Friday, 24th October 2014
United Nations Resident Co-ordinator Subinay Nandy in an interview with the coinciding with the celebration of the 69th United Nations day today, shared his views on the common perception of the UN in Sri Lanka, the work carried out by the body and its future goals.
Q : There’s been a lot of skepticism in this country with regard to the work of the UN. Do you think this skepticism is justified?
Firstly, thank you very much for talking to us and as we are heading towards the 69th Anniversary of the United Nations in a few days time it is a good opportunity for us to be able to talk to you and your readership in Sri Lanka. I wish to avail the opportunity to convey our best wishes on UN Day. Coming to your question on the perception of the UN system, I am often confronted with this question. If you look back, the UN has been working in Sri Lanka for the last 62 years. Sri Lanka has been very active in the UN even before it was an independent country and has been more active since it has become a member. It was a very engaged two-way partnership. The UN, based on its mandate, its comparative advantage is that and resources and capacities.
I think the people’s perception looks at one side of the UN. Firstly, we are an organisation of member states and Sri Lanka is an important member. We are expected to work in a multiplicity of areas including peace, development and human rights.
I think that the country based work of the UN in development and humanitarian support are, to our understanding from the partners and beneficiaries, very well appreciated. The perception of a group of people is not necessarily positive for human rights issues and political engagement issues, not the overall actions of the UN. These views are misplaced.
Our actions are carried out through an inter-governmental process, thereby causing unease amongst a certain population about various decisions taken within inter-governmental bodies. It is important to understand and distinguish between the UN bodies and the inter-governmental decisions. The UN bodies are to implement inter-governmental decisions that are adopted from time to time.
It is a much broader discussion than saying that the UN is not appreciated; we feel much appreciated as we work with our counterparts in the area of developmental and humanitarian work.
We worked and negotiated with the government to develop and implement our 5-year framework from 2013-2017. I welcome you to observe the work of the UN. We are diversifying our footprint by looking at other challenges and issues that the government has prioritised as well as focusing on lagging areas.
Q : Stemming from the same criticism, there is a sense of belief that the criticism by the UN of Sri Lanka in the above mentioned aspects are not justified. This is based on the notion that there is a double standard that the UN applies depending on the country concerned. What are your thoughts on this?
I clearly do not agree with your proposition. That is probably the way it is construed. Let me go back to the basics and fundamentals of it. Your country has a very progressive constitution. Your country has also signed almost all key international conventions in the areas of human rights, natural resources and so on. The objective of the UN is to work with the member government along those lines. In the case of post-conflict development, Sri Lanka has been successful in implementing the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. Our discourse is primarily based on the parameters set by your constitution, the obligations Sri Lanka has taken vis-à-vis the signing of international conventions and also supporting the implementation of the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.
Let me also bring another dimension to that. Immediately after the closure of the war, the Secretary General came to Sri Lanka and made a joint statement with the President of Sri Lanka on the 23rd of May 2009. I would encourage you to look at the premise from where we come: the existing agreements to which Sri Lanka is a signatory. It’s not that we are setting new targets and new goals but instead what we are looking at is as to what can be done to achieve your national and international obligations.
Q : Before I move on to the celebration of the 69th UN Day, having witnessed politics beyond a national realm- do you believe, either in your personal opinion or as the Resident Co-ordinator in this country, that Sri Lanka has made progress in comparison with other post-conflict nations? Do you agree or are you apprehensive towards that view?
The job that I am assigned to do as a representative of the UNDP and a Humanitarian Co-ordinator, does not involve putting up a score card. My job is to be part of solutions and bring support to areas where our national partners request us to do so. At the national level, we work more with the agenda set out by the 16 UN agencies. As partners, we see tremendous progress in certain areas and also see a need for improvement in certain areas. These messages are conveyed in our day-to-day discussions, in our leadership, the country’s leadership in Geneva, New York and elsewhere. If you go back to the joint statement made on 23rd May 2009, it addressed a number of issues. With regards to reconstruction, I think Sri Lanka has done very well in setting up its macro level infrastructure and coming out of the extensive damage due to the war. This is acknowledged in all major documentation and engagements. Significant investments have also gone into such construction. With regards to resettlement, with approximately 300,000 people in one camp, few groups of people are still leaving with the assistance of host families and social welfare centres. The enormity of this challenge can be underestimated. In 2012, when the last person from Menik farm moved back to their areas, it showcases a good track record. Demining is an area that Sri Lanka can legitimately be very proud of. Here again is a good example of how we work together. The UN system worked with the Sri Lankan government to set up the entire capacity to manage the entire process which was a tremendous success. On the whole, progress has been good. Some people still need to get full access to their lands which have been taken over. The next issue is livelihood. Success is in a positive direction, may be not as successful as the infrastructural development and we always say that there needs to be a balance. These things cannot happen overnight. Focus was on the restoration of the mega infrastructure and livelihood investment went as far as possible. There were several impediments for restoration of livelihood. There were two floods and one drought which had drastic effects on the people. Then you come to much softer issues like reconciliation. This is time consuming and also linked to the political process of empowerment and there is much more that needs to be done in this sphere. The next issue has been accountability, to bring justice if there was any wrong that occurred, but our country teams mandate does not extend that far. It is the mandate and under the purview of other bodies of the United Nations system. Accordingly at this point of time our main focus is at restoration of livelihoods giving people the means to get up on their own feet and also in the areas of reconciliation. But the latter falls in to many other complicated areas such as rule of law, access to justice, peoples rights and that would probably need a lot of engaged discussion together with the acceptance on the part of the government to engage with the United Nations system.
Q : Moving on to the 69th United Nations day, what does the UN seek to achieve in a micro sense within Sri Lanka, coinciding with this celebration?
Thank you for the question. The work of the UN is based on the charter and the Secretary General of the UN, when he started his second term laid out the road map as to the areas which the UN system should focus. The UN was created in 1945 and since then the world has evolved, indeed we have been successful in a sense that there was never a world for these 69 years, but as the Secretary General quite rightly points out, poverty, disease, terrorism, climate change, discrimination are all taking a heavy toll. I was at the recently concluded General Assembly sessions in New York of which the main focus should ideally have been the future goals and a re-visiting of the Millennium Development Goals . However, during the last session the entire focus of the General Assembly was on Ebola and the ISIS crisis that is unfolding. You must be aware that the Security Council itself, for the first time in its history, took decisions on how to tackle Ebola. So if you understand the context, a lot has happened, there has been success but challenges remain. At the beginning of the second term of the Secretary General one of the main goals that was sought to be achieved was sustainable development and the new round of the development agenda that is due is called the Sustainable Development goals. This time, these have been done in a much more inclusive and participatory form. If you take Sri Lanka for example, they have been one of the leading countries which provided inputs. That was one agenda. The second agenda is the prevention of conflicts and disasters, upholding of human rights and the prevention of development setbacks. The third agenda was to build a safe and secure world which includes standing strong on fundamental principles of democracy and human rights and all other areas that are related and which enhances capacity. Fourth is, supporting countries in transition. As we speak there are a huge number of countries that are in transition. Sri Lanka is transiting from a lower to middle income earning country and from conflict to hopefully, long term peace. There are many countries around the globe that are going through transformation of some sort and supporting these countries are of utmost importance. The last on the agenda is working with women and the youth. These are the five marching orders and it is in this direction that we will tread.
In 2013 we with the government of Sri Lanka, having taken into context Sri Lankas priorities, defined four major pillars. The first one was growth with equality. Sri Lanka is growing very fast but inequality is on the rise. The second pillar, was to secure development which addresses disparity which includes quality services. As you are aware poverty is very much a rural phenomenon and over 80% of the country still live in rural areas. So there is a disparity between the rural and the urban among other disparities. In a modern, strong and developed country you would like every citizen to have equal access to services. Therefore the second pillar. The third pillar is development which promotes rights and good governance. Fourthly, supporting efforts of the government for development that is green and sustainable, which will include issues of climate change and issues of resilience to disaster. These are the four areas of our work and 16 UN agencies are currently working towards these goals in Sri Lanka. Each of these goals are broken into different strands and these agencies focus on the said tasks with our national partners. This encompasses all levels of interventions.
Q : You gave a precursor to my next question, again there is a feeling that the work of the United Nations is confined to slogans. If you could take the second pillar- disparity reduction, equitable and quality social service, could you enlighten us as to what it exactly entails and how the UN would get about achieving it?
One of the means of our interventions are programmatic, where we do some projects. The other is advocacy where we take an issue and bring it to the forefront. You took the example of the second pillar. So lets take the areas of health and education. If you look at the statistics as they stand today everyone could be happy. Sri Lanka with 91% literacy, it has low infant mortality rates, 90% of the deliveries are handled by trained midwives so these are positives and such equality needs to be maintained and enhanced. In order to sustain these positive results we work with national agencies which have the capacity to work on policy development. An area we also focus on is the provision of access to and demand of quality social services. Now if one is to take an example, there are many schools in the country which UNICEF works with. These schools are helped to be more child friendly, and this has now been embraced at the national level. There are schools which simply teach, but there are certain international standards that need to be maintained when making a school child-friendly. We advocated this to the government and thereafter gave certain ‘pilots’ and now this has been embraced by them and included into the national education system. So we are working towards everyone having minimum standards of schooling that they will get. Another is the support the UNFPA provides to the Department of Census and Statistics to modernise the census process in Sri Lanka. In the modern day, quality of data, storing of data etc. is very important. So what the UNFPA is doing is not only helping improve the data but securing the data in areas of ensuring that it is used in a user friendly manner for diverse and different purposes which would help decision making. The ultimate aim should be that somebody sitting at the level of a Grama Niladhari division will have access to the same data as the person sitting at a national ministerial level. There is a major initiative that is funded by the European Union which six UN agencies in the country are currently handling. The project is working with 7 districts from all over the country, in order to strengthen the planning process of the districts and below that. These include the department of health, education, agriculture etc so that they are aligned towards the same plan.
From: http://www.dailymirror.lk/54975/more-to-un-s-work-in-sl-than-is-perceived
