Multilateral agencies

Multilateral agencies and organisations have a critical role to play in helping developing countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Three institutions – the European Commission, the World Bank and the United Nations – already account for around 30% of global aid.

Why are multilaterals important?

Multilateral development agencies are rarely out of the news whether it's the UN  working in Darfur and Sri Lanka to deal with conflict and humanitarian crises or the World Bank and Regional Development Banks putting into action their commitments made at the G20 London summit or the WHO leading on the response to the outbreak of Swine Flu.

They play a crucial role in lifting people out of poverty and DFID's funding and expertise supports them in their operations across the globe.

DFID engagement with multilaterals

DFID works with multilateral agencies because they are well placed to respond to regional and global development challenges such as conflict and instability, communicable disease, population displacement and trade.

Many global challenges can only be addressed through a collective international response – for example, climate change mitigation.  When we pool our money with that of other donor countries, we increase its impact. It helps to lower costs, and means everyone is working towards the same goals - it also enables us to help more people in more countries than we could reach on our own.

Institutions like the European Community, the UN and the World Bank are doing a good and essential job. They have highly skilled staff working all over the world to help eliminate poverty.

But they’re not perfect, which is why work hard to make sure that the money we give to multilaterals is used efficiently to contribute to achieving the MDGs by 2015. 

Key facts about multilaterals

• Multilateral agencies are established by intergovernmental agreement. They are independent of the interests of any single country member or recipient government.
• Multilaterals have a strong advantage in the fight against poverty because of the global reach of their operations, unique legitimacy, breadth and depth knowledge and expertise of staff.
• Multilaterals set their own policies and have their own governance arrangements. As a member of a multilateral, the British government has rights and duties which include participation at board meetings.
• These meetings provide an opportunity for the government to influence the design and implementation of multilaterals’ policies.

Institutional strategies

For many of the key multilateral organisations, DFID has developed individual Institutional Strategies (ISs).

ISs set out how DFID aims to work in partnership with each institution to deliver mutually agreed objectives, and contain action plans to assess progress against our strategic objectives. They are normally produced every three to four years.

The purpose of the IS to set out a framework for DFID’s engagement with an individual multilateral agency.

This document:

• explains the agency's role within our overall vision of the international system
• identifies priority objectives for our partnership
• explains the medium term strategy for financial support
• sets out a framework for assessing progress towards the identified objectives, including improvements in the agency's performance against its own and DFID's targets
• outlines the management arrangements with the agency and any risks.

ISs aim for a partnership approach. A key focus of IS’s will also be to strengthen their ability to work in partnership with developing countries.