Working in an upper-middle income country: the evolving engagement of UNICEF : Sandie Blanchet

Working in an upper-middle income country: the evolving engagement of UNICEF

by Sandie Blanchet

As I take up my new assignment as Representative in Panama, a High-Income country until recently, I reflect on my past 27 years of experience with UNICEF and how the role of the Organisation has evolved during these almost 3 decades. One of the most obvious changes has been our positioning and work in high- and upper middle-income countries.

My own journey of discovery started in Romania in 2012. The country had joined the European Union (EU) five years earlier, and had asked all UN development agencies to close their offices in Bucharest. Thanks to a last-minute advocacy by the Regional Director, the Government had agreed that UNICEF could stay for another Country Programme and would close then. As a new Rep, I was tasked to reposition UNICEF ‘s engagement in Romania in the following five years to ensure that our work would remain relevant, impactful and adapted to the context of an EU member state.

Romania was at that time an upper middle income country, with a fairly strong government and developed social infrastructure at all levels and many qualified civil servants. Access to EU funding supplemented the national budget, potentially making additional resources available for reforms. At the same time, inequalities between rich and poor, urban and rural, the Roma minority and the majority of the population were glaring, along with widespread discrimination, governance challenges and detrimental social norms.

In the following five years, my colleagues and I (with the notable support of the Regional Director and Office) pivoted our strategies to:

• Focus our work on leveraging better policies and budget for children. While the new UNICEF Strategic Plan recognized leveraging as a key role for UNICEF, we shifted our whole country programme in that direction in 2012. Any initiative, from workshops to pilot projects and consultancy, was systematically screened through the question: how is this contributing to the development of better laws, standards or protocols for children and/or to the mobilization of funding for children? A number of small activities were closed, colleagues had to work cross-sectorally every day, funding that was not contributing to our key results was declined, our two flagship pilot projects were developed rigorously with randomized sampling methodology and control communities. All these changes were challenged, internally and externally.
• Complex and political partnerships were developed. In a country that had two public donors left, the CO developed multi-level engagements with Norway, the World Bank, the European Union, the Private Sector and the Government to mobilise the seed funding it needed (a mere $3 million a year) to influence considerable loans and funding to the government from the EU and the WB (e.g. an additional 500 million euros for primary education from the EU) to ultimately leverage national resources. Our work became much more political. We hired an agency to analyse political currents and identify allies, and we worked alternatively with the Government, the Parliament, Civil Society, the media and celebrities using private and public advocacy to convince, influence, persuade decision-makers to invest in children.
• Step up our technical advice to a Government whose civil servants worked as international consultants for the World Bank or UN organisations, including UNICEF. With a team of only (very competent) national staff, we had to draw expertise at a high-level not only from the RO but also HQ and beyond. Too often, the response to our requests for technical support was: this is too complex, you are unique, we don’t have that type of experience. We wanted examples from the Czech Republic or Poland, but UNICEF did not have the knowledge or contacts in other EU member states at that time (besides Croatia and Bulgaria where we have COs).
• Integrate our multiple roles as an agency that was advising the Government on social reforms, mobilizing political will, influencing social norms and raising private funding. In 2012, the government and the general public were fairly confused about UNICEF. Our external communication was going in all directions, with colleagues in the same office competing for media attention and disseminating uncoordinated messages. We restructured our Office and focused exclusively on a few but longer-term integrated communication strategies that brought together our C4D, media communication and branding, fundraising and public advocacy.
• Engage with Romania as a new donor and a source of good practices. The country was very proud of becoming an EU member state and saw itself as a new donor. The nascent aid agency, RoAid, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were looking for technical support to develop their policies, priorities etc. UNDP was very quick to position itself in this area, but the Government grew quickly wary of their endless stream of workshops. Despite our best efforts, our CO was not able to find sufficient support from the Organisation to propose a credible alternative. We did succeed in identifying good practices and sharing Romania’s expertise in the social sectors but felt we could have done much better. At the same time, our private sector fundraising helped finance not only our programme in Romania but also emergencies and RR at the global level. The Government became interested in the connections between our public and private engagement for children.

The results of our re-positioning became clear in 2017 and in 2021. When the time came to develop a new CPD, the Government of Romania unquestionably supported the continuity of our engagement in the country. UNICEF is seen as a child rights agency that promotes the CRC everywhere and partners with the Government and the private sector to do so. Romania became a high-income country in 2019, and it will be interesting to see how UNICEF remains relevant in this evolving context.

Signing the partnership between the Romanian Parliament and UNICEF

At the beginning of 2021, the Government and the Parliament translated our pilot project on community-based social services into a law and national budget. It took over seven years of continuous efforts to reach this outcome, and of course UNICEF’s work is not finished. We need to ensure that these new policies become a reality for all children, especially the most vulnerable ones. The outcomes of our other pilot project on quality and inclusive education have been incorporated in policies over the years. The CO was lucky to have a new Rep in 2017 who believed our work should be continued. This took place in a context where the Organisation frequently continues to ask for results in one year.

As I moved to Panama a month ago, I remember all the lessons learned, mistakes and good practices we developed in Romania and wonder how I will use them to step up our country programme. When the Executive Board endorsed our new CPD in February 2021, because the country had been qualified as a high-income country in 2019, our RR was allocated for only two years, putting the CO in the impossible situation to develop its private sector fundraising in less than 22 months to become self-funded. This decision was taken despite Panama demonstrating one of the highest levels of inequality in the world, with social indicators much lower than in many poorer countries. Five months later, the World Bank reviewed Panama’s status and lowered its classification as an upper middle-income country. Our RR is back, giving us the much-needed space to develop a strong and sustainable engagement with the private sector. The example of Panama begs to question UNICEF’s policy on RR allocation – but this is a different story….

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