Good morning, this is Kasmira. After world leaders gathered under the sweltering sun last summer in Seville to strike a new plan to plug the estimated $4 trillion gap needed to curb poverty and meet other sustainable development goals, one little-known UN fund stepped forward hoping to play a bigger role.
”When people tell me you can't raise finance in least developed countries, this is like a poke in the eye. It’s not true,” Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, the head of the UN Capital Development Fund tells me from his office in New York. In my interview below, he sets out to put the record straight. |
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Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, executive secretary of the UN Capital Development Fund, which is headquartered in New York, with some staff also based in Geneva, including the Global Fund for Coral Reefs. (UNCDF)
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Pradeep Kurukulasuriya is not frustrated. “I’m impatient,” he says, correcting my earlier assumption as we connect over Zoom. The 54-year-old Sri Lankan economist is standing in his office in New York, a framed photograph and a wooden model of a sailing ship on the ledge behind him. Though two screens and 6,000 kilometres divide us, his energy is palpable, almost compelling me – but not quite – to stand up from behind my computer too.
Kurukulasuriya runs the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), a little-known entity of the UN machinery that, in his view, has been waiting 60 years too long for its moment in the spotlight. Sweeping cuts in overseas development assistance (ODA) has left major donors espousing a “do more with less” strategy – and here, in his view, is the perfect underutilised opportunity for them to get way more bang for their buck.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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