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| (Photo: ©UNDP Cambodia) |
As it often happens in our work, we familiarize ourselves with relevant data on the country we are going to work in when we are assigned to a new UNDP office operations. Amidst the impressive accounts I read about Cambodia prior to my arrival, I only came to appreciate the profound economic and social transformation the country had gone through once I arrived.
Economic performance had positive statistics telling of an average GDP growth of 8.2% between 2000-2010, and 7.4% from 2011-2013. Cambodia is home to people where 65% of its population are under the age of 30 and will remain so until 2038, creating an unprecedented demographic dividend.
Given these premises, I was eager to see for myself the world’s 15th fastest growing economy perform during the period of my stay. Most importantly, I was interested to see how UNDP would contribute to make this growth more inclusive and more conducive to human development. As we know, while poverty may decline in absolute terms, it is seriously challenged by a wide range of vulnerability threats. These can come through shocks embedded within a narrowly based economic structure, through climate change or climate-induced calamities, and within an unfinished agenda over the full chain of institutions assigned to public sector governance and service delivery to the population.
As a result, significant pockets of people are stalled or hover near the poverty line as those who had just escaped from extreme poverty risk to move back.
Over the next three years, UNDP’s support will be critical in helping the Royal Government of Cambodia set institutions and systems in place for its structural change and transformation.
The focus will need to remain on the unfinished growth agenda as well as on how to be best equipped amidst new and compelling challenges, such as inequality, non-sustainable development and overall public/private sector accountability towards development.
In this respect, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, together with the current and future iterations of the National Strategic Development Plan, offer a concrete and unprecedented global platform for aspirations and a means to measure progress towards better human development. UNDP, in complementing the efforts of its development partners, is attempting to clear trails out of poverty and support public action to capture the gains from expansion of global value chains and to adapt to a changing development finance landscape.
UNDP is historically well placed in assisting public institutions that address poverty reduction and building resilience. It is opening to strengthen citizenship voice and participation. Work is ongoing to upgrade value chains, financing development sustainably, building resilience and fostering participation.
As the programmatic paradigm shifts, UNDP had to adjust the way it operates in the country. During my time in Cambodia, we invested significant energies in creating the conditions for UNDP to have a scaled-up policy capacity as opposed to the downstream project management function that the office traditionally provided. As we speak, we are investing time and resources into far-sighted new programme development, novel partnerships, policy options, and analysis and research.
We found that by sequencing the business development and the programme execution side of the house differently, we would be able to adjust our partnership posture from ‘grant provider’ to ‘service provider.’ We are looking into an office geared to supply cutting edge knowledge and innovative policy solutions to meet the challenges Cambodia will face, especially as the World Bank has recently upgraded its status as a lower Middle-Income Country. To position for these new challenges, our interventions are progressively aligning to work under the accountability framework of the 2030 Agenda for SDG.
The capability of the organization to deliver on the expectations requires intensive and continuous focus on empowerment and an effective and agile office structure capable of ensuring higher quality programmes, greater organizational openness, adaptability, as well as improved management of its operations.
Every country I have had the privilege to work in provides a set of unique experiences and I will surely treasure my time in Cambodia.
My experience in this country taught me that building a credible institution that is regarded as a loyal and significant partner is key but may not be enough in a fast changing context. While we have surely benefitted from our long-standing contribution to the country’s rehabilitation and development in the past, it is now time to evolve into a more complex player for development, able to partner with the government in the policy space and progressively shed off our grant agency mark while engaging concrete transformational results.
We have devised and are executing a clear organizational plan to acquire and resource the competencies needed to move in a new arena of partnership interactions while at the same time becoming institutionally more agile and responsive.
I believe the office has identified a new set of entry points into a new development environment that is less resource- and issue-constrained. Thanks to its organizational agility, the country office can now enjoy renewed UNDP regional support. In this respect, UNDP is joining other organizations which have an integrated regional management approach towards their field presence, building on economy of scale, pocket of competencies and excellence in other and larger business units. We have definitely moved from UNDP Cambodia to UNDP in Cambodia.
As the team bravely starts its challenging work, I see an opportunity to balance our upstream ambitions and our downstream focus. Those who fall outside the statistics of economic growth and do not “roar” in tune with the new tigers of South East Asia need an answer to poverty now. They will not wait for complex development theories to stretch their sequenced logical pattern of transformational change over time. So while thinking big, let’s keep our boots well on the ground.
I surely leave behind an office which has dared to upgrade its founding blocks and is now testing a challenging business model that has the potential to open new scenarios for UNDP. As I recognize growth is a painful process in both organizational and human terms, I can tell this country office has tried its very best to anticipate and interpret the organizational and political change at the cost of business as usual choices, and I am confident the change will yield positive results.
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