Global capitalism comes to the rescue as rattling the tin cup doesn't do it any more

When the executive board of the United Nations Development Programme gathers in New York on Monday, the first matter for consideration will be a 25 per cent cut in the size of the organisation's headquarters.

But this is only the start of the shocks in store for the UN system over the next few years. The business plan devised by new UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown envisages a massive retreat from the 7,000 development projects it runs in 166 countries worldwide.

Bureaucracy is out under the plan, and risk-taking and staff accountability are in. A new emphasis is to be placed on partnerships with business in what some critics have derided as the "Coca-Cola-isation" of development, and the Internet is being heralded as the means by which the poorest countries can catch up on the rich West.

The turmoil within the UNDP is being echoed throughout the international organisations. Donations are down and rattling the tin cup just doesn't do it any more. So global capitalism is riding to the rescue - but at what price?

Brown, a Cambridge-educated former journalist, wants to change the UNDP from an "all-purpose, unspecific globular" development agency into one "with sharp edges", he said in an interview with The Irish Times this week.

"Globally, I want to restore UNDP's voice as a campaigning organisation. We have a unique relationship with developing countries and I want us to position ourselves as the governments' adviser on political institutions, human rights, the market economy."

Big business, anxious to open up new markets, has not been slow to spot the benefits of this "unique relationship". The oil company BP Amoco is spending $800,000 through the UNDP to help fishermen in Angola rebuild an abandoned port. Chevron is giving $500,000 for a business centre run by the UNDP in Kazakhstan and it is helping Johnson & Johnson to set up an education programme for cardiologists in Moscow.

This is nothing short of a revolution in UN terms. It isn't that long since the organisation turned down an offer from Coca-Cola to help would-be entrepreneurs in poor countries sell drinks at sporting events, lest it be seen to favour Coke over Pepsi.

Brown describes the media's interest in this trend as "prurient" and insists his organisation is not losing sight of its goals. "This is not UNDP selling its virtue by getting into bed for a one-night stand with big commerce. Our primary relationship remains with developing countries and the relationship with business is secondary."

There's a simple reason for the new emphasis on partnerships with business. Western governments are meaner than they have ever been and the UNDP has seen its core funding slashed from $1.2 billion to $700 million in just a few years. Core funding goes to the poorest countries, so they have borne the brunt of the cuts. Next year's funding for Africa, for instance, will be one-third of what it was five years ago.

Brown says the cutbacks are devastating, and although the funding pendulum may be swinging up again, other donors have to be found.

It's time, says this former World Bank vice-president, that business realised that "the South is the next market". Beyond the one or two billion inhabitants of the West, there are another four billion potential consumers in the developing world, just waiting to be tapped - and what better way to create this global market than the Internet?

Brown says the information technology revolution is the "mould-breaker" which can transform the lives of people throughout the world. "The old restrictions do not apply; the Internet is low-cost technology that can be accessed globally."

The problem today is that no such equality exists. The developing world labours under a "digital divide". Just 0.1 per cent of Internet connections are in sub-Saharan Africa, with 9 per cent of world population. South Asia has 1 per cent of connections, for its share of 19 per cent of population.

To counter this inequality, the UNDP has piloted Internet cafes in places such as Egypt and Bhutan, but its best known initiative is NetAid, the Internet successor to Live Aid and Band Aid which was launched with a glitzy high-tech webcast last year.

However, NetAid has proved a disappointment. Public contributions have amounted to only $1 million. Forty million "hits" on the website might sound like a lot, but most of these were registered on the day Bono, Puff Daddy, David Bowie and others appeared in the concert last October. Internet fatigue has set in early.

Ireland pays about £2.5 million a year towards the UNDP, though Brown is hoping this might increase. Bono aside, his familiarity with things Irish extends to links with Concern and its former head, Father Aengus Finucane, forged when both were working with refugees in Thailand.

"From working with Concern, I learned that the Irish public has a much stronger grasp on aid issues than in many other Western countries, thanks to the work of its aid agencies and missionaries.

"On the other hand, I realise this comes with a strong scepticism about international institutions, and that can be a handicap for us."

In spite of the fact that he is a newcomer to the UN, Brown is quick to defend the organisation against charges of bureaucracy and wastefulness. The entire UN, he points out, is smaller than the city government of New York.

Increasingly, the UNDP is taking on the role of representing all the UN agencies in developing countries; thus, for example, it acts as the front organisation for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, in many countries.

Whether private aid can succeed where public donations failed remains to be seen, but the needs are enormous. Almost half the world's population live on under $2 a day, one billion are illiterate, the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. The only thing Ireland and its rich neighbours cannot afford to do is to stand idly by.