United Nations experts and external partners meet in Kampala, Uganda, to discuss ways to respond to development challenges in the Great Lakes region

21 Oct 2016

United Nations experts and external partners meet in Kampala, Uganda, to discuss ways to respond to development challenges in the Great Lakes region

Kampala (Uganda), 21 October 2016 - The United Nations Special Envoy for Africa’s Great Lakes region, Said Djinnit, and the Chair of the Regional United Nations Development Group (R-UNDG) and Director for Africa of UN Development Programme, Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, convened a meeting in Kampala, Uganda, on 19 and 20 October 2016 to review and act on cross-border implementation of United Nations activities under the Regional Strategic Framework 2016-2017. Participants included several officials from the United Nations, among whom Regional Directors, Resident Coordinators (RCs), representatives from UN Country Teams (UNCTs), and the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), Mamadou Diallo.

The Strategic Framework is the outcome of a process launched by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim during their joint mission to the Great Lakes in 2013. Since then, RCs and UNCTs from the region and the R-UNDG have met in Kigali, Rwanda, in May 2014, to discuss their joint response to challenges facing the Great Lakes region.

In the same vein in March 2015, technical representatives of the R-UNDG and UNCTs met in Nairobi, Kenya, to develop a set of regional projects under the Strategic Framework. They agreed that, while continuing with the initiative in the whole region, the approach should initially focus on the core area of conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which borders Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania.

On 21 March 2016, the United Nations Secretary-General formally approved and launched the Strategic Framework at the Security Council Open Debate on the maintenance of International Peace and Security, and called on the Security Council, the States of the Great Lakes region and the donor community “to endorse the Strategic Framework and extend their full support to its implementation”.

The Strategic Framework is a reference document for the United Nations regional action in the Great Lakes in support of the implementation of the Peace, Security and Cooperation (PSC) Framework for the DRC and the region, signed in 2013. The Strategic Framework covers six pillars: 1) Sustainable land and natural resources management; 2) Economic integration and food security; 3) Mobility and border management; 4) Youth and adolescents; 5) Gender and sexual and gender-based violence; and 6) Justice and conflict prevention.