Making the Transition from Relief to Development
Presentation to UNDP, UNFPA and UNOPS Executive Board
9 September 2011
Lise Grande, DSRSG/RC/HC/UNDP Resident Representative
.
The new Republic of South Sudan is undergoing a complex transition
South Sudan has made impressive achievements since the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed six years ago.
Basic state structures have been created from scratch:
•
29 ministries and 17 independent commissions and
chambers have been established
•
An elected Legislative Assembly is fully functioning
•
State Governor’s offices and State Assemblies have been
established
•
Key rule of law institutions, including a police service, a
prison service, and a judiciary, have been established
Basic services and infrastructure are also improving:
•
Over 6,000 kilometers of dirt road have been upgraded,
linking major cities and towns
•
Primary school enrollment has quadrupled and the number
of school buildings has increased by 20 percent
•
The first midwifery school has been established in Juba
where midwives are being trained to fill a critical gap in
frontline maternal health care
Yet, the critical tasks for the new state remain overwhelming in scale and complexity
South Sudan has the largest capacity gap in Africa. Every single
ministry, state government and spending agency lacks qualified,
competent staff. Nearly half of all civil servants have only a primary
education and fewer than 5 per cent have higher degrees. It will take
a generation to improve the capacity of the public service.
South Sudan has some of the worst human development indicators
in the world. More than 80 per cent of the population lives on less
than USD 1 per day. Only 20 per cent use a health facility during their
lifetime. The maternal mortality rate is the worst in the world. Less
than 6 percent of children are fully immunized and half do not
attend school. 92 per cent of women are illiterate. A 15 year old girl
has a higher chance of dying in childbirth than finishing school.
South Sudan is one of the world’s most underdeveloped countries.
In a country the size of France, there are only a handful of allweather roads. Up to 60 per cent of remote locations are
inaccessible during the rainy season. There is no electricity grid, no
national energy system and no civil aviation capacity. Farmers can
not access markets so there is no incentive to produce. Many areas
are insecure because they are inaccessible, and state structures have
little if any capacity to access to intervene when conflict occurs.
South Sudan presents the single largest state-building challenge of our generation
Insecurity remains the single greatest threat
•
The Government is currently fighting five armed militias in
strategically vital areas of South Sudan and tensions are
rising along the border
•
SPLA commanders estimate that only 30 per cent of
soldiers are under their full command and control
•
Leaders have been unable to address ethno-political rifts,
unresolved grievances, and a lack of opportunities for
youth, all of which continue to drive local conflicts
The largest semi-peacetime movement of people since World
War II is taking place in South Sudan
•
Since 30 October 2011, 340,000 South Sudanese have
returned from the north and in 2011, over 300,000
persons have been newly displaced due to conflict
•
Returnees and ex-combatants from the SPLA and other
armed groups need to be reintegrated into communities
where basic infrastructure, basic services, and livelihood
opportunities are lacking
Strategic Priorities During the Transition
At Independence there is still fundamental instability
State-building is the priority that trumps all others
The situation in South Sudan challenges our
common conceptions about transition. Most
transitions are about getting state systems to
start functioning again. In South Sudan,
however, state systems haven’t been
established because of the long war and
decades of marginalization.
The concept of ‘recovery’ doesn’t make sense
since there are no structures or systems to
‘recover’. The transition from relief to
development is taking place at the same time
that the state itself is being built from scratch.
Because expectations are so high and so much is
at stake, the government doesn’t have
generations to build the state. The new Republic
is it racing time against time to establish viable
institutions capable of maintaining peace and
security, accountably managing public resources
and delivering public goods and services to one
of the poorest populations in the world.
At Independence there is still fundamental instability
Responding to the challenges facing South Sudan requires a new way of working
Throughout the Interim Period of the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement, the bulk of international assistance has been
directed towards humanitarian programmes, which have
contributed little to towards building state structures and
resulted in the state not being held accountable for the
delivery of public services.
This needs to change. The UN needs to shift gears and help
the Government to prioritize and focus on:
•
•
•
•
establish core state functions
stabilizing insecure areas
build delivery systems for basic public goods and services
introduce redistributive programmes that give people
the confidence that the state is there for them
Because the transition is so complex and difficult, agencies
need to focus on only a handful of simple, transformative
programmes that can be done at scale. Agencies need to
manage extreme levels of fiduciary risk, move very quickly
while also being prepared to change course and adopt new
strategies and reduce transaction costs by minimizing complex
bureaucratic procedures and programming processes.
Because everything depends on the state, agencies will focus on core functions and the capacity gap
Agencies will work with partners to put in place core
governance functions. Over the past two years, the UN and
partners have been helping the Government to prioritize
and focus on building the core state functions essential for
service delivery and economic growth. These include
systems for:
•
•
•
Management of public resources
Maintenance of basic law and order
Management of the public service
Agencies will also help to bridge the capacity gap by
rapidly augmenting existing capacities and providing onthe-job mentoring support. This includes:
• placing United Nations volunteers in every state to
support core functions
• embedding civil servants from Ethiopia, Uganda and
Kenya into Ministries and twinning with South
Sudanese counterparts
• Launching a partnership with the African Union
through which 1,000 technical specialists will
support public services across South Sudan
The UNV ‘surge’ initiative is one of the most popular programmes in South Sudan
Ephrem Israel, from Ethiopia, is a
Development Planning Specialist
helping the State Ministry of Finance
to plan and budget for the needs of
the people of Northern Bahr el
Ghazal State
‘Surge’ initiatives have successfully been used
in Botswana, East Timor and Afghanistan and
need to be expanded here.
Shekhar Shrestha, from Nepal, is
a Civil Engineer working closely
with the State Ministry of
Infrastructure overseeing major
construction works on roads and
buildings
Simeo Nsubuga, from Uganda, is a
Law Enforcement Advisor who assists
the State Police Headquarters in
strengthening the rule of law in
Western Bahr el Ghazal State
Nicholas Jonga, from Zimbabwe,
is a Statistician working to assist
the Government with evidencebased planning and budgeting
for the people of Jonglei State
Because stability is so important, UNMISS and agencies will focus on extending state authority into
insecure areas
Insecurity remains a chief impediment to the expansion of services
and growth. Insecure areas lack government presence, law
enforcement or any effective application of the rule of law. They have
the largest concentration of vulnerable and displaced persons and
therefore the largest humanitarian and emergency programmers and
presence.
Extending state authority into insecure areas and doing so in way in
which the legitimacy and credibility of state authority increases is
crucial to stabilization and any prospect for a successful transition
from relief to development. This is a chief area for collaboration
between UNMISS and the country team.
This means providing direct support to and through the state and
local governments so that government structures can actually take
control, rather than state authority being undermined as can happen
when external parties and contractors provide the assistance. The UN
will be helping the Government do this by:
•
providing support to allow local government to lead interactions
with their constituents and stakeholders, including youth,
women, the church and civil society groups.
•
helping to expand access to justice and protection, particularly in
areas where the state’s armed forces are seen as being part of the
problem.
Because people need confidence in their state, agencies will focus on helping to establish service delivery
systems and establishing a social compact between the Government and its people
Following independence, expectations are high. The
Government has a small window of opportunity to establish
itself as viable, legitimate and responsive to people’s needs.
Although security remains an overriding priority, the
Government needs to spend more than 14 per cent of the
national budget on health, education and social services.
Bold initiatives aimed at
consolidating the social
compact include the
introduction of child benefit
and the launching of a “national
solidarity” programme that will
reach each county
To fight the perception that only elites are benefitting from
independence, the Government needs to adopt policies that
redistribute national wealth so that it reaches the poorest
households and reduces the “deadly decisions” that South
Sudanese families confront daily. This is best done by bringing
service delivery to scale through simple transformative
programmes. The UN will help the Government do this by:
•
tackling the maternal mortality through cascading
training that builds up a new cadre of village midwives
•
Supportingteacher training as part of a mass campaign
to boost access to education
•
tackling the exceptionally high levels of illiteracy through
a major national literacy campaign
Each day in South Sudan, families try to decide how to spend their one dollar
Will the family use their dollar to:
Buy a second meal?
Buy wood for the family stove?
Buy thatching for the roof?
Buy anti-malarials for their ill child?
Buy school uniforms and materials?
Pay bribes at the market checkpoint?
Buy agricultural inputs?
The approach of the UN agencies
to social progress and justice is
based on reducing the seven
“deadly decisions” that the
average family makes every day
Although needs are overwhelming, prioritization is key
The UN agencies will align their
programmes with the South Sudan
Development Plan’s four pillars: Social
and Human Development, Economic
Development, Governance, and Conflict
Prevention and Security
For the social and human development pillar, agencies will:
• Build South Sudanese capacity to deliver services
• Promote child rights and combat gender-based violence
For the economic development pillar, agencies will:
• Accelerate inclusive growth and diversify the economy
• Improve agricultural production and access to markets
• Create an enabling environment for private sector
• Address youth unemployment through labour-intensive
works
For the governance pillar, agencies will:
• Improve the Government’s capacity to deliver core state
functions and public services
• Strengthen accountability and oversight mechanisms
• Strengthen rule of law and access to justice
• Improve protection for women and children
For the conflict prevention and security pillar, agencies will:
• Help to reintegrate returning populations
• Support accelerated demobilization, disarmament and
reintegration
• Support stability and community security
A joined up prioritized approach within the UN will be crucial to consolidate peace
during the first years of statehood
In summary, lessons learned
from other transitions show that
it is important for the UN to:
1) Not try to do too much and
be prepared to take tough
decisions about priorities
2) Not to overwhelm national
structures and overburden
national authorities
3) Ensure that humanitarian
programmes
are
coordinated
with
government delivery by
incorporating humanitarian
clusters into sector-wide
structures as soon as
possible
4) Reach out to other partners
to create a common sense
of purpose and to avoid
gaps in key areas
UN planning in South Sudan is being joined up to ensure a
system-wide realistic, prioritized approach to the most important
tasks.
The Consolidated Appeal will present a summary of emergency
needs and the emergency programmes which UN agencies and
hundreds of national and international NGOs intend to
implement. This year’s appeal will include sections describing the
phased incorporation of the cluster system into the Government’s
sector-wide coordination mechanisms and the “shut-down” of
humanitarian funding windows as basket funds for service sectors
are established.
The United Nations Development Assistance Framework involving
the 23 agencies, funds and programmes in South Sudan, is
currently being prepared. This plan will include a highly prioritized
set of programmes identified by the government as crucial for the
successful implementation of the South Sudan Development Plan.
A joint UN peace building plan will be developed for UNMISS and
UN Country Team, and other bilateral and multilateral partners as
entailed in SCR 1996 Para 18. This plan will prioritize specific peace
building tasks related to key issues of state-building and
development. It will help to establish the conditions for
development and will be aligned with national priorities.