Perhaps the recent protest by member states belonging to the ‘group of the friends of the family’ was just a storm in a teacup. By and large, board members seem to agree that the overall gist of the new UNICEF Strategic Plan (2022 to 2025) is quite in order, save for some wrinkles in language that can be ironed out.
For those who did not follow the film: The group of the friends of the family are 25 member states, the large majority being heavyweight UNICEF programme countries, such as Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, or Zimbabwe. Together they absorbed One-Third of UNICEF programme expenditure in 2020. Russia and Belarus, the latter on behalf of the group objected to language in the Strategic Plan such as rights-based approach; multiple, intersecting vulnerabilities; sexual orientation, sexual rights and sexuality education, and others. They threatened to not-approve the UNICEF Strategic Plan. As I hear, some compromise is being cooked up, language is being crafted, damage is being controlled and business will go on.
But how come that the largest recipients of UNICEF assistance have objections to what some have described as the UNICEF Agenda?
I realize that ministry officials in Yemen, Pakistan, Uganda, or Nigeria (and soon in Afghanistan) have other worries than ensuring sexual rights for their citizens. In contrast, I am convinced that much of the terror, violent conflicts and endless wars continue to persist exactly because of ongoing delusions about gender roles and sexuality.
So, UNICEF finds itself in a tight spot. Our cherished UNICEF-invented country programme approach is meant to support national goals and plans. Ownership of the country programme by the national government is a key principle for cooperation – regardless whether such governments have been elected in fair and free elections, are the result of a one party system, or just happen to be controlled by some loony despot. Ownership is implored not only by UNICEF but the entire UN, even though country programme documents are entirely written by UNICEF staff members and discussed mostly in UN bubbles. Still, the basic idea is that governments implement their own plans and the Children’s Fund provides money and expertise.
In contrast, the Strategic Plan, or what goes for it, has been crafted by global citizens, development experts, humanists, scientists, rights activists, and people who learned their trade by traveling widely and often studying at universities of international renown, pushing for modernisation and cheered on by the mostly western donors. Every UNICEF staff working in a country office knows the underlying contradiction between the design of a global Strategic Plan and drafting a ‘nationally owned’ country programme document. Perhaps it is time to be crystal clear how things hang together, and to rethink our business model.
Right to the point as usual Detlef... but the wider issue is the UNSDCF (UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework.... the UNDAF+UN Reform 3.0) from which UNICEF and all agencies cooperation is derived - not aligned. The business model has many more challenges!
ReplyDeleteGreetngs Ian and Detlef, the rumors of my demise as, as they say, overstated!! It appears that UNICEF and the U.N is being drawn into the culture wars around values and while the CRC was universally ratified,once the more sensitive areas started to come into play, the terrain shifted. What is interesting is that the stance of the socially conservative policy elites may not accord with what obtains on the ground, so for example, we see in many countries policy planners hewing to a older narratives. In one country, someone very senior told us with a straight face, that there was not need for an HIV/AIDs programme, because everyone in the country knew there were no cases. Not. So one does some level of undercover programming with the help of the implementation level. Gender, identity and sexuality seem now to be contested terrain. With global platforms, the binary developing and developed country division seems to be increasingly a threadbare proposition, because within the realities in the urban areas are so different from other areas. Perhaps, international actors can support the broad facilitative areas like Girls Education and inclusive education, and encourage domestic actors to develop the approaches that may resonate with key constituencies to support and internalize senstive issues. While we support the idea that development programmes should be led by the Govt, we also base this on the assumtion that all Govts have the well being of thier citizens as their first priority. On the other hand, the NGOs have by and large become service providers and really a form of social enterprise, accountability is an issue. And then as Ian points out, the overlay of the increasingly centralized frameworks around UNSDF and UNDAF, the framing process becomes a juiridical drafting process to touch all bases, rather than optimize the synergies. In 2019, as part of a course project, I did a survey among actors in a clean tech sub sector here in Canada and from a frame of 300 potential respondents, some 55 responed to the question of the utility of the UNSDGs to this sub sector, a majority that it was nice to have but interms of advancing the sector not as useful, as implementers the broad brush strokes of goals etc did not lead them to the granular details of their realities. Gosh, nice to be on a discussion re: development...
ReplyDeleteThank you SDL - would love to hear more - but would you let me know who you are?
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