years, UNDP will be working to ensure that HIV
becomes part of India’s development response across districts vulnerable to HIV in nine states across India. In partnership
with NACO and other UN agencies, UNDP is also designing a national programme to make migration safer. Since it is the
agency mandated to work on human rights and gender, UNDP will work with sexual minorities, such as men having sex
with men, to address their most urgent needs and to reduce stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.

UNDP has helped the National AIDS Control Organisation to develop national policies for gender and HIV and for greater
involvement of people living with HIV. Almost 15.6 million people across India were provided with information, training and
services to improve their capacities to deal with HIV. 9,000 people living with HIV as well as trafficking survivors received
livelihood training to expand their employment opportunities and skills. UNDP has also conducted pioneering research on
the social dimensions of HIV. The first large-scale study of the socio-economic impact of HIV on households drew national
and international attention from the media and policy makers.

Regional Human Development Reports

Several HDRs have been prepared for the Asia and Pacific Region. HIV/AIDS and Development in South Asia 2003, has
been prepared by the UNDP's Human Development Resource Centre and the Regional HIV and Development Programme in
collaboration with UNAIDS.

The Mahbub Ul Haq Human Development Centre has prepared several South Asia HDRs since 1997. The first report,
Human Development in South Asia 1997, is general, while the others are thematic. They focus respectively on education
(1998), governance (1999), gender (2000), globalization (2001), agriculture and rural development (2002) and
employment (2003). The Asia Pacfic Regional HDR Initiative (APRI) collaborated with the Mahbub ul Haq Human
Development Centre, Islamabad, for the preparation of the Human Development in South Asia 2002 and Human
Development in South Asia 2003.

Two Human Development Reports have been prepared by UNDP, Fiji, for the Pacific Region. The first HDR, Pacific Human
Development Report 1994 - Putting People First, is a general report, while the second HDR for the Pacific Region, Pacific
Human Development Report 1999 Creating Opportunities, is a thematic report.