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Switzerland renews 60 mln CHF contribution to UNDP

Xinhua, July 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

Switzerland's Federal Council announced on Wednesday that the confederation would renew its annual commitment to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) by providing 60 million CHF (64 million U.S. dollars) every year until at least 2017.

According to the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), while building on current levels of assistance, the council's decision also serves to renew Switzerland's long-standing commitment to one of the country's top UN partner institutions.

FDFA confirmed that UNDP's activities and development objectives are in tune with Switzerland's international development concerns and priorities.

The department furthermore highlighted that Switzerland's close relationship with UNDP enables the country to shape both policies and strategies through shared interests such as eradicating poverty and enhancing sustainable development throughout the world.

By directing international cooperation efforts towards states and regions in fragile contexts to help mitigate injustice, poverty and conflicts, Switzerland can also help protect its own economic and foreign policy interests, explained FDFA.

Entailing a close collaboration with UNDP, FDFA reported that the program can then provide fragile states with greater crisis and recovery expertise, which will also support UNDP's mission to substantially reduce poverty, inequality and exclusion in developing countries.

Partnerships between the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) and UNDP in Albania, where an education project has helped some 700 young men and women enter the labor market over the last two years, and in Nicaragua where 2,000 people have been trained in natural disaster prevention, reflect the success of past and continued cooperative efforts.

UNDP plays an important role in coordinating the UN development system and is present in over 170 countries across the world. Endit