For decades, Member States have called on the United Nations system to work as “one UN” and provide more integrated support to governments in advancing national development priorities. Despite successive reform efforts, a fundamental structural constraint remains: the UN system is composed of distinct entities with separate mandates, governance structures, funding streams, and lines of accountability. When these differences translate into fragmentation or even competition between agencies at the country level, they can limit the UN’s ability to deliver results and achieve greater collective impact.
This White Paper examines these coordination challenges through the recent experience of Mexico, where UN representatives, government officials, and outside experts consistently describe both interagency collaboration and cooperation between the UN and the government as working particularly well. The analysis draws on interviews with over 20 individuals from the Mexican government, the Resident Coordinator (RC) and the Resident Coordinator’s Office (RCO), UN agencies, and donor countries, as well as independent researchers. The paper finds that funding incentives, effective coordination mechanisms, joint programming, and the leadership and commitment of the host government, the RC/RCO, and individual agency heads can enable stronger collaboration even when the broader institutional architecture does not always facilitate it.
Mexico’s recent experience, particularly in the development and early implementation of its 2026-2031 Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, points to several practices that have helped strengthen both interagency and UN-government coordination:
Rather than treating the Cooperation Framework as a document to be negotiated between the UN and the host government, the UN Country Team (UNCT) and the government approached it as a process of genuine co-construction, jointly shaping priorities and implementation arrangements and engaging in joint consultations with civil society.
Coordination has not ended with the adoption of the Cooperation Framework but has continued into the implementation phase through sustained engagement between the UNCT and the government, which have established high-level arrangements and a new technical-level mechanism for periodically monitoring implementation, addressing obstacles, and maintaining alignment around shared priorities. Whether this collaborative approach is sustained throughout implementation remains to be seen.
Strong leadership and sustained engagement from the Foreign Ministry, particularly its Undersecretariat for Multilateral Affairs and the Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), have been central to strengthening coordination between the government and the UNCT. The Foreign Ministry and the Resident Coordinator's Office deliberately reinforce each other's messages about the importance of interagency coordination. The Ministry strengthens the RC's coordinating role by encouraging agencies to work together, while the RCO reinforces the message that greater collaboration is a government priority.
Leadership from the RC/RCO and individual agency heads has been critical to fostering a culture of collaboration within the UNCT. The RC/RCO have prioritized creating opportunities for collective action, including through support for joint resource mobilization and proactive engagement with donors to encourage them to adopt funding modalities that promote interagency collaboration. Beyond these institutional efforts, the RC/RCO and individual agency heads have demonstrated a commitment to collaboration, even when agency-specific priorities and expectations from headquarters pull in a different direction. The RC/RCO and individual agency heads have also invested in interagency relationships and trust, including through informal spaces such as the “Garden Dialogues” (Diálogos de Jardín), which allow for candid exchanges beyond formal UNCT meetings.
The UNCT and the government are jointly developing interagency flagship initiatives (iniciativas insignia) to translate shared priorities into collective action, bringing together agencies' complementary expertise and comparative advantages to create programs that respond directly to national priorities.
An independent evaluation was used as an instrument for institutional learning, with lessons from the previous Cooperation Framework informing the design of its successor, particularly its stronger emphasis on implementation and monitoring.
Some challenges persist, however. Agency heads remain accountable first and foremost to their headquarters, which at times encourage them to prioritize agency-specific objectives and resource mobilization over joint efforts, a pressure heightened by the UN’s financial crisis and by donor funding practices. The Management and Accountability Framework, which seeks to make agency heads also accountable for their contributions to collective results, including through Resident Coordinator input into their performance assessments, is applied inconsistently across agencies.
Drawing on Mexico’s experience, the paper identifies eight recommendations for Resident Coordinators, UN agencies, governments, and donors. While Mexico's strong institutional capacity and other contextual factors may not be present elsewhere, many of these practices can be adapted to other contexts. They are particularly relevant as Member States and the next Secretary-General take stock of the UN80 initiative and consider the next phases of reform.
Host governments should actively reinforce the coordinating role of Resident Coordinators, including through mutually reinforcing messaging with the RC/RCO.
Governments should engage more actively in the development of Cooperation Frameworks, working closely with UNCTs to co-construct the Framework and its priorities, especially as several UN80 reforms would give Cooperation Frameworks an even more consequential role in shaping UNCT configurations.
Governments and UNCTs should establish mechanisms for sustained technical-level coordination and monitoring of Cooperation Framework implementation.
Host governments should invest in sustained, informed, and coordinated engagement with UNCTs at both the political and technical levels, including by strengthening information-sharing and coordination among government institutions that engage with different UN agencies to ensure coherence across the government.
UNCTs should use independent evaluations of Cooperation Frameworks as instruments for institutional learning.
Member States and the UN system should continue strengthening pooled funding mechanisms that create incentives for collective action.
Donors should ensure that their funding practices reinforce, rather than undermine, their calls for greater UN coherence, including by avoiding funding arrangements that encourage competition among UN agencies and promoting joint and pooled funding modalities that incentivize collaboration.
UN agencies should make interagency collaboration consequential for the performance assessment of country representatives and staff, including through full implementation of the Management and Accountability Framework.