Q&A: UNDP Latin America chief on UN reform, US funding cuts, and Venezuela

ISTANBUL — United Nations reforms are underway, but it’s too soon to tell whether the changes will succeed, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s top Latin America official. After about 15 years of economic growth and poverty reduction, the past several years in Latin America and the Carribean have been marked by slow growth and increased vulnerability, which means new challenges for the agency to address in the region, said Luis Felipe López-Calva, UNDP assistant administrator and regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “I think there is a very positive change in the citizens’ tolerance to bad governance.” --— Luis Felipe López-Calva, UNDP assistant administrator and regional director, Latin America and the Caribbean “One of the challenges that we now face in a context of relatively slower growth, inequality has stagnated at a high level and we are still vulnerable to many shocks,” he said. Devex sat down with López-Calva to get his take on U.N. reform, the impacts of uncertain U.S. funding in the region, and the situation in Venezuela. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How is the U.N. reform process going in the region? The resident coordinator used to sit at UNDP, so what does UNDP’s role look like now that it’s an independent position? How have things changed for the agency? This is a great opportunity because UNDP can now focus on the development role and the development mandate, so we are trying to precisely do that and be more effective as a development agency, which is what we are. Of course, there are challenges, which means several actions that we're taking to strengthen our capacity to deliver on this challenge. From an administrative side, UNDP is delivering the reform. Putting that aside, the effectiveness or way that the experience is shaping up has a lot to do with the specificity of the context in terms of how the [resident coordinator]s are seeing their new role and are taking this new role in a constructive way. My view is the jury is still out, it’s still too soon to really assess. I think the risks, recipe for failure, will be if the RC office starts acting as another implementer and not as a strategic leader of the team. That's an important element. And the other is that we, the agencies, have to understand that we have to support, cooperate, and strengthen the role of the new resident coordinators. I think to the extent that this happens and it’s happening in many places, it’s going to be an effective new way of working. UNDP needs to be more one more team player in the U.N. country team and needs to be able technically and operationally to deliver on what the system expects from us. We are prepared to do that but we need to strengthen our capacity to continue doing that, and continue building on something that is a fundamental asset for UNDP, which is the trust that our government counterparts have with UNDP. We have a few administrative reviews to make the system more efficient, we have the digitalization strategy, which is a very ambitious strategy to turn UNDP into a digital organization. We have the accelerator labs, we have the global policy network, so all these are strategies aimed at the same objective — which is strengthening the capacity of UNDP to be an effective player. Now the regional aspect is another one that is in the process of discussion and the regional architecture should also play an important role in supporting the teams on the ground. In my view that requires less fundamental changes but rather just providing incentives for better cooperation among the agencies and also with the regional economic commissions. The U.S. has said that it will pull back some funding from Central America, how will that impact your work? “There is a critical juncture now, in terms of decisions being made on how to support the region.” --— There are several of them but let me mention one — what we call the joint initiative that deals with chronic violence in the northern countries of Central America. For example, we have several agencies working together including UNICEF, including UNDP, including UNAIDS, UN Women, trying to work together with specific interventions to try and reduce violence. One of the central inputs for that is information — so we created a system called “infosegura,” which is for the first time providing systematized information on the rates of violence in these countries and making it publicly available so decision-making can be improved. We received funding for a certain period of time and we have so far not been affected in the sense that we are moving on with those projects. There is a critical juncture now, in terms of decisions being made on how to support the region. We do expect this to be eventually going back to what we had before because it is of strategic importance for all the countries in the region including the U.S. So we don't engage in a political discussion, it’s not our role — our role is to show that what we are doing is having an impact, in the quality of policies, in the quality of life of people. We show that there is impact — then the discussion is moving away from the politics and more into “well does it make sense to invest in these interventions.” This is what we're trying to do, to try through the evidence to show that putting resources into those programs makes sense. It’s a time of change in the region particularly in Venezuela, which was once an example of growth and now is a country in political turmoil with growing humanitarian need. What is UNDP’s role there and what’s next with your work in the country? There is one thing that I would like to stress, and I am going to be optimistic but this is an honest assessment. I think there is a very positive change in the citizens’ tolerance to bad governance. We could see what looks like a crisis in the short term but I think it could have a positive effect if this is correctly processed. For example, people do not want to accept inequality as normal, people do not want to accept discrimination and exclusion as normal — and you can see it — and certainly people don't want to accept corruption as they used to. I see the role of UNDP and many other actors as potential instruments for processing these tensions in a way that is constructive. So I would argue that rather than trying to slow down our engagement because of the situation we have to be even more proactive but in a very intelligent way, in a way that works very closely with governments and with other actors to try and process these tensions in a way that leads to a better institution and governance structure. There are many legal changes happening, there are many discussions taking place and I think we want to be constructive actors in that conversation. That’s our role. Having said that, certainly the case of Venezuela is a very particular one because in that case, the economy has really collapsed. According to all public estimates available, the economy will be less than half in size what it was 10 years ago, or even seven years ago. So that contraction of the economy of course has huge social consequences, and we have a mandate to protect people. So we as U.N. system are trying to work on protecting people independently of the political discussion which is a matter that can only be led and driven by the secretary general and the department of political affairs. We leave that to them because that’s their role but we're a development organization and as a development organization, we have to respond to the needs of vulnerable people. So we are trying to do as much as we can to support vulnerable populations both in Venezuela and outside Venezuela for the people who are leaving looking for better opportunities. Editor’s note: UNDP facilitated Devex's travel for this reporting. However, Devex maintains full editorial control of the content.