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FUNDING:

Although the INCD"s discussion on financial issues was aimed at giving an indication of how much funding was needed by the Secretariat during the interim period, problems that arose point to issues both governments and the Secretariat will have to address.

Prior to the negotiation of the Convention, little, if any, funding was provided for consultation with local communities. On the other hand, while donor countries have successfully argued for the need to use existing funding structures, some of these structures have not been reformed to correspond with the provisions of the Convention. This means that although the affected developing countries may have the goodwill to prepare programmes that conform to the requirements of the Convention, their efforts may be frustrated if the funding structures themselves are not reorganized to meet the requirements of the Convention.

The main challenge will be in the implementation of the resolution on urgent action for Africa and activities in other regions. The Convention provides clear guidelines, up to the completion of the national action programmes, on the process that governments should follow. However, since the multilateral funding processes may not be fully resolved until, at least, the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties, some affected countries may find themselves short of resources. Bilateral funding is likely to dominate during this period, but such funding mechanisms are often bureaucratic and entail requests for huge budgets. Awareness raising programmes in target communities, however, require small amounts of quickly accessible funding. This necessitates that bilateral funders must establish mechanisms, in particular for the implementation of the resolution on urgent action for Africa, through which such funds could be made available to both NGOs and governments. Any delay in accessing funds may cause affected countries to cut short on processes that are crucial to implementation of the Convention .