Podcast: UNGA Decoded #1 — Raj Kumar on shaping development narratives

Listen to "Raj Kumar on shaping the development narrative" on Spreaker.

As the global development community descends on New York City for the 77th United Nations General Assembly, Devex Senior Reporter Michael Igoe sits down with our very own Editor-in-Chief, Raj Kumar, to discuss: what is UNGA, exactly?

Raj Kumar is a Washington, D.C.-based social impact leader, journalist, and author specialized in global development. He is the President & Editor-in-Chief of Devex, and the author of The Business of Changing the World, an influential book about the future of global aid and philanthropy.

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Transcript:

Michael Igoe:  

Welcome to “UNGA Decoded.” I'm Michael Igoe, senior reporter at Devex. For the next couple of weeks, my colleagues and I are going to bring you inside the biggest global development gathering of the year. Skip the travel, the traffic, and the security lines, and join us for candid conversations with people at the leading edge of global development, global health, and humanitarian assistance. “This is UNGA Decoded.”

This year marks the 77th time that leaders from nearly every country in the world have gathered together to tackle some of the biggest challenges on the planet. Over the years, UNGA has evolved into something far beyond the formal meeting of global leaders that happens inside the UN headquarters. Today, at the halfway point of the Sustainable Development Goals, UNGA is a sprawling collection of meetings and events that take over large portions of New York City in mid-September. For a reporter who writes about global development, global health and humanitarian assistance, it's a bit like facing directly into a firehose. I've actually struggled sometimes to describe what UNGA is. Yes, it's a UN meeting. But it's also a kind of annual ritual for people working on issues like global poverty, climate change, pandemic preparedness, conflict prevention, and other pressing challenges. It's a sort of pilgrimage based on the assumption that there's value in getting large numbers of people together, working in these areas in the same place at the same time. But what is that value, exactly? What really happens here? To help me think through those questions, I turned to someone who’s been doing this for a while. He also happens to be my boss. Raj Kumar is the founding president and editor-in-chief of Devex, which he started over two decades ago. Raj joined me for a conversation to help kick off this podcast series, and to help me understand the question, what actually is UNGA?

Michael Igoe:

Hi, Raj.

Raj Kumar:

Hey, Michael.

Michael Igoe:

How are you?

Raj Kumar:

I'm doing great. Excited for this week at UNGA and all that’s gonna go into it and I’m excited to be talking to you.

Michael Igoe:

Yeah, I'm excited, too. I wanted to start by talking about what we're excited about. Because I think we have a tendency to just sort of refer shorthand to UNGA; to sometimes talk about the United Nations General Assembly. But in a way, these are sort of two different things. And UNGA has become its own phenomenon. And I was thinking about this. If someone were to ask me, you know, what is UNGA? Someone who hadn't been there for the last in my case, I don't know, nine years and in your case, probably the last 20 years or so — sorry, not to age you — I'm not sure I would be able to define it. It's sort of this smattering of events that takes over New York City for a week. How would you explain that, what we're about to see and experience, to somebody who's not intimately familiar with it?

Raj Kumar:

I mean, as a shorthand, I tell people, it's the Super Bowl or the Oscars of global development. And what I mean by that is, of course, you know, there's the main event, which is these official meetings that happen inside the UN Secretariat building, but there's so much else around that. And really, for our community, it has become this big marker. It's kind of a moment to reset and think about where we're headed. And, you know, it's getting more and more attention. And during the pandemic, of course, it went virtual. Last year, it was kind of semi-virtual. But there's a real hunger to be back. Because in the many issues that get covered during that week, from climate to global education to global health, there are very few moments when world leaders and leaders across sectors get together in one place. And that's what happens in Manhattan. And it's a really special moment. There's lots of skepticism around it too, which we should talk about, but I do think it has grown and grown for a reason.

Michael Igoe:

Yeah, I do want to get into that. You know, I'll share my skepticism and then you can convince me why everyone should be traveling to New York to talk about these issues every year. I love the Superbowl of development idea, but I wonder, does anybody ever win? Or the Oscars, you know? We don't really have, sometimes it feels like you go to UNGA and there's discussion of all of these really intractable giant challenges. And then everybody goes home, and then you come back next year and do it all over again. How would you — if someone were to say, it can't possibly make sense for people fly to New York every year to talk about climate change, for example. Where do you see the progress in this? Is it really driving significant action on some of these issues?

Raj Kumar:

Yeah, that is the core criticism, I think you put it really well. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. This is not a pledging conference, of course, this year, the Global Fund will have their replenishment there. So there's some dollars attached that we'll be reporting on. But for the most part, when you hear about money, at UNGA, it's money that's already been committed by governments. And they're using this moment to refresh it and make a new announcement around it. So it's really not a place where you hear about new policies, new money. So the skepticism is really fair in many ways. But I think it is a place that has grown into a place where narratives develop. And I think, for example, around climate, a lot of the urgency around the climate movement was helped by climate activists coming to UNGA and having this moment where they can be in front of world leaders, they can be in front of corporate leaders, the foundation world is there, the NGO world is there. And so it creates this opportunity to shape a narrative. And it's hard to see the results of that, year to year, it's hard to say, “Oh, well, this is what this UNGA achieved”. I think that would be really tough to ever pin down. But it's a bit like the Churchill quote about democracy being the worst form of government, except for all the others. It's imperfect in lots of ways; it's in Manhattan, it's logistically impossible. It's a challenging country for people to get to with visas. There's so much that we can say is imperfect. But it does serve a real purpose. And I think that's the reason why people are voting with their feet. And when I first, the first year I went to the UN General Assembly, I was just basically a kid in college. I was working in the Clinton administration and I was doing press advance. And my job was to get the White House press corps into the General Assembly, which I thought sounded like a very straightforward procedure and turned out to be highly complex, like all things related to the UN. And I kind of learned how things actually work there during that process. But back then it was very sleepy. It was a place for diplomats. And that's it. And that has changed dramatically. And I think it's for a reason. I think people want to be there across sectors. Corporates and foundations, and NGOs, and governments and donors, bilateral aid agencies, not just the diplomatic missions; they all want to be there, because it's become this place where global issues can get discussed. Maybe not solved, maybe nothing tangible and concrete comes out as much as some groups, Clinton Global Initiative among them, tries to make that happen. But certainly a place where narratives get developed.

Michael Igoe:

I want to dig into that piece of it, this idea of narrative in development, in global health, in global issues broadly. I think one of the sort of big efforts to shape the narrative has been the Sustainable Development Goals. When I think about the Sustainable Development Goals, the thing that I hear stressed so frequently is that the big evolution from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals was sort of this message that we're all in this together, these are universal goals that wealthier countries and lower income countries are pursuing, sort of both in parallel and in cooperation. And to me, that's trying to shape a narrative about what is development. And I think that tracks really closely with what you were saying that, 20 years or so ago, this was sort of a sector specific thing that was kind of a smaller group of people discussing their niche topics, and now it's blown up into something much bigger. I'm curious if you have any insights into why that is? Are more people just interested in global issues these days? Or has the kind of industry that surrounds these issues matured and changed in a way that can support something like this in a way that it didn't before? What are the driving factors there?

Raj Kumar: 

I think the main one is globalization. The world has just gotten smaller. And so these issues are no longer so focused on individual countries. And I think that's kind of what dominated the UN in the past; it was geopolitics and conflict and looking at individual nations and their relationships with each other. And I think increasingly, so many issues cross borders. And so people are looking for a place where they can engage on those issues that go beyond any geopolitical question. The geopolitics, of course, plays into it. But, again, climate is a really good one. And another one, I think, is universal health coverage, as an example. It's within the SDGs. But that's a narrative that really got shaped at the UN General Assembly. And in fact, next year, there'll be another high level meeting on UHC; there was one a few years ago, and a lot of it we're gonna be talking about at Devex, and a lot of the global health community is going be talking about is trying to shape, even now in 2022, what the conversation will be in 2023 around universal health coverage. And back when that concept was launched, it was seen as so radical. There was certainly consensus in rich countries that we could spend money to help solve specific diseases afflicting poor countries. That was easier to sell in places like Washington, DC. AIDS, and malaria, and TB are of course examples. But the idea that every person on earth deserves universal access to health care, kind of a broad based system of primary health care, I don't think that was so easy to sell. And so UHC was a bit radical. And it's not so radical anymore. And that's what I mean by narrative shaping. At least within the global health community, it's become seen as a given. So I think the SDGs had a similar drive behind them, like, look, we're gonna make this framework, it's gonna apply to everyone, we’ll use the UN as the sounding board or the springboard to bring it to the whole world, but then the whole world will own it, it won't be a UN thing anymore. And I think the results are really mixed. It's hard to find people who are just completely sold that this has worked. And so, on the other hand, it's hard to find, what's the alternative? What do you do with the SDGs? In fact, you know, when I interviewed Bill Gates at Devex World, I asked him about this. What's the alternative? You know, what else do we do? Yes, we're way behind, we're slipping further behind, but what? Some countries, some communities have really picked up on these SDGs. A lot of the private sector has. But what has it meant tangibly? You know, what can you point to and say, this is what these things have achieved. It's harder to find that.

I also think the context has really changed. I remember being at the UN General Assembly in 2015, when the SDGs were ratified. And back then things in the donor countries and the rich countries were generally going pretty well. We'd come out of the financial crisis, things were basically good. And so this was a chance to say, okay, the Millennium Development Goals were at least partly successful, and they were a good galvanizing force. Let's take them to the next level. And you know, the rich countries that are doing pretty well are going to create new energy and impetus to support poor countries. But look at the context now. I mean, just a year later, we had a consequential presidential election in the U.S.. So you get democracy in question in much of the Western world. Look at the energy crisis happening now in Europe, the geopolitical crisis, Ukraine, Russia, U.S.; look at the China-U.S. rift, how much that's grown. So the donor countries are in a very different position. And I think, in 2022, it's hard for them to talk about the SDGs. It's hard for them to make this their top priority issue when they're so focused domestically. So I think the context has just really shifted. And I do think this is going to be one of the topics people in the development community are going to wrestle with during this year's UNGA is, what do we do about these SDGs? How do we reframe them? Or get new energy behind them, if we really care about the issues that are framed within them?

Michael Igoe:

It seems like COVID-19, and the sort of collision of the pandemic with these economic crises, energy crises and climate change, to me, it seems like it's sort of forcing a question about whether the SDGs do provide sort of that adequate narrative, or way of thinking about how to move forward. And I think you've seen some sort of hints at alternative things like, you know, not just the sort of specific U.S. political agenda, but some of the broader rhetoric around building back better and sort of finding opportunities for transformation in crisis and things like that. To me, that's slightly, that's sort of a different way of thinking about development and global health than the SDGs, which are sort of, you know, steady progress, like we can get there if we just keep it up, and if everybody cooperates, we can finally get to the end of the race on some of these critical challenges. And now, it seems like, do we have to rebuild the world in a completely different way? And what's the sort of development agenda that's going to tell us how to do that? So for me, this idea of thinking about these as as sort of competing narratives, or just almost heuristics, like how should I think about and live in this current moment, maybe like, steady progress towards some development goals is helpful, or maybe like, completely rethinking the way that we provide global health security is what needs to happen. To me, it seems like there's a lot up in the air at the moment. And I'm going to be fascinated to see how that level of uncertainty and just how that level of just not being really able to sort of take past models for granted right now is going to play out in the conversations this week. One conversation that I had recently that really made an impression on me was with Peter Sands, who's the executive director of the Global Fund, which, of course, is in the process of seeking $18 billion for its current replenishment. And what he said to me was that all of these pressures, all of these crisis factors, particularly when you look at the pressures that lower income countries are facing with debt and public budgets being strapped, all of those things make it more difficult for the Global Fund to raise $18 billion. They also make it more important for the Global Fund to raise $18 billion. It feels like we're reaching this sort of moment of reckoning about whether the institutions, the ways that they're funded, just the general ways that they're conceived, can meet this moment when everything seems to be really up in the air.

Raj Kumar: 

Yeah, I agree. I think it's kind of a crisis of leadership, as well, you know, like, where is the leadership in the global community for these issues? Where's their attention and their focus, especially when there's so much to worry about domestically? And I think it's a real tension. The SDGs, there's a lot to a lot of good things about them. The framework is really carefully thought through, there's all these indicators, it's something that you can at least try to measure against, it has a long-term way of thinking. But I think it's always appealed more to intellectuals. It's appealed as an intellectual framework that you can think about, to people who like to analyze the world. It's never really got people in the gut. It's been hard to kind of get an emotional response to the SDGs. And I think that's sort of where it competes with on the political agenda. And it's much easier to get an emotional response around the climate emergency. You know, when people see flooding and storms and drought. It's much easier in the food crisis, where people all over the world, in rich countries and poor ones, are seeing their food prices spike, and shortages. You know, those are things you can kind of get a visceral reaction to. And I think we might just have to get to a point where we see the SDGs as this analytical framework, that's helpful at a certain level. It's a bit abstract, and it's useful to leaders in the foundation world, in the NGO world, in the policymaking world, but maybe it isn't the thing that is going to stir the masses and is going to move politics and we need other things to do that. So it is a challenging moment because we need competition, I think, against the forces pushing governments and countries to just look inside their own borders, and to say, you know, let's burn a lot more coal right now, because we just don't have a choice. We need a counternarrative. And maybe that's what will come out of this year's UNGA week, it's kind of some thinking around what could that counternarrative be.

Michael Igoe: 

Yeah. So what are you going to be watching this week? We've mentioned the Global Fund replenishment. That's a big one. To me, that's probably one of the more, I mean, it's an interesting example, because it's both significant in terms of the specific funding going to HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, and it will really have significant bearing on the ability to implement programs to tackle those three diseases. But it's also sort of this barometer for who's really coming to the table here. Each country has the opportunity to sort of make a pledge, and some of them likely over perform, some underperform, there's disappointment, there's surprises, and maybe some reason for optimism. So that's an interesting one to me, because it speaks a little bit more, it sort of takes the temperature of where different donors are and how the institutions are interacting with them. Are there other big, either issues that you think will be in focus this week, or specific opportunities to kind of get a sense of where we are on some of these bigger questions?

Raj Kumar: 

I think so. And I think you're right to point out the Global Fund, because, in a way, it's sort of the bridge between the two eras in global health. It comes out of this era of vertical funding instruments, political support around disease specific areas like HIV. And the Global Fund has grown into something that is more cross cutting, they're doing health system strengthening now, that's part of their pitch. They even do a lot more on pandemic preparedness, it's a big part of their replenishment argument. So I think they kind of bridge these two eras, and it will be interesting to see how much of the conversation during the UN General Assembly's couple of weeks will be around the future of global health, and what does it look like. And is it UHC, is it health system strengthening, given that the pandemic is still with us, the COVID pandemic, is there going to be a lot of focus on COVID, in particular? And how to get vaccination rates and boosters up and even still treatment availability is low in much of the world? Or will countries sort of say, oh, yeah, we've been there and done that, that's kind of in the rearview mirror. So I'm really interested to see what this global health conversation evolves into.

This is also a really important year for global education. Everybody knows that global education has generally been failing, the World Bank has called it a learning crisis. And that was before the pandemic. And then things got just so much worse, as kids all over the world were out of school for, in some cases, a couple of years. In many cases, there are still kids who are not entirely back to normal in their school systems. So education is going to be a big one. And there's a Transforming Education Summit, TES, that's going to happen this year during UNGA. I think it will be a place where people make announcements. It's not clear yet whether there'll be any really big ones. But some of the things people are looking at is will the philanthropic sector step up? Will we see any big new philanthropy around global education? We really haven't seen that before. Philanthropy in this space tends to be pretty small scale. Will there be a new clear vision around global education? Or will it be kind of the kitchen sink? You know, every global education issue gets talked about, as is often the case of these UN summits, it's hard to politically focus in on one thing. Or will there be a little bit more of a clear, pointy edge of the sphere that comes out of this summit? So I think that's another really big one. And I'm hearing that there are going to be some potentially interesting announcements around the role of the multilateral development banks in this space. So let's stay tuned to that area.

I think the food crisis is the third big one that's going to be talked about a lot. I mean, there are many places in the world that are facing severe hunger. The Horn of Africa, as we've been reporting on at Devex, is a particular one. So I think there's going to be a lot of conversation about that, because like climate, it's one of these issues that everyone is starting to feel in rich countries and in poor ones, and it is a visceral issue, maybe unlike the SDGs. It gets people in the gut. And then maybe lastly, a really narrow thing, which is localization. In our space, there's lots of conversation around localization, USAID is going to be there at the General Assembly, there's going to be lots of conversation on this. I’m moderating a session that's brought to the General Assembly week by the Hilton Foundation, the Skoll Foundation. I think it's gonna be a lot of conversation on localization. And it's kind of a make or break moment, certainly in the U.S. context with the midterm elections coming up, as to whether or not there's going to be real, tangible progress on this. So this is an important moment, just a couple of months before those elections, to see what really gets announced, what really comes out of these localization discussions.

Michael Igoe:

And, you know, just in anticipation that this podcast episode might go a little bit to a slightly broader audience, I want to be clear that when we talk about localization, we mean shifting funding decision making authority, from sort of the the donor headquarters or associated community of US and international organizations to the communities where those programs are operating. And that comes with funding implications, comes with programmatic and program design implications, and a whole range of things. Certainly an issue that we're tracking closely.

And on each of these four issues, Raj, I'm reminded, and I tried to keep in mind that, you know, UNGA, like all of these kinds of big gatherings, these big global summits, I mean, it creates media events, and it creates an occasion for institutions to talk about what they're doing, or to make an announcement. Because something might be trending on Twitter, or whatever. But what I try to keep in mind is it also represents an enormous amount of work, throughout the rest of the year, that a lot of people are undertaking in preparation to be able to announce something, or to be able to make some small change in the way that something is worded in a UN resolution or something like that. So, I think that's part of what I really have appreciated about reporting deeply on these issues is that you get to see a lot of that behind the scenes stuff that happens. That really if you were just sort of reading a press release that comes out during UNGA, or reading the text of a resolution, it's just impossible to, to fully grasp, you know, how many human hours go into just moving the needle a little bit on some of these issues, or in some cases, you know, producing really big breakthroughs. Like we've seen really big drug pricing agreements come out of UNGA, and things like that. And those aren't agreements or announcements that were decided at UNGA, these are pretty slow moving processes. And in some ways, I think it's important to keep in mind that this is all part of a much bigger process. And I wanted to ask you about this reporting piece, or what it's like to keep an eye on these issues over a long period of time. You alluded to this a little bit in the opening when you talked about your first experience with the UN General Assembly, getting through the press credential process, and all of that, and attending sleepy meetings and dealing with obscure issues in a small group of people. And now it's changed. And I guess I'm just curious. Those early days sort of coincide with when you started Devex, and started focusing on these issues from a journalistic perspective. And I'd be curious to hear what it's been like to continue doing that, as the prominence and just sort of general consciousness around these issues has changed. Because now, you know, there's not a more important issue right now than global health, and even specifically, sort of global health security. You can say the same thing about climate change. So, how do you think about that? I mean, how has that sort of changed your view on covering these issues as a news organization?

Raj Kumar:   

I think in the earlier years we were covering this, there wasn't as much happening in this space. So you would see an event on global health or a conversation on agriculture. And it was all interesting, it was all relevant to our audience. And so we'd report on it. And now this has become this really big week just chock-full of events and conversations and announcements. We've got to be a little bit more skeptical. And we try to be, when we hear governments say, “We're committing this much money to this issue,” to be able to go back and say well, wait a second, what is this? Is this new? Is this significant? What did you announce last year? And did you fulfill that promise? So to bring some really healthy journalistic skepticism to the circus that is UNGA week, right? I think that's more and more important that we do our jobs as journalists in that way, this week. At the same time, it’s really important that we figure out what are those seeds that are being planted, that are going to affect the narrative, that are going to lead to policy shifts or new funding down the road. And because there's only so much we can cover, I think we've got a big responsibility in picking what those topics are, and finding those seeds, and giving the right attention to the right things. And there's a natural inclination to say, well, you know, let's listen to what the Secretary General is saying, or let's listen to what world leaders are saying. But we’ve got to be careful, because sometimes actually, the most exciting things happening during a week like the UN General Assembly are coming from small local organizations, or from social entrepreneurs, or from a small coalition of actors. Finding that nugget of exciting activity that will, in the future, lead to something significant, that's really important for us to make sure we're elevating. So it's a big responsibility to cover this week at Devex, I think. We host a lot of our own events, we try to be really thoughtful about who we put on stage, about what issues we give priority to. And when we go out there and cover these issues, we try to bring that same combination of healthy skepticism, and real thoughtfulness about what's possible, and the kind of good work that a lot of people in our sector are trying to get done.

Michael Igoe: 

Well, I think it's going to be a fun week. This is actually my first time back in New York since the pandemic and to be honest with you, I wasn't sure if the sort of whole UNGA phenomenon would make it through. There's some tendency to think maybe people have a moment to reflect on whether it does make sense to travel to New York to go to side events. But clearly, they've decided that it does. But I'm really looking forward to it and really looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.

All right, thanks so much. It's been great talking with you.

Raj Kumar:

Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Michael.

Michael Igoe: 

Thanks for listening to UNGA Decoded. We'll be bringing you more interviews from the UN General Assembly throughout the next week. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do share it with friends, family and colleagues, and you can also leave us a rating or a review on Apple podcasts. If you've been to UNGA and have some thoughts, or if you just want to share some feedback on this episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us on social media @devex and @AlterIgoe.