Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. The fund is created in such a way that we are.... Having offices in various countries means that you're part of country programming. We are funding local civil societies in countries some of whose governments, I would say, would prefer us to go through them. We actual

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. I wouldn't see the project-based way of doing things as a limitation. We do it this way because we're a fund. Other UN entities have different programs and projects. On our end, though, we've managed over the past 10 years to gather those experiences and we've learned

Foreign Affairs committee  Interestingly enough, we don't get to choose. At the pre-selection stage, we hire external assessors to go over the 2,300 applications for a grant. Afterwards, we have resident coordinators. The resident coordinator system is a network of UN senior leadership in almost every stat

Foreign Affairs committee  Benchmarks or performance indicators are enshrined in our project document. For each project, there is a project document, which acts as a contract, binding the implementing agency, the local NGO or a local civil society organization, with UNDEF. During the project life cycle, t

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members. It is an honour for the UN Democracy Fund and for me as a Canadian to be here and to thank Canada for being a donor to UNDEF. I will make my presentation in English, but I can answer questions in French also. In the decade-plus si