UNDP Head Helen Clark In Croatia

The head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, has arrived in Croatia for the first time. The reason for Clark’s visit is to chair a meeting of the UNDP in Zagreb.

Clark will also visit the Dalmatian town of Zadar, where the local council have been working closely with the UNDP. In the last year 12 million USD has been invested into a range of projects to develop Zadar and some of its surrounding islands.

The UNDP has come under recent criticism in an official report saying much of its annual 5.7 billion USD budget is only remotely connected to ending global poverty. The report paints a striking picture of a confused organisation seemingly unable to bring significant change to the world’s 1.3 billion poor people despite spending  8.5 billion USD on fighting poverty between 2004 and 2011, reports portal Stuff.