The EPTA was set up in 1949 to help the economic and political aspects of underdeveloped countries while the Special Fund was to enlarge the scope of UN technical assistance.

With the US proposing and creating the International Development Association within the World Bank's umbrella, the EPTA and the Special Fund appeared to be conducting similar work.

[12] The following table lists the top 15 DAC 5 Digit Sectors[13] to which UNDP has committed funding, as recorded in its International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) publications.

UNDP focuses primarily on five developmental challenges: UNDP supports national democratic transitions by providing policy advice and technical support, improving institutional and individual capacity within countries, educating populations about and advocating for democratic reforms, promoting negotiation and dialogue, and sharing successful experiences from other countries and locations.

It also works at the macro level to reform trade, encourage debt relief and foreign investment, and ensure the poorest of the poor benefit from globalisation.

UNDP works through its country offices to support local government in needs assessment, capacity development, coordinated planning, and policy and standard setting.

[22] UNDP works to help countries prevent further spreading of and reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS, convening The Global Commission on HIV and the Law which was reported in 2012.

Working closely with national governments, Resident Coordinators and country teams to advocate the interests and mandates of the UN drawing on the support and guidance of the entire UN family.

[28] The UNDP established the Innovation Facility in 2014, with support from the Government of Denmark, as a dedicated funding mechanism to nurture promising development interventions.

[29] The Innovation Facility offers technical assistance and seed funding to collaborators across 170 countries and territories to explore new approaches to complex development challenges.

[31] Documents of Edward Snowden showed in December 2013 that British and American intelligence agencies surveillance targets with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) included organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme, the UN's children's charity UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

[32] In August 2016, Israel's Shin Bet security agency publicized the arrest of Wahid Abdallah al Bursh, a Palestinian engineer employed by the UNDP, stating he had confessed to being recruited in 2014 to help Hamas, the dominant Islamist group in Gaza.

Among "various assignments" Bursh performed on behalf of Hamas was "using UNDP resources" to build a maritime jetty for its fighters; no further details were provided on this claim.

Shin Bet also claimed Bursh had persuaded his UNDP superiors to prioritize neighbourhoods with Hamas operatives when earmarking reconstruction funds for Gaza, which was devastated by the 2014 war with Israel.

The Foreign Policy article reported that a 2017 confidential audit appendix prepared by final evaluators found "strong indicators of deliberate misappropriation" of millions of dollars in funds from the project between 2010 and 2014.

This independent review found "irregularities" and concluded the project in question was not managed "either efficiently or effectively" by UNDP and that a number of individuals were able to 'game the relatively weak systems of governance and technical capacity.'

It suggested UNDP consider returning to the Global Environment Facility (which funded the project) its "entire management fee" as "restitution" and proposed "ongoing efforts to achieve changes in the work culture that reward greater transparency and remove fears of unfair reprisals" aimed at whistleblowers.

[40] Concerns over UNDP's failure to handle the Russia controversy in a satisfactory manner led to the government of the Netherlands withholding some 10 million euros in funding in early 2021.

[41] According to the 2019 Foreign Policy article, Ershov claimed he was "pushed out of his U.N. job" after raising concerns about procurement irregularities and project conflicts of interest way back at the end of 2014.

The Guardian discovered that there had been some 136 corruption allegation cases to its Office of Audit and Investigations (OAI) in relation to the reconstruction programme – the majority of which were against suppliers rather than employees.

Other holders of the position have included: Bradford Morse, a former Republican congressman from the U.S. state of Massachusetts; William Draper, an American venture capitalist and friend of George H. W. Bush who saw one of the UN system's major achievements, the Human Development Report, introduced during his tenure; Mark Malloch Brown of the UK, who was previously Vice President of External Affairs at the World Bank and subsequently became UN Deputy Secretary-General; and Kemal Derviş, a former finance minister of Turkey and senior World Bank official.