Michael Smith of UNDP to Yemen Times ‘We Foresee Building up Capacity of Non-Governmental Organizations” [Archives:2000/14/Interview]
April 3 2000
Q: What are the topics you discussed Yemeni officials?
A: I had the distinct pleasure and privilege to meet the Yemeni Minister of Planning who not only welcomed us very warmly, but warmly invited us to his home late at night. He was leaving next day to join the President in an official visit to Canada. So, we had the chance to talk about the program a little and about our plans for the future. It was very encouraging that he made the time available at the last minute. I met some other officials: chairman of the Environment Protection Council and other officials in the Ministry of Planning and Ministry of Finance who joined the course of our review yesterday.
Q: How do you assess the UNDP’s programs in Yemen?
A: There are some interesting aspects to UNDP programs in Yemen. One, I think, is to say it was set up or established within the context of your own five-year plan and it was decided between the government of Yemen and UNDP to pick some areas from the plan for which UNDP assistance would be requested. These issues are related to the reform program, national resources, poverty, disaster management. These are some of the key areas that have been identified in the program and on which we have made some significant progress. These are the areas we looked at yesterday within the review. I think there are other elements in the program that are interesting not only for Yemen but for the UNDP as a whole. One is the ” program approach” and this is meant to take subjects, issues in a broader perspective. The other element that was picked up and set as a goal was that all the programs will be executed by national authorities in more traditional UNDP government relationships. Quite often the international agencies at the UN family taken to be contractors in a sense. In this case for capacity building reasons in the country, we decided, as a matter of principle, that national authorities would be given the responsibility to implement the programs. The UNDP assistance would be used to help them develop their capacity. That was rather an important decision on which much of our review centered because there have been some problems of understanding the concept, getting everybody on board in the mechanics of doing that.
Q: Does the UNDP face difficulties in implementing its projects globally in general and in Yemen in particular?
A: In general, we face resource constraints. Over the last few years, UNDP has not received the level of funding that was anticipated when the board meeting took place. This means that not only have we had to reduce certain levels of funding available to countries like Yemen, but we had also to think of new ways of doing our business to convince those who do provide us with the funds that, what we do, is worthwhile. So, frankly the whole change process going on now in the UNDP is obviously being done in conjunction with various countries we work with. So the way has become many more practical, result-oriented rather than input-oriented.
In Yemen, I think the issues that we face today are ones that were anticipated to some extent from the decision on the program. We are also looking at the manner in which we re-execute the program through national authorities. We anticipated that these are new concepts and sometimes it would be necessary to bring everybody on board to understand the concepts and get it down in a way that it matches the needs of Yemen. There have been some difficulties, some delays in our start of the projects that struck me yesterday in our review. The Ministry of Planning together with the other ministries involved were very will aware of the difficulties that they face. There were some clear decisions taken yesterday to look at the problems we face and to come up in a very short time with some very concrete solutions. I do not think they are very difficult issues because they are ones that are already on the table and for which people have solutions. I think it is going to be more a process of sifting through the various options and then just taking some decisions to ensure common understanding, consistency of approach, etc. That is a management issue.
On the substantive side, we are going to be running a series of evaluations during the course of this year in various programs, specially in the environment program and water resources. We are going to go methodically one by one. So we look at the substantive side, whether we are really on the track or we should be doing something on a slightly different way given the present circumstances.
Q: What about the UNDP’s future plans in Yemen? What will these plans be focusing on?
A: The program was fitted very well. It took its principles and its major programs from within the five-year plan. It is evident that the five year plan is still a document, that it has some validity for the country and, more particularly, those programs that we are to assist seem to be of continuing pertinence. So the review was in the sense of validation, that we are on track, that the programs and the various sectors were still valid and making sense of delays in starting the programs. We have still much work to accomplish under those programs. Nevertheless, what we will be doing is a sort of evaluating them to make sure that is really the case. Second, we are moving with national authorities and civil society and various outside agencies that are helping Yemen to start the process of the formulation of the next program. Like the last one, it would fit within the national planning frameworks for Yemen’s next five-year plan. It would be the basis for determining what assistance we provide. But already we will be working within the context of the government plans to look at poverty reduction which is a very key theme for UNDP. We have recommitted ourselves in a global meeting of all our representatives to assist countries in reducing poverty levels to half of what they are today by the year 2015. That is a global goal. There is a nice marriage of interest between a global mandate, the countries’ needs and desires and the existing programs we have, which will continue and probably be strengthened.
Q: Talking about poverty reduction, one of the UNDP’s programs in Yemen is “Poverty Alleviation Program.” What has this program accomplished so far?
A: There have been two important elements in the Poverty Alleviation Program. One is doing community development work, addressing issues of local communities and hoping that the lessons learned from those can be replicated elsewhere which can be integrated into policy changes and programs, that not only the government but those agencies that help government can adopt. The other part is the monitoring aspect where we have assisted in putting together a program indicator monitoring system. This is to commit any party within Yemen to judge whether or not success has been achieved under Poverty Alleviation Programs because without those tools, monitoring indicators, nobody knows to what extent achievements have been reached.
Q: Do you include the civil society associations in your programs as partners in the development process?
A: In principle, indeed, a few years ago the traditional relationship that we enjoyed with Yemen or any other country was a sort of tri-party relationship. It was usually government, the UN agencies and ourselves. So, you have those three parties that came together and implemented programs. For some time now, UNDP officially broadened its scope. Governments themselves said they are not the only parties operating within the national context. So, it is the whole concept of bringing on board civil society and giving us the room to work with the civil society. So very much indeed whether it is Poverty Alleviation Programs or some other program the design of the programs anticipates direct dealings with the civil society, NGOs. In fact, in some countries, I am not sure whether this is the case in Yemen, are capacity building programs. We foresee building up capacity of non-governmental organizations because there are decisions taken at the national level. The NGOs have a particular role to play, government has another role to play, we have a particular role to play, other agencies have different and complementary roles. So the short answer is ‘yes.’ We very much expect to work with the civil society, with NGOs. Again, the issue in many countries, I am not sure if this is the case in Yemen, is that the NGO community varies greatly from country to country. Some countries do not have the history of involving the civil society to the extent that others do. So UNDP globally, in some countries are very advanced in working with NGOs. In other countries it is just beginning, but the opportunity is there. I know from my understanding in discussions of the country review that this is something that the government welcomes and so even in our programs we anticipate and attempt to look at that aspect and involve not just NGOs, but a broad range of partners. One of the UNDP’s re-commitments to international assistance is to work not just with a government or just a national partner but also with the international partners; World Bank, IMF together with countries like the Netherlands, the UK, etc. There is a very broad ranging opportunity here to work with everybody who is involved. The program approach we adopted is designed to permit a number of parties to work within a broad framework.
Q: Any last word?
A: I should have said right from the beginning that this is the first time in 22 years that I visited Yemen. I have not had the opportunity this time to do much traveling as I did last time. I went down to Taiz and looked at the program down there going on at the time. This time I had the opportunity when I came to go to Amran governorate and see some of the land resources. Work has been there where there are villages that are reconstructing their traditional reservoirs to carry the water from rainy seasons through the dry season to the next rainy season. It is not perhaps the right time in the year to come in the sense of making comparisons because I think I came last time after the rainy seasons. So the place looked much greener than it does at the moment. One point of comparison I can make is certainly Sana’a that has grown enormously. I can see the sort of challenges that are presenting themselves to the Yemeni authorities and the international community. I think I have made Yemen my first country to visit in all the Arab states for various reasons. One is because you were running a country review early in this year. Secondly, because of some of the innovations that your government is moving and also because poverty being one of the reasons on that review, UNDP and with your emphasis on poverty alleviation, I though it was better to come to a country that’s dedicated itself to that, to see how the relation is working out and what sort of results we are achieving. I have been very pleased to see that people seemed to be pleased with themselves which is a good sign of progress. I hope that I will be able to return to Yemen, but I can not say when, for there are a number of countries I have to visit.
I also want to focus on the UNDP’s resources. The UNDP has limited resources. We are attempting through our result-based approach now to encourage donor countries in particular to provide more resources to UNDP. We are also encouraging partnerships to provide resources within the frameworks of these programs that we are working on. So, It is a sort of making a plea to all parties who are interested in Yemen to look at the programs that we are running and to see whether those frameworks are needed to join forces. I think it just makes sense that we can achieve more together than separately and perhaps that will be the basis for even more positive responses in terms of resource mobilization to the country that obviously requires more money than we have presently available.
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