UNDP partnerships in MENA: A conversation with Helen Clark

In the Middle East and North Africa, the first two months of 2011 brought historic political changes. Two of the longest-running regimes in the region – those of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak – fell, and now Tunisia and Egypt are seeking to move toward democracy. For Helen Clark, those developments provide the United Nations Development Program with a golden opportunity for greater engagement and partnerships in both countries and in the region. UNDP, she asserts, has the experience to support political transitions. Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister, has been the administrator of UNDP since April 2009. The agency operates in 166 countries, where it aims to build local capacity relating to democratic governance, poverty reduction, crisis prevention and recovery, environment and energy, and HIV/AIDS. Devex caught up with UNDP administrator on the fringes of the March 8 panel discussion in New York on how to facilitate women’s economic empowerment, and again a week later in Istanbul, Turkey, where Clark attended the Leaders of Change Summit and opened a center to engage the private sector. In our conversation with the U.N.’s third-highest official, Clark identified priorities of UNDP’s partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa and shared her thoughts on the persisting gender pay disparity worldwide. The U.N. has allocated emergency aid for Libya. Besides the Tunisia-Libya border region, will other areas in Libya receive aid? The U.N. has been asking for complete access in Libya to deliver humanitarian aid where it is needed. So it has been seeking an unrestricted access. How do you think the situation in the Middle East and North Africa right now is changing the dynamic for development work UNDP is doing and hoping to partner on there? In Egypt and Tunisia, for example, the political systems are obviously in transition, and UNDP has a lot of experience with political systems and transition. So, if the new government authorities make requests for support, for redesigning electoral systems, constitutions, institutions, whether they be [focused on] accountability, transparency, human rights, then that’s bread and butter business for UNDP. So, we can bring a lot of experience to there to support the political transitions. For example in Tunisia, the government is looking to work with us and other relevant players on this transition to a different kind of constitution, to different kind of government. Does that mean UNDP wants to engage in more partnerships in those regions as well? Exactly. Is UNDP shifting funds to civil societies in North Africa and the Middle East following the popular uprisings there? We deliver a lot to civil society. Civil society will be a partner, particularly when you are talking about engagement with youth and engagement to promote the political and economic improvement of women. And what would be the point at which you move in to start implementing those new initiatives? We are there. We have country offices in every developing country in the world … Well, we have a presence in every developing country in the world. The opportunity now with Egypt is to step up the governance side of the portfolio, because it will create new opportunities. They are looking for a more representative government, different style of government, more participatory, so we can … support that. The other thing that has come to the fore is the needs of this huge generation of young people that is coming of age – young people who feel frustrated, underemployed. Whether they are educated or not, they feel as though now they lack talent, they lack voice, they have not been able to participate. All of this is coming through very, very strongly in the Arab states’ uprisings. And so UNDP has been working away with governments, trying to get more attention on youth and their needs, for years, and this creates new openings. Do you think this is a direction UNDP will be heading more toward in the near future? Definitely. It enables us to follow through on initiatives, like there has been in recent times … a national human development report on youth in Egypt. And now, there is an opportunity to do something about it. Are there any other opportunities that stand out to you, in terms of areas for potential growth and expanded partnerships in this region? Partnerships will be very important going forward. I think the new opportunities are definitely in the prominence of the youth issues and the openings for the political reform process, which we can help with. But that doesn’t mean we should take our eye off the basic [Millennium Development Goals] agenda and equity agenda and off the broader sustainable development agenda, because there is no point in having growth that is unsustainable. One thing that wasn’t mentioned at the Women’s Day forum you attended today is the question of disparity of pay in the workplace. Why do you think that is, and where is the place for discussions on this? Well, I have done a lot of work on this in my own country. Going back 24 years, I was minister of labor, and I introduced employment equity legislation which aimed to go beyond equal pay, with equal pay as usually being with one job, men and women get the same rate. But, of course, there are occupations which are almost gender-segregated and where if they are women-dominated, they don’t get the same pay frankly as male-dominated professions, which require a similar level of skill. So, I was involved in 1990 in taking legislation for pay equity, where we measured professions against each other and had ways of determining whether or not there was gender discrimination in terms of pay and a way of doing something about it. But in essence, the long-term pay gap, in many societies, it becomes stuck. Women getting an average 80 percent of pay of men has a lot to do with career structure, so the time women spend out of the workforce tends to be undervalued by employers. They think the skills women are developing – running the childhood care center, managing a household on a budget – these are somehow irrelevant. These are very important organizational skills. So, it is a way of finding recognition for the years of unpaid work which women do in Western societies and then making it more possible for women to effectively mix work and home life, and that comes back to the quality and affordability of the early childhood care centers, your after-school care and so on. So, there is quite a complex range of things that need to be done. Derya Deniz contributed reporting from Turkey. Read more MENA business news: - Industry Veteran Offers Tips on Mideast Consulting - In Mideast Consulting, Culture is Key - EU Pins Lebanon’s Development Progress on New Government - EU Looks for Track Record in Lebanon Contractors Read more international development business news.