13 January 1997

Bonn, Germany: Ms. Brenda McSweeney, Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Volunteers and Mr. Samuel Nyambi, Director, Office to Combat Desertification and Drought (UNSO) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing on a two-year programme in support to the Implementation of the Resolution on Urgent Action for Africa (UAA) in the context of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) which has entered into force on the 26 December 1996.

The CCD calls upon the affected countries to prepare and implement action programmes at national, sub-regional and regional levels. The action programmes as conceived in the Convention is process-oriented, bottom-up, iterative and decentralized.

The signed joint UNV - UNSO programme aims at supporting this very approach by ensuring ownership and full participation of the civil society and its representative organizations in the National Action Programme and Sub-regional Action Programme processes in order to allow lasting impact of related initiatives.

This objective will be met through the deployment of 17 National United Nations Volunteers attached to the national coordinating bodies, responsible to implement the National Action Programme as called for by the CCD in 15 African countries and to the two UNSO sub-regional support projects in Ouagadougou and Nairobi, to assist them in institutionalizing participatory planning processes.