The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners' peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Mandated as a central resource of the United Nations, UNOPS provides sustainable project management, procurement and infrastructure services to a wide range of governments, donors and United Nations organizations. With over 8,000 personnel spread across 80 countries, UNOPS offers its partners the logistical, technical and management knowledge they need, where they need it. By implementing around 1,000 projects for our partners at any given time, UNOPS makes significant contributions to results on the ground, often in the most challenging environments.
Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the Europe and Central Asia Regional Office (ECR) supports UNOPS offices in the region, providing management and financial/programmatic oversight of Global and Country specific Portfolios, Clusters and Operations Centers including hosting services, fund management, management advisory services, implementing projects, procuring goods and services and managing human resources.
ECR ensures that projects are executed to the highest standards, providing a shared knowledge base and ensuring that best practices and lessons learned are disseminated between business units and projects across the entire region.
RBM Partnership to End Malaria
The past fifteen years have seen tremendous gains in reducing the burden of disease and progressing towards malaria elimination. Since 2000, global malaria deaths have been cut by more than half, saving 7 million lives, primarily among children less than five years of age. Expansions in financing, strong political commitments, novel diagnostic and preventative measures, and multi-sectoral co-ordination have facilitated this progress. Since 1998, RBM Partnership to End Malaria has been central to the global fight against malaria. It has been essential to mobilizing resources and scaling up innovative interventions, putting the world onto a path towards eliminating malaria. The Partnership comprises more than 500 partners committed to end malaria, including malaria endemic countries, their bilateral and multilateral development partners, the private sector, nongovernmental and community-based organizations, foundations, and research and academic institutions.
The RBM Partnership's Vision is of a world free from the burden of malaria.
The RBM Partnership is based in Geneva and hosted by UNOPS
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Although malaria is entirely preventable, the disease continues to be an obstacle to both human and economic development. The devastating effect of malaria on development can be traced from national to household and family level. Malaria is associated with poor socio-economic development, marginalization and exploitation. Malaria morbidity and mortality is associated with industrial and agricultural losses due to loss of person-hours and decreased worker productivity.
Even with concerted efforts to increase effective coverage of vector control interventions – especially with insecticide treated long lasting mosquito nets, the disease burden remains significant and points to the fact that these interventions (and other conventional ones) are not enough to sustain gains achieved in the control and subsequently to malaria elimination. The effects of malaria extend well beyond the health sector, calling for a multi-sectoral response. For example, sustained gains in malaria control and elimination in developing countries has been seen in countries where action is being taken to address the broader socio-economic determinants like improving living conditions, promoting smarter agricultural and industrial practices, and addressing barriers to accessing health services.
The multisectoral approach to malaria, based on social and environmental determinants will remain a dream unless the relevant communities are empowered, engaged and effectively play their role. Community participation is not about giving them tasks to do, but involves communities taking active part in the analysis, decision-making about priorities and resources, doing and monitoring, as well as holding authorities and others accountable. A multisectoral approach to malaria control means that a wide range of stakeholders is engaged, and the aims of malaria control are met by joint efforts. Resourcing such efforts is not simply a matter of securing cash donations; major advances can be made at little or no cost to health or malaria programmes. Being ‘malaria smart’ means making actions and operations in all relevant sectors contribute to reducing, rather than producing, malaria, while achieving their sector-specific outcomes as well as the malaria-specific outcomes. The latter will in turn benefit all stakeholders.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a regional economic community founded and maintained by countries in Southern Africa. It aims to further the socio-economic, political and security cooperation among its Member States and foster regional integration in order to achieve peace, stability and wealth. SADC currently has sixteen (16) Member States (Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe).