Reflecting on UNDP’s focus on Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights: What has worked well and what hasn’t?

Welcome to this discussion! My name is Sofiene Bacha and I will be the moderator of this room alongside Roqaya Dhaif for the first week. Nicholas Booth, Giorgia Tortora, Gloria Manzotti, Clement Hamon, and Yagiz Oztepe will accompany you during the rest of the consultation. This segment of the discussion deals with your feedback on:

• The scope and impact of UNDP's contribution to strengthening the Rule of Law, Security, and Human Rights in Host Countries;
• The outcomes and the effectiveness of the UNDP Global Programme on the Rule of Law and Human Rights. For more information on the last achievements of the Global Programme, please see the 2019 Highlights of the Global Programme and the 2018 annual report. This programme is under review and the outcome of this discussion will also inform the design of its next phase (2022-2025).

We are very delighted to welcome your feedback, comments, questions, and thoughts on the ongoing partnerships –including the Global Focal Point on the Rule of Law and other global Task Forces and initiatives– as well as on your experience, good practices, challenges, etc., both in the field and on policy development. We hope also that this interaction will help you connect with other experts from the greater rule of law, security, and human rights community around the world.

We look forward to our interaction and exchange of views, ideas, recommendations, and forward-looking thinking. Thank you!

Hola, mi nombre es Álvaro Herrero y soy especialista en temas de justicia y estado de derecho. Quisiera destacar que la contribución del PNUD en la región de América Latina y el Caribe ha sido muy importante. Por su despliegue territorial y su capacidad de brindar apoyo técnico, ha logrado generar una agenda coherente de reformas del sector justicia. No hay otros organismos en la región con esa ventaja comparativa. En tal sentido, ha tenido un rol destacado en la promoción de una agenda integral de acceso a la justicia, tema prioritario en la región, apoyando proyectos innovadores como el Hospital de Derechos, las redes de Centros de Acceso a la Justicia, y los cuerpos de abogados especializados en violencia de género. También ha apoyado la justicia de paz y ha trabajado para llevar la justicia a áreas remotas de muchos países. También ha diseñado estrategias para utilizar el acceso a la justicia en contextos de multiculturalismo

Vale destacar que hay dos áreas en las que PNUD tiene trabajo activo pero donde se abren muchas oportunidades adicionales en el contexto post-COVID19. La primera es fortalecer las capacidades de los poderes judiciales para impulsar procesos de innovación dentro del sistema de justicia. Esto servirá además para consolidar los avances repentinos implementados en el marco del COVID-19. Pero también son necesarias reformas de justicia abierta (transparencia, datos abiertos, participación ciudadana), uso de nuevas tecnologías (inteligencia artificial, aprendizaje de máquinas, automatización) economía del comportamiento. La segunda oportunidad se refiere a generar capacidades en materia de datos acordes a los nuevos desarrollos tecnológicos e institucionales (gobernanza de datos, explotación, etc.), la inclusión de políticas basadas en evidencia y seguir consolidando los esfuerzos para producir datos estadísticos de calidad.

Me Sattar from Community Initiatives for Development in Pakistan-CIDP NGO , as discussed role of law is very important subject and develop societies and countries is follow the role of law but in those countries have not control their boundaries. So many national and international mafias develop influence on the society to no have any role of law, many examples are in Pakistan and other countries. Like in Pakistan, no any follow traffic role, no any follow buildings construction role, no any follow food items quality, no any follow transport quality, no any follow transparency. Govt. developed nice SoPs. But need to proper implement of law from law and force institutes. UNDP Pakistan is working with Government closely since many decades for betterment role law. I think after development strategy with Govt. UNDP should building capacity of direct institutes who are involved in role of law. Second Civil Organisation role is reduced in the UNDP and UNO interventions so I suggest that role of CSOs must be added in the UNDP projects otherwise Govt. and UNDP developed many strategies and output will be zero as here is showing. 

UNDP doing very good work in the role of law some links UNDP doing work in Pakistan on role of law.

https://www.pk.undp.org/content/pakistan/en/home/projects/SRLP.html; https://www.pk.undp.org/content/pakistan/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2019/undp-pakistan-and-government-of-japan-agree-for-capacity-buildin.html

Hi, I´m Juan Pablo Gordillo from RSCLAC, about the question on ¿What is UNDP doing well in Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights?, it is important to remark UNDP´s work on Citizen Security and Peaceful Coexistence in Latin America and the Caribbean region. 

A broader view of security and justice, integral, based on the citizen´s expectations and freedom of fear , Rule Of Law principles, and Human Rights based, it was developed jointly with 24 countries (CSOs-governments) for more tan 15 years, and today many governments have a Citizen Security and peaceful coexistence policy. This idea of a public Good, co-responsible among citizens and the state still is reliable, adaptative to different emerging challenges and points at those who may be left behind because of different vulnerabilities and risk factors. 

Some key resources:

• https://www.undp.org/content/dam/rblac/docs/Research%20and%20Publications/IDH/IDH-AL-ExecutiveSummary.pdf
• https://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/corporate/HDR/Latin%20America%20and%20Caribbean%20HDR/C_bean_HDR_Jan25_2012_3MB.pdf
• http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/crisis%20prevention/Decade%20of%20Work%20on%20Citizen%20Security%20and%20Conflict%20Prevention%20in%20LAC%20ENGLISH.pdf
• https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/crisis-prevention-and-recovery/IssueBriefCitizenSecurity.html
• https://www.sv.undp.org/content/el_salvador/es/home/library/democratic_governance/aportes-para-la-convivencia-y-la-seguridad-ciudadana--vol-2.html
• https://www.sv.undp.org/content/el_salvador/es/home/library/catalogo-de-soluciones/el-abc-de-la-seguridad-ciudadana.html
• https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/crisis-prevention-and-recovery/IssueBriefCitizenSecurity.html
• https://www.sv.undp.org/content/el_salvador/es/home/presscenter/articles/2018/09/datos-y-analisis-sobre-seguridad-ciudadana-en-un-nuevo-sitio-web.html
• https://www.hn.undp.org/content/honduras/es/home/library/informe--evidencias-para-la-agenda-2030-y-el-ods-16---sociedades.html

¡Colegas del PNUD y red de socios, saludos desde Panamá! Seré la moderadora de este grupo durante esta semana junto con Roqaya Dhaif 

Gracias a Sofiene Bacha , hemos tenido comentarios muy interesantes hasta ahora!

Los animo a aprovechar esta oportunidad  a través de esta consulta: podemos ayudar a re pensar el trabajo de PNUD en los temas de Estado de Derecho, Seguridad y Derechos Humanos. ¿Consideran que ha sido suficientemente efectivo? ¿Cómo podría mejorar para los próximos 5 años de programación del PNUD? Qué ideas valdría la pena considerar para nuevas áreas de compromiso y alianzas?

Recuerden que pueden continuar cualquiera de las conversaciones ya iniciadas, responder las preguntas que dejamos en la introducción o hacer cualquier comentario relacionado

Envíenos sus experiencias, enlaces a artículos y herramientas útiles, buenas experiencias e ideas!

Week One Summary

Thank you all for your valuable contributions to the discussion during this first week of consultation.

Colleagues highlighted the important role that UNDP is playing in the LAC region, especially on access to justice and the justice reform. Suggestions were brought forward to strengthen UNDP’s engagement in innovation, open justice, and data exploitation, taking advantage of the COVID-19 opportunities.

Case examples and experiences on the use of behavioral economics in the justice sector were shared, with examples from Chile and LAC (resources can be found in the comments above).

Feedback was shared on the experience of civil society in Pakistan and including civil society in UNDP programmes as well as feedback on the citizen security programme in LAC. Here, the importance of applying and implementing people-centered justice and people-centered security in UNDP programmes was emphasized.

The discussion will continue with Lorena this week and I believe that more and more comments will stimulate the feedback, enlighten the evaluation and suggest avenues for reflection on UNDP support on Rule of Law, Security, and Human Rights. Thank you!

Hola colegas:

Saludos desde Buenos Aires! Sugiero que PNUD impulse a nivel regional mayor trabajo en la dimensión de estado de derecho ya que el sistema democrático esta debilitándose  cada vez mas. El proceso se advierte en todas las regiones incluido LAC y se ha agravado en el contexto de la pandemia: alta concentración de poder en los ejecutivos, débil rendición de cuentas, poca actividad de los poderes legislativos, de los órganos de control y del poder judicial aumentando los niveles de impunidad y la consecuente desesperanza en la ciudadanía. A disposición para contribuir con iniciativas en este sentido. 

 

Thanks Nora Luzi   for your comment regarding the need of promoting Rule of law at regional level and the alerts to the democratic system. It will be great if you can share suggestions on how could UNDP  better engage this support 

Also great if you can share good experiences on the excellent work you are doing in UNDP Argentina in rule of law!

I think you might find useful the webinar series that UNDP Mexico with Global Network on Electoral Justice are coordinating regarding electoral processes and justice in emergency situations. You can find the link here: https://undp.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYldO2gqTIpHtKOL3xxuKI5xz5LSrmnQtDU

 

Thank you Lorena.

A couple of ideas:

1. To launch a learning program on Peace, democracy, & rule of law to promote human Development. The institutional role of the judiciary and parliaments should be highlighted. UNDP might partner with donors and IFIs to mobilize funds. Target should be Young and young adults. 

2. Rule of Law & Human Development projects to be prioritized by UNDEF in 2020/2021

UNDP Argentina CO provides technical assistance in Access to Justice to the Ministry of Human Rights. The project has a innovative approach since health and justice services are provided from a mobile center to people living in remote and isolated areas in the North and NE of the country. The Project also supports a Network of lawyers specilized in gender violence and partneringwith UNICEF a Network of lawyers specialized in child sexual abuse. 

In addition, 3 new initiatives dealing with gun violence prevention, introducing ADR in prisons and Justice services in pandemia times are projects in pipeline.

Cheers,

Nora

Thanks Nora Luzi  for your suggestion on learning programmes on Peace, democracy, & rule of law to promote human Development

Also the information that you've shared on justice and human right issues give a very good idea about the innovative focus on justice centered in people, that UNDP is promoting, congratulations!

 

Hola, me parece muy interesante la conversación y todos los intercambios. 

En términos de lo que se puede hacer hacia el futuro, existen oportunidades para incorporar herramientas del paradigma de gobierno abierto para fomentar la transparencia, participación ciudadana y la colaboración en los sistemas de justicia. En América Latina, hay una tendencia creciente para incorporar este tipo de herramientas y promover el paradigma de una justicia abierta. Por ejemplo, hay experiencias muy valiosas sobre apertura de datos judiciales a nivel nacional (Argentina: http://datos.jus.gob.ar Colombia: https://www.minjusticia.gov.co/Servicio-al-Ciudadano/Ley_de_Transparenc…) y subnacional (https://datos.tsjbaires.gov.ar).

También hay cortes que funcionan con todas sus sentencias, resoluciones y agendas publicadas en formato de datos abiertos, y otros que usan redes sociales como Twitter o Instagram para mejorar su vínculo con los usuarios y la ciudadanía. Las cortes que utilizan datos abiertos y tienen todas sus decisiones accesibles al público, fueron las que más rápido se adaptaron a los desafíos del COVID-19 y pudieron continuar prestando servicios pese a la cuarentena (https://apolitical.co/en/solution_article/open-justice-pioneering-bueno…).  Asimismo, hay ejemplos de la creación de laboratorios de innovación judicial (https://jusbairesabierto.gob.ar) y la realización de ‘hackatones’ para buscar soluciones a problemas del servicio de justicia mediante el uso de datos o visualizaciones. Además, estos espacios pueden servir para el diseño de políticas centrado en las personas.

Otra área donde se puede profundizar y avanzar es la creación y fortalecimiento de áreas dedicadas a la innovación en los poderes judiciales. Si bien ya lo mencioné en un comentario anterior, quería profundizar en este argumento. Por un lado, se puede promover la incorporación de nuevas tecnologías como inteligencia artificial, aprendizaje de máquinas y más, siempre respetando los estándares éticos de protección a los derechos humanos. Existen en América Latina algunas iniciativas muy valiosas sobre uso de inteligencia artificial, como la impulsada por el PNUD en Brasil para mejorar el acceso a la justicia (https://pnudbrasil.exposure.co/inteligencia-artificial-para-fortalecime…) y la implementada por la Corte Constitucional de Colombia para mejorar la eficiencia en la gestión y resolución de los más de 600.000 casos que recibe por año (https://ialab.com.ar/prometeacolombia/). Por otro lado, existen oportunidades para aprender de otras áreas del Estado donde se han creado espacios dedicados a la innovación. Hay buenos ejemplos para imitar en los poderes ejecutivos nacionales (Chile: http://www.lab.gob.cl) y en los gobiernos locales de  muchas ciudades de América Latina (Quito: http://linq.quito.gob.ec, Santa Fé: https://www.santafe.gob.ar/ms/gobiernoabierto/colaboracion/santalab/, Nariño: http://labcapital.veeduriadistrital.gov.co/CISNA).

Si fuera posible, me interesaría conocer experiencias de innovación y de justicia abierta de otras regiones.

¡Muchas gracias!

Thank you very much Alvaro Herrero   for sharing this interesting experiences on open government and access to justice.

On strengthening capacities in innovation in the judicial powers, UNDP has very interesting experiences on increasing the efficiency of judicial systems by improving electronic case management and monitoring systems in Indonesia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan that will be great if colleagues could share Ainura Bekkoenova 

Also sharing this blog from UNDP Asia A “new possible” for justice after COVID-19: towards digital, open and inclusive courts" that showcase some interesting experiences!

https://www.asia-pacific.undp.org/content/rbap/en/home/blog/2020/a-_new-possible_-for-justice-after-covid19--towards-digital--ope.html

 

Hello everyone and welcome to the third week of our consultations.  I'm delighted to be your moderator this week and I'll be joined by Clement Hamon and Yagiz Oztepe .   A big word of thanks to Lorena MELLADO for her excellent moderation last week and to all participants for great discussions.

This week, I hope we can continue the discussions on the new elements which you would like to see reflected in the Global Programme of the future, including the awareness of the opportunities and risks from digital and other emerging technologies; holding states accountable for maintaining the rule of law and human rights even in circumstances of emergency; and using behavioural insights research to increase the effectiveness of the justice system's response to violence against women and girls.

I hope we can also hear more perspectives from those who have benefitted from - or worked with - the Global Programme in the past, such as justice providers and civil society, with your views on what has worked well and what you would like to see improved going forward.

Looking forward to engaging with you all for another week of inspiring conversations!

Nicholas Booth 

Women throughout the world suffer from violence. They experience physical harm, loss of life, emotional and psychological pain, lost productivity, and much more. Society suffers the economic cost of treating and rehabilitating women survivors of violence, healing emotionally damaged children and families of survivors, the loss of women’s contribution to development, & prosecuting perpetrators. There are also the unquantifiable costs of traumatized individuals & dysfunctional families. While it may be pervasive, violence against women is not inevitable. Both governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders have a central role in reducing violence for the benefit of the whole society. Sexual harassment is a form of psychological and/or physical violence against women currently pervasive in colleges, universities, workplaces & public spaces in Pakistan.

Sexual harassment in Pakistan’s public spaces remains a neglected issue and is looked upon as an expected part of everyday life. The cost of this type of violence has been reflected in serious personal health, social, and economic repercussions as it inadvertently affects lifestyle choices, social capital, and ability of women and girls to continue education or join the work force. Ultimately, in Pakistan, it shrinks economic growth, and eats into public budgets.

This technical-proposal is a result of a new partnership that guided two organization (CIDP) NGO into consensus on using data science and AI artificial intelligence for hammering the sexual harassment issues at universities, colleges, workplaces and public spaces in Pakistan. The purpose of this proposal document is to response CIDP’s request for proposal in order to create a strategy based software platform & mobile app to end sexual harassment in colleges/universities, workplaces and public spaces in Sindh province of Pakistan. This platform goals, objectives, and activities will be consistent with its evidence-based strategy to end sexual harassment. The proposed anti-sexual harassment platform will consist of an executive secretariat, as well as the coordination and programming with similar interest organizations and networks.

Formulating a clear strategy that can be internalized by partners, supporters and networks across the board is imperative, because although violence against women (VAW) is a growing phenomenon in Pakistan, studies have shown that technology powered prevention efforts can be both effective and cost-effective in regional and national scenarios at educational institutions, public/private organizations and at public spaces in Pakistan.

What is street harassment and should it be criminalized?

Street harassment is sexual, gender-based, and bias-motivated harassment that takes place in public spaces like the street, the supermarket, and the bus stop. It’s not about sexual gratification, it’s about power. It constantly reminds historically subordinated groups – women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people – of their vulnerability to being assaulted in public spaces. We believe that we should not criminalize street harassment because criminal law and punishment are disproportionately applied to people of color, low-income individuals, and trans and gender-nonconforming people. It is our role as advocates to steer policymakers away from measures that would increase criminalization that predominantly affects these groups, and toward measures that engage communities in prevention.

What is online harassment?

Online harassment includes a wide range of targeted behaviors including: threats, continued hateful messages, doxing, DDoS attacks, swatting, defamation, and more. Online harassment can target (or come from) a group or individual and often has the expressed purpose of having the individual or group leave the internet, take down their content, or dissuade them from publicly having a point of view. We believe in a free internet where individuals feel safe to connect and speak freely, regardless of their religion, identity, or political ideology.

Sexism, harassment, & discrimination in colleges, universities and workplaces are issues that have been around as long as we remember or since women have been in the workplace. Sexual assault is far too common & often never reported in rural or urban scenarios. The process of reporting can feel isolating or worse, re-traumatizing. Reporting also comes with its own set of personal & professional risks.

When it comes to preventing harassment in the colleges, universities and workplaces in Pakistan, most of the sexual harassment activists and experts we spoke to agreed that most institutions/organizations or sexual harassment reporting-mechanisms fail on two fronts: creating fair environment where employees or students feel comfortable reporting any incidents of sexual harassment or discrimination, & having an effective process to hold the perpetrators accountable. 

People often think that harassment is just an interaction between the harasser and the target. We know that’s not true. So many incidents of harassment as well as the overall culture of violence that it fuels, can be silently perpetuated by people who witness or know about the abuse and do nothing.

 

PROPOSED INNOVATION: FOR ELIMINATING THE FEAR OF REPORTING SEXUAL HARASSMENT. (Supported by UNDP Asia Pacific under N-peace)

Our proposed technology initiative (mobile app) empowers survivors, providing options and allowing disclosure in a way that feels safe. Our unique matching system securely connects victims of the same perpetrator to identify repeat offenders and to get useful information to deal with risk situations on public spaces and/or workplaces.

CIDP DIGITAL SOLUTION OF WOMEN AND GIRLS HARASSMENT REPORTING

The proposed cloud based software and its android and IOS mobile apps will make it easy to report and access information to deal with sexual harassment at universities, schools, colleges, workplaces and public spaces in Pakistan.

Additionally the proposed app features including posting safety tips, marking places to indicate resources like hospitals and police stations and building a community through partnered events, public discussions and robust digital media strategy.

Initially the proposed app would be launched with 1000 sensitized user base in 24 higher secondary girls colleges and 02 universities in Sindh province of Pakistan, and the students, staff and parents would be allowed to access this app and share their experiences, incidents and stories with or without their identity.

At the backend of the software a web-interface based dashboard will show summery of all reported data where authorized users can generate customized reports based on different indicators i.e. geography, incident types, timeline.

The applicant organizations will produce 02 public reports during the proposed period, these periodic reports will include the analysis of crowd sourced data i.e. geo-mapped spots (HarassMaps), showing density of reported SH incidents. Organization/institution based HarassMap profiles. The same reports will be shared through digital and mainstream media followed by public talks with journalists, #Metoo activists and active citizens at open spaces.

The AI powered data analysis reports will help journalists, advocacy organizations, activists, and data scientist to transform crowd sourced citizen data into useful forms of action stories safety guides, and into advocacy material to raise voice against sexual harassment at large.

THE PROPOSED STRATEGY

There are many key players involved in combating sexual harassment in Pakistan, we believe technology is essential to drive a change in culture. Setting a robust strategy can help create the necessary crowd-sourced data platform and offers direction from the onset. This minimizes the overlap of activities, especially when multiple programs and strategies are in action. The strategy is the road map to effective data-secretariat execution of evidence-based priorities. It sets out the projects purpose and solidifies plans on an agreed basis, relates activities and serves as a reference point during implementation, monitoring and evaluation. A written strategy document can be shared with others, discussed and adjusted as the action progresses towards planned outcomes. It identifies the approaches, methods and tools to be used to achieve goals, and is a key element for transparent communication with other stakeholders, and fundraising from institutional donors/supporters.

The proposed software/mobile app would be available on three fronts web/android and Apple store, users can download, sign-up and view reported cases/data with detailed analytics, where citizen gathered /cowed sourced data would be visualized in a user friendly forms i.e. charts, maps, data bars and other visual forms of information sharing.

DIGITAL MEDIA STRATEGY

The both partnering organizations will invest their creative resource in creation of content for policy and media mobilization that will help to raise voices and to create environment for encouraging public talks on sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women in Pakistan. The proposed digital media strategy would help launch of this AI technology based solution, and for sustainable outreach to target audiences. We will engage activists, senior citizens, journalists, active citizens and other stakeholders to speak-up through planned digital media story forms to encourage public discussions on sexual harassment and report sexual violence and join our movement in making public spaces safe for all especially women and girls in Pakistan.

USER FRIENDLY WORKFLOW

GUI Graphic User Interface of this app would be designed with simplicity and minimal design approach, with visually guided user actions, additionally this app would be available in multiple languages and can be translated into more languages.

 

 

TO LOGIN   

Download the app from the Apple Store or Google Play.

 

1. The first time you open the app you’ll need to create an account or login through Facebook or Google account.
2. To create a new account, enter your email address and a strong password with at least 8 characters, one capital letter, and one number or special character.
3. Using the drop-down menus, select your language and your local city/college/university/workplace. If your area/workplace not available in app, click “none in my area.” That will create demand to enable app in your city/institution.
4. You will receive an automated confirmation email once you’ve finished signing up.
5. Login to the app using the email and password you just set.

6. 

    

    

   TO ACCESS OTHERS’ STORIES AND SHOW SUPPORT

    

7. Every time the user logins will be automatically directed to the “Home” page. This will show a map based on user’s GPS location. User can tap on the dots on the map to read other people’s stories. User can also search for stories in a specific location by typing in an address or area in the search bar at the top of the screen.
8. When user click on and read someone’s story, the user can tap “I’ve Got Your Back” to let the person know they’re not alone.

9.  

   

    

   TO SUBMIT YOUR STORY:

10. Click “Take Action” at the bottom of the “Home” page.
11. On the first screen, click either “I Experienced” or “I Witnessed.”
12. Next, user can select as many boxes as he/she want to categorize what happened. User options include verbal abuse, sexual gestures, inappropriate touching, being followed, indecent exposure, and assault, as well as homophobia, transphobia, racism, and other.
13. After selecting the categories, click “Next” at the bottom of the page.
14. At this point, you can choose to use your first name or remain anonymous.
15. On the following screen, user can select where he/she experienced or witnessed harassment. If user’s GPS is on, the app will pull up a map based on user’s location and user can tap his/her location on the map. User can also set location by clicking on “search for address” and typing in the location.
16. Click “Submit.” Now user can choose to share more details about your story and/or attach a photo. If user is located in App-enabled city/area, he/she can choose to share other reported stories with system-connected and state-owned complaint mechanisms portals, software and/or call centers.
17. Click “Finish” to return to the home screen.

18. 

     

    TO VIEW AND SHARE YOUR PERSONAL MAPS:

19. On the “Profile” page user can view all of his/her experiences of harassment on one map.
20. By clicking on a shared story (the green or pink dots) you can re-read it and see who’s got your back.
21. Click on “Share Map” to circulate your personal map of street harassment on social media so that your community can have your back.
22. To logout, scroll to the bottom of the “Profile” page and click “Log Out.”OTHER USEFUL RESOURCES
23. Harassment training, surveys, and anonymous reporting in one solution.

24.  

25. 24/7 bot for reporting
26. Report comments and tracking
27. Two-factor authentication
28. Unlimited reports
29. Anonymous report follow-ups
30. Educational videos
31. Employee verification
32. Compliance with state laws
33. Ability to export all data

34. Connecting Users with Existing Services & Helplines

    The software/App will serve all logged-in users with location based information about resources i.e.

35. Police Station
36. Emergency Hospitals
37. Women protection cell
38. District Bar/Legal Aid
39. Counseling Services
40. Local Government Offices

41.  

    Implementation organization will reach out different services/Departments to build linkages and list their helpline numbers/services within App.

     

42. Local Government/District (District Chairman)
43. College universities authorities (Principal/VC/Director colleges)
44. District bar council (Advocates)
45. Women Police station (SHO)
46. Women Protection Cell (Director)
47. Health department (doctors)
48. NGOs working on GBV (Coordinators)

49.  

50. USER INTERFACE LANGUAGE(S)

    The Default user interface language would be in English, and app will be offering in-App translated user experience in Sindhi, Urdu and other local languages depending on targeted area.

    FUTURE ADD-ONs

    Other features and extensions would be developed and incorporated in this app through future partnerships and/or grants based on results and lessons learned during this pilot phase.

51. This app will redesign the training for the #metoo era Sexual harassment training – online (free certification) for the employees of organizations/ college-universities and government organizations.
52. Lightweight surveys will be added to identify where the problems are, and tied in anonymous reporting so organizations/institutions can take action on issues early.
53. API based (system-to-system) connectivity with Government operated complaint systems/software for sexual harassment reporting and/or referral. This project recently started and under experiment facing some challenges. 

Week Two Summary

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion over the last week. 

Colleagues expressed the need of promoting the Rule of law at the regional level in LAC and put forward some suggestions on how UNDP could better engage in supporting by for example launching a learning programme on peace, democracy and rule of law to promote human development.

Interesting experiences on open government and access to justice were shared as well as good examples on the use of innovative approaches in access to justice and strengthening capacities in innovation in the judicial powers.

Thank you once again for your contributions and we encourage you to continue this fruitful discussion, share your experiences and provide your suggestions and feedback.

Dear Nick, 

I think that these examples touch on another issue which is the extent to which we have consciously put anti-discrimination at the heart of our approaches in our work. When thinking about the human rights principles of accountability and the rule of law; meaningful participation and non-discrimination, I would put forward that our strong emphasis on remedy and accountability in our work reinforces the first principle well. We also prioritize specifically meaningful participation esp through our tools and innovations related to inclusion. However, in relation to non-discrimination, my impression is that this is an area that we can at times 'take for granted' as an off-shoot of rule of law and human rights support. Most likely, our work does contribute to non-discriminatory approaches - particularly when you consider strengthening National Human RIghts Institutions and supporting countries to meet their human rights obligations which inherently address discrimination. But as we reflect on the previous phase of the global programme it would be worthwhile considering whether we need a more explicit frame.

Looking at Leave No One Behind approaches can help enormously by identifying marginalized and excluded groups however, using a human rights-based approach including the principle of non-discrimination really requires an unpacking of the forces, root causes and drivers of discrimination that are real structural barriers to people in societies. My sense is that our approaches here are uneven and we need to address this in the next phase. 

Best regards, 

Sarah

Well said Sarah Rattray.   Your comment reminds me of an important point - actually we already have the right frameworks and approaches in our toolkit, but we still don't use them often-enough.   If we really walked the talk, and took human rights-based approaches seriously, then all our theories of change would naturally bring out the patterns of stigma and discrimination which are embedded in cultures, power relations, laws, policies and institutions, and our interventions would address them by design.   And the UNSDG guidance on Leave Noone Behind perfectly illustrates your point - showing us that we can only understand how to reach those left behind if we have properly analysed the root causes of discrimination which are keeping them behind.   But I'm not sure we have been doing that systematically enough - I see too many projects which simply propose to target certain groups without a proper systemic analysis of the complex set of issues that need to be engaged.  How should we make sure we do better going forward?

Let me take this chance to talk about anti-corruption, which is an area deserving of more focus from the Global Programme in future.  All of us who have worked in the field are painfully aware of the linkages between corruption, rule of law, justice and human rights.  Many of us have worked in countries where the rich and powerful can buy impunity and only the poor and powerless languish in jails - often in pre-trial detention that lasts longer than they could receive if convicted.  Corruption fuels conflicts in multiple ways:  as a source of grievance and injustice as leaders strip countries of their national assets and bank them safely offshore, and directly through the organised crime rackets which often fund all parties to conflicts.  In countries like Afghanistan, corruption has been a major factor undermining the legitimacy of the state and enabling the Taliban to continue to maintain its popular foothold in much of the country. We are coming late to the discussion as an international community - the first Security Council briefing on the link between conflict and corruption was held only in 2018 - but it is time to give this more prominence on our agenda.   For sure it is challenging to address, but our efforts to support peaceful, just and inclusive societies are bound to fail unless we meet the challenge, and redouble our intellectual and financial resources to the task.  

Greetings from Geneva! We see now the word ‘security’ added to UNDP’s work next to ‘rule of law’ and ‘human rights’. Security has been regaining space among UNDP’s thematic areas of work; the emphasis is on people-centered security within the rule of law and with a human-rights based approach to achieve justice. This renewed interest derives from a steady increase in demand for technical and financial support from conflict-affected governments over the past years.

Requests have focused on how to address those members of armed groups, whether terrorist designated or not, who surrender, are captured or simply decide to abandon violence. Moreover, solutions for self-defense armed groups or vigilante groups, which often operate closely with security forces, are also sought within the framework of how to best achieve stabilization, including through community security and community policing. More recently, addressing the widespread availability of small arms and ammunition in fragile and conflict-affected countries has made a global comeback, against the backdrop of UNDP’s long-standing regional experience in this area through SEESAC and the EU-ECOWAS Project on Small Arms and Light Weapons.

This demand that has triggered global-level policy developments along the security spectrum from the re-launch of UN standards that serve far beyond the UN system to achieving progress towards the implementation of SDG 16.1 on reducing all forms of violence and other relevant goals and indicators. The most recent examples of these policy and inter-agency coordination developments are:

• The revamping of the ISACS into Modular Small Arms Compendium Implementation (MOSAIC) along with revitalization of UN Coordinating Action on Small Arms (CASA), following the 2018 Agenda for Disarmament, along with new opportunities generated with the creation of the funding window Saving Lives Entity (SALIENT).
   
• Review of the Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards (IDDRS) with the adoption of a revised UN Approach to DDR launched by the UNDP Administrator and partners  in Inter-Agency Working Group (IAWG), now applicable well beyond post-conflict situations across the peace continuum and in mission as well as non-mission settings.

These areas make up the work of the Global Programme under the banner of ‘community security’, spearheaded by the extensive experience of the LAC region on Citizen Security. It would be opportune to consider articulating all these areas under people-centered security, supporting strategic results at regional, national and local levels based on joint security assessments undertaken with our partners with the perspective of achieving equal justice for all. Making this work in mission settings, during transitions, as well as in non-mission settings is key, and the means to delivering on UNDP’s SDG integrator role.

Week Three Summary

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion over the last week. 

We learned of an interesting new initiative harnessing the power of technology to facilitate reporting of violence against women in Pakistan,  and a regional review of justice in the Caribbean.

We were challenged to focus more both on anti-discrimination and on anti-corruption in our work.

Thank you once again for your contributions and we encourage you to continue to contribute energetically during this last week of discussions, share your experiences and provide your suggestions and feedback.

Welcome to our final week of Global Online Consultation!

I will be moderating this group during this week along with Glaucia Boyer. Thanks Nicholas Booth, Clement Hamon  and Yagiz Oztepe for an excellent moderation.Thanks to all participants for the very interesting discussions.

Add your voice and Join us. Your contributions will be the inputs for building a UNDP offering in the areas of Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights.

COVID-19 is a health problem. And as such, the response to the pandemic has centered around this premise. In preparation and recovery, it has been understood that COVID-19 is also a development problem. As such, the triangular approach of attention to COVID-19 seeks to aim at governments and societies having the capacity to prepare, respond and recover.

As UNDP we have a comparative advantage and that the challenge is to understand that: “We need to pursue a new social compact. We must rethink how we approach challenges with novel policies, strategies, and solutions. A new social compact requires leadership and acceptance for change."

Recovery is about effective governance and requires a strong component of institutional transformation to be effective, based on interaction with citizens, managed transparently and in accordance with the rule of law.

The next phase of UNDP’s COVID-19 crisis response is designed to help decision-makers look beyond recovery, towards 2030, making choices and managing complexity and uncertainty in four main areas: governance, social protection, green economy, and digital disruption. Beyond Recovery :Towards2030.  

During this week, let us continue to seek in experiences the key to our transformation and adaptation to new challenges. Remember that you can continue any of the conversations already started, answer the questions we leave in the introduction or make any related comments. You can make your contributions in the language of your choice.

Share  your experiences, links to useful articles and tools, good experiences and ideas!

 

Desde PNUD Perú venimos implementando una iniciativa multidimensional y multiactor que busca acelerar la respuesta temprana frente a la violencia basada en género en tiempos de aislamiento social, producto de la emergencia sanitaria desatada por la pandemia. Como parte de las acciones de esta iniciativa lanzamos Mascarilla Violeta, una campaña simbólica y de movilización social que tiene como objetivo visibilizar otra pandemia: la violencia contra las mujeres, la cual no ha cesado durante esta emergencia sanitaria y por el contrario, como sabemos, se ha visto agudizada.

Activistas, organizaciones feministas, aliadas y aliados del sector privado y del gobierno, y ciudadanía en general se han sumado a la campaña. El 4 de junio, durante una de las conferencias de prensa del gobierno, la ministra Maria Antonieta Alva, responsable de la cartera de Economía y Finanzas del Perú vistió la mascarilla violeta, junto a los entonces responsables de las carteras de la Producción y Salud, enviando el mensaje a millones de peruanas y peruanos que veían la transmisión en vivo desde sus hogares.

Como parte de una segunda fase de la campaña, las mascarillas violetas están siendo adquiridas de manera solidaria a beneficio de dos albergues temporales para mujeres de la Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima, gracias a una alianza entre PNUD y la empresa de supermercados Cencosud. 

UNDP's Being LGBTI in Asia made momentous advancement in providing visibility to the plight of LGBTIQ people in Asia. 
I hope UNDP continues to be LGBTIQ inclusive to all it's programs and projects to ensure that every people, regardless of one's sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) are afforded the same opportunity for partnership, for funding, for inclusion.

Most of the humanitarian work especially during this time of pandemic excludes LGBTIQ people. 
Please refer to OutRight's research - https://outrightinternational.org/content/vulnerability-amplified-impact-covid-19-pandemic-lgbtiq-people

and read the experiences of LGBTIQ and gender non-conforming people during the pandemic. 
 

The specific challenges faced by LGBTIQ people identified in OutRight's new report are:

• The devastation of livelihoods – rising food and shelter insecurity resulting from job loss, and economic fall out as a result of over-representation of LGBTIQ people in the informal sector and broad employment discrimination;

• Disruptions in accessing health care, including crucial HIV medication and gender-affirming treatments, and reluctance to seek health care due to discrimination, stigma, and refusal of services experienced by LGBTIQ people even outside a pandemic;

• Elevated risk of domestic and family violence – the most prevalent form of violence faced by LGBTIQ people on a day-to-day basis is heightened in circumstances of lockdowns, curfews and lack of access to support services and community resources;

• Social isolation and increased anxiety which is further heightened by being cut off from chosen families and the LGBTIQ community;

• Scapegoating, societal discrimination and stigma – there is an unfortunate history of LGBTIQ people being blamed for emergency situations, leading to further stigmatization, marginalization, violence, and danger;

• Abuse of state power – repression, exclusion, and criminalization are all on the rise in countries prone to authoritarianism and regressive gender ideologies, with some states using the emergency situation to clamp down specifically on LGBTIQ people;

• Concerns about organizational survival – amplifying the effects even further are the impacts on LGBTIQ community organizations and spaces, which are a lifeline to countless LGBTIQ people. Organizations now face an uncertain future with funding cuts, lockdowns, and having to shift activities online while calls for direct, practical support are on the rise.

Recommendations 

For Governments at All Levels

• Consult LGBTIQ communities in all planning and implementation of national pandemic control strategies.

• Address food shortages urgently.

• Resolve delays and disruptions in access to health care for people living with HIV, transgender people, intersex people, and others - including LGBTIQ people - with long-term health and wellness needs.

• Ensure access to justice for all those enduring family or domestic violence.

• Ensure law enforcement agencies provide SOGIESC inclusive, appropriate, and sensitive services.

• Condemn anti-LGBTIQ hate speech and scapegoating.

• Prioritize decriminalization and anti-discrimination provisions in law and policy.

For All Donors

• Be flexible, stay committed, and increase support, including general operating support and poverty alleviation funds.

• Ask what communities need and support their most immediate priorities.

• Contribute to and support emergency relief funds at the local, national, regional, and global levels, ensuring that they are inclusive of LGBTIQ communities.

• When funding large humanitarian relief organizations, hold them accountable for competently addressing LGBTIQ needs and mandate non-discrimination based on SOGIESC as a pre-requisite for access to humanitarian funding.

For UN Agencies, Humanitarian Relief Organizations, NGOs, and PrivateSector Entities Involved in Pandemic Response

• Ensure inclusive emergency relief health services by engaging LGBTIQ communities, understanding their needs, forging partnerships, and tailoring programming to LGBTIQ realities.

• Develop safe, respectful, sensitive, and secure approaches to ensuring access to relief commodities and services.

• Collaborate with LGBTIQ communities to develop tailored information that addresses infection control, availability of safe health services and safe spaces, and availability of social support.

• Include LGBTIQ issues when describing the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Document lessons learned from inclusive emergency relief and pandemic control efforts.

• Develop global guidance on ensuring an inclusive response to pandemics and other health emergencies.

Thanks Ging Cristobal for the important reminder of the impact of the pandemic on LGBTIQ communities.   As Sarah Rattray reminded us last week, we need to keep issues of stigma and discrimination at the front and centre of our programming on human rights and justice.   UNDP's Being LGBTI in Asia and the Pacific programme has generated important evidence on the multiple ways in which LGBTIQ communities are left behind - from legal discrimination on the basis of gender identity, through to violence, education, health care, livelihoods and in humanitarian situations, and the Global Programme on rule of law and human rights should be addressing this evidence in our programming.   

The Being LGBTI in Asia programme also pioneered support to NHRIs in our region to better protect and promote the human rights of LGBTIQ people, through our partnership with the Asia-Pacific Forum of NHRIs, which resulted in a great handbook for NHRIs, the development of a blended learning programme for NHRIs and support to NHRIs across the region to undertake projects together with LGBTIQ community organisations.    It would be great to introduce these successful knowledge products and methodologies to NHRIs in other regions during the next phase of the Global Programme and the Tri-partite Partnership on support to NHRIs which is closely associated with it. 

Thanks @Melissa Patino and @Ging Cristobal to shared those experiences and introduced a very interesting entry point of our work. Also, Nicholas Booth to contributed with the Being LGTBI initiative from Asia.  Violence is a major barrier toKP members’ access toHIV-related services,and itmust be addressed to improve their HIV-related outcomes and overall well-being. Violence faced by FSWs, MSM, and transgender women demands attention from those with a public commitment to gender equality and human rights as well as those concerned with health inequities such as HIV burden. Broadening our understanding of gender can also help build coalitions amonggroups working to increase gender equality;improve human rights;and address HIV prevention, care, and treatment becausethese groups oftenshare a common concern about violence. https://www.fhi360.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/resource-lin…;

Nicholas shows the work with NHRIs and Melissa, the key rol of an integrated institutional net at national and local level in the design, implementation and evaluation of public policy to improve quality response for a key population. How can we build better beyond the pandemic crisis? How can we support institutional capacities to improve inclusion and no discrimination? How can build reparation strategies and  acknowledging the resilient lives of women and LGTBI+?

 

 

Let me also share you our response in relation to addressing SGBV and domestic violence. UNDP Nepal has been working on this issue through rule of law previously and access to justice project currently. We have been using multi-faceted approach in this regard.

We work with targeted groups the most vulnerable and also with the like minded institutions working in dealing with this issue at the community level. Equally the engagement with courts, lawyers and oversight bodies like the National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). With the court, we worked in establishing fast track court system by introducing continuous hearing and introducing in camera hearing. With the lawyers for legal aid services to the need and vulnerable women and survivors of domestic violence and GBV. While talking about legal services, this is the first time that UNDP Nepal has been able to endorse the comprehensive approach in terms of definition of legal aid services and structure. We have supported the government to introduce integrated legal aid which defined legal aid in an inclusive manner. It entails legal representation to the counselling, legal information, mediation and primary support to rescue and rehabilitation through referral services.  The referral system has been instrumental in terms of providing immediate support to the survivors of SGBV.

Through the judicial committee (it's the mechanism being run by the local government), UNDP has been working on informal sector of justice to settle the issues regarding domestic violence against women. The necessary capacity of such bodies has  been important avenue to claim the rights for women and other marginalized communities.

At the policy level, law reform/implementation is one more focused areas for us. We provide support to regularly review the implementation of the laws in relation to this issue and support on the implementation by provide technical support in developing necessary rules, regulations and more importantly to conducting orientation to the implementing authorities and building awareness of the poor and vulnerable. 

Finally we have affirmative law educating targettting women and vulnerable. Idea is to create a groups of pro bono legal aid lawyers in response to the issues of GBVP. We provide them full support for law education and run the internship programme to connect them with legal practitioners and community.

 

The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) as long standing partner of UNDP received direct support from the UNDP RoL, Security and HR Global Programme to build its capacity and the capacity of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), with a particular focus on enhancing the NHRIs' capacity to accelerate implementation and achievement of the SDGs.

In reply to the guiding question 2 above, I can say that UNDP support has been crucial at increasing NHRIs' participation and capacity to influence global processes with a view of impacting at national level.

The synergy between the global support to GANHRI and the support UNDP is also providing at national level to NHRIs contributed to reinforce the role of NHRIs in contributing to enlarging civic space and guide states to follow a human rights based approach to SDGs.

GANHRI is very satisfied with the support  received. The flexible approach and the guidance provided by the UNDP team has been fundamental in times of important institutional changes and has significantly contributed to increase GANHRI's and NHRIs' capacity to engage, become visible and influence relevant international human rights processes.

 

Thank you for highlighting the inseparable and indivisible link between human rights and Agenda 2030. 90% of the goals established in the Agenda are human rights commitments assumed by the countries. In addition, political and financial investment in SDG 16+ needs to be amplified to accelerate progress on SDG 16+ and to achieve the whole of Agenda 2030. Due to the political sensitivities and cross-cutting nature of SDG 16, specially in terms of human rights, Ileana Bello  your comment is very important to highlight the way that we can be strong together thought strategic Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI). Sarah Rattray and Livio Sarandrea and Nicholas Booth also can contributes to  this conversation! Experiences, tools and specially innovative pathways to suppot process to improve more knowldge and capacities for NHRIs and civil society and support global, regional and national nets.

Hello again colleagues. Juliet Solomon from Panama Hub here. I would be interested in experiences in the mitigation of risk on Data and Privacy issues, particularly in digitalization processes of police data. And project or office faced a similar issue? What mitigation and security process can be put in place?

Thanks very much in advance.

DCAF’s International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT) is partnering with UNDP to build a coherent and extensive evidence base for UNDP’s Global Programme through a series of country-level evaluations. Since the beginning of the partnership, the UNDP interventions in Guinea Bissau, Jordan, CAR and Colombia were evaluated.

 

1.       Cross cutting findings from the evaluation conducted.

 

All evaluations highlighted, in quite similar terms, the UNDP reputation for being responsive to the countries’ needs and acting as an honest broker with a significant political credibility with national partners. In Jordan for example, UNDP was described as the mediator, holding a critical independent and neutral role in the discussions around legislative reforms. Several respondents were convinced that critical legislations would not have made it through the process without the UNDP support. In Colombia, interlocutors constantly emphasized the UNDP’s added value as an intermediate and connector, with its territorial reach allowing national institutions to get access to vulnerable groups which have historically been disconnected from State services. The evaluation also observed how UNDP used its added value as a trusted interlocutor to build an environment of collaboration.

This strategic positioning is underpinned by a clear adaptive approach to implementation. All evaluated projects and programs capture the need for its security and justice intervention to work using an adaptable, learning modality, both in terms of seizing opportunities to support reform processes when they occurred, and to adapt to changes in context, funding and/or its scope. In Guinea Bissau, Jordan or Colombia, the evaluation team were impressed by the extent to which the project and program maintained awareness of political processes around adoption of key reforms, and then adapted and modified activities using multiple lines of action to support positive impacts. For example, the Strategy for Peace designed by UNDP in Colombia to bridge the gap between the new reality after the Peace Agreements and the CPD proved to be a solid contribution towards relevance and consistency, while providing a necessary framework for activities aimed at supporting the immediate implementation of the Peace Agreements.

However, this adaptive approach has not been formally documented in any of the context evaluated and never appears to have been developed through the application of a clear Theory of Change from a Country Programme perspective. While a ToC could be reconstructed coherently, it was not actively used by the programme to guide decision making, identify the logic of the programme contributions, articulate the benefits to such decisions, and show how some activities were achieving positive effects on related (but not predicted) lines of impact.  This consistent finding entails four main consequences:

 

1.       The absence of a strategic framework to report against can lead to a lack of understanding of all contributory outputs to the outcome.

This in turn impacts the UNDP learning and knowledge management system and affects the UNDP capacity to use knowledge in planning and programming, to inform the strategic decision-making and especially when it comes to replication and upscaling or to inform the partnership strategy.

In some instance, in spite of outcome-level reporting requirements, the M&E system itself is focused more on outputs and seems limited when generating learning. In other instance a robust monitoring framework, intended to be a living tool constantly updated and meant to inform project decisions during implementation, was simply not used to this effect. Lessons were drawn from day-to-day implementation in a direct and ad-hoc basis.

Better monitoring could have demonstrated projects outcomes clearly, potentially meeting the requirements of the Global Programme oversight requests. Focusing monitoring efforts at the outcome level would align the project and programs evaluated with the needs of UNDP strategic outcome reporting, where the intricacies of technical inputs and outputs have little relevance to demonstrating global achievements. The most direct option for the Global Programme to address the monitoring issues would be to prioritise supporting good practices in programme management across the whole programme cycle. There are indications that the Global Programme currently seems to be successful at supporting the assessment and design stages. The gap comes in supporting country projects during implementation, where the Global Programme could do more to support the successful implementation of the strong monitoring frameworks described in the project design.

 

2.      The absence of clearly defined theories of change can lead to a limited appreciation of the efforts of other potentially complimentary rule of law projects.

The lack of integration of the projects  probably contributes to the lack of project level outcome monitoring, as each project is operating in a silo and focused only on its own outputs. With a limited understanding of the bigger picture it is obviously difficult to determine and collect sensible outcomes monitoring indicators at the project level. For instance, in CAR better alignment and information sharing between the joint project supporting the Special Criminal Court project and those aimed at improving the ‘ordinary’ justice system would have enabled an understanding of the impact of the Special Courts on the normal courts. Lacking such an integrated approach, UNDP CAR is unable to demonstrate what effect, if any, has occurred.

In a similar vein, in Colombia there was limited evidence available to suggest that individual projects were sharing information and aligning efforts to maximise impact within a country programme. While countries did have a defined strategic framework (and in the case of Colombia, with direct Global Programme support to the development of an integrated RoL programme), this did not seem to result in better integration or alignment of effort across rule of law projects.

 

3.      As a  result of the lack of monitoring and limited understanding of roles, the Global Programme is missing an opportunity to highlight some of the innovative and good work that is being achieved by country projects.

Examples of innovation are numerous.

The evaluation team were impressed by the Community Cohesion Grants Mechanism set up in Jordan, where a large number of small projects are selected and supported, and then appropriately outcomes based monitoring enables identification of the most successful ones for continued support. Such mechanism holds the potential to demonstrate UNDP application of an “experimental” or learning approach to community security development. In the Jordanian context, where UNDP engagement in the security and justice domain is new, this seems to be the type of approach that should be adopted to finding the right solutions to complex security and justice issues.  However, developing an evidence base to enable this depends on UNDP staff managing it as an experimental approach. This potential does not appear to be well understood at this current stage by the UNDP system, which risks meaning that this opportunity to manage and collect evidence will not be seized. UNDP has a real opportunity through its Global Programme system to coordinate knowledge development across its programmes on what works in the effective reform of security and justice systems. This is an area where the global community is still struggling to build an evidence base, and the Global Programme could enhance its added value by early identification of such examples, by promoting such approaches generally in its projects, and by ensuring that these projects have the high quality monitoring they need in order to demonstrate what aspects were successful and should be replicated.

 

4.     The absence of ongoing and timely monitoring of benchmarks translates into a lack of evidence base to transit from direct implementation to National implementation.

All projects and programs evaluated operate under a Direct Implementation modality. In all instances, DIM appeared to be the adequate modality due to the context- transition to peace and post-conflict- and the necessity to respond in an agile way to the urgent request in complex territories and with a low institutional capacity. Projects evaluated however do not justify why they cannot be nationally executed, do not include capacity-development measures and a time frame for transitioning to national implementation modalities or scaling.

UNDP’s reliance on the direct implementation modality and on project implementation units can limit the long-term sustainability of its programs and the development of the Country’s own institutional capacity to implement and scale up successful programs. Moreover, in some contexts such as Colombia, the fact that a significant amount of the funds being implemented does come from the national government budget makes UNDP not only an implementing agency of the official development aid but also a ‘contractor’ of the GoC. This sets limits to the UNDP’s efficiency in terms of enabling a relationship of trust between government and civil society when UNDP could be regarded as a service provider and not necessarily as a bridge to link the Government with the civil society.

The monitoring of exit strategy benchmarks should be integrated into the overall program’s monitoring and evaluation plan to prevent duplication of monitoring efforts and maximize use of existing data. While ‘process indicators’ are helpful to gauge the programme or beneficiary’s progress along a developed continuum, ‘result indicators may help to graduate communities or to assess readiness to phase out programs.

 

2.       Options for the Global programme

 

All the evaluations conducted highlight the importance of the Global Programme in supporting and encouraging UNDP country level involvement in activities that are vital for longer term development, but may not be current critical priorities. In Jordan, the Global Programme is to be commended for supporting the push for access to justice, and assisting the Country Office in developing and implementing a programme beyond the focus on the immediacy of the humanitarian crisis. Similarly in Colombia, the Global Programme support was instrumental to mobilise the resources needed to foster functional complementarities for conflict resolution and conciliation in rural areas. The GP thus contributed to fill the gap identified in the Local Justice Systems, where the rural action was limited to the organization of mobile Access to Justice journeys. In addition, thanks to the GP support, a Program Officer- Rule of Law could be recruited to oversee the RoL portfolio and reinforce coordination between clusters. This proved to be a sensible method of encouraging an integrated cross-cluster and inter- agency approach to RoL for a more consolidated, strategic and impactful support to Rule of Law in Colombia.

The value added of the Global Programme was also evident in CAR where the “group of Friends of the Central African Republic” in New York could not have been established without the support of the Global Programme under the aegis of the GFP. This model of political engagement in New York, based on a genuine advocacy and advisory strategy vis-à-vis States interested in supporting CAR and the Special Criminal Court is unique and has proved extremely useful, particularly in terms of recruiting international magistrates. The support provided for resource mobilization also proved extremely important for the implementation of the project.

Building on this important strategic support provided, the Global Programme could support and promote systematic outcomes reporting, along with some support to help project level teams do this in practice. The aim of the changes required to support strategic monitoring involve an increased focus on the importance of collecting outcome data while operating country programmes in resource constrained situations.

The Global Programme’s strategic monitoring capacity is dependent on the strength of the country project monitoring systems. The quality of rule of law data is weak in most of the countries supported by the Global Programme, which is a problem for demonstrating issues around the scale of justice problems and the problematic effect of limited rule of law on a range of country outcomes. In most countries it would be appropriate for UNDP to invest in projects aimed at collecting rule of law data, which could then be used to demonstrate higher level impacts on the delivery of justice to the community – and not just with regard to improvements linked to UNDP programmes. However the focus on country level solutions for better outcome data, while sensible under the constraints the Global Programme works within, is also likely to continue to be influenced by the factors that currently push country programme monitoring into a input/output dominated system. Project level personnel often believe that input/output reporting will satisfy their key reporting requirements, and currently they are correct.

 

 

 

Thanks Juliet Solomon for your question (interesting entry point) and also Jean-Philippe Kot for share the experience from DCAF’s International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT) and UNDP. Can find UNDP evaluations and reviews by region and by country at the following link erc.undp.org. And I want to highlight some key contributions for the Global Programme: (i) the importance of the Global Programme in supporting and encouraging UNDP country level involvement in activities that are vital for longer term development, (ii) the model of political engagement in New York, based on a advocacy and advisory strategy vis-à-vis States interested in supporting an iniatitive, (iii) the method of encouraging an integrated cross-cluster and inter- agency approach to RoL for a more consolidated, strategic and impactful support to Rule of Law, for example Colombia, (iv) the support for resource mobilization, (v) and invest in projects aimed at collecting rule of law data, which could then be used to demonstrate higher level impacts on the delivery of justice to the community – and not just with regard to improvements linked to UNDP programmes.

 

Hi I am Claudia de Saravia, Programme Officer, Rule of Law and Peace Construction.

What is UNDP doing well in Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights?

The contribution of UNDP Guatemala in the area of ​​rule of law and justice has been significant. Important changes at institutional level have been reached in institutions such as the Public Prosecutor Office. UNDP has played an important role in creating and supporting the technical capacities of this institution at the central and regional levels. Through the interconnection of information systems, criminal investigation has been improved and now the institution is more efficient in managing cases as a phenomenon not separate. The modernization of the criminal investigation and the interconnections within the systems  had result in a reduction of 42 days average for the diligence of cases, which has been an achievement that the institution highlighted as a significant advance towards improving institutional effectiveness.

The UNDP experience in Guatemala, is an opportunity to continue strengthening justice and security institutions in the collection, management and analysis of data in a context that will be seriously impacted by the effects of COVID-19 and the response will require interventions that promotes the efficient and effective use of resources.

Week Four Summary

Weekly session completed!

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion over the last week.

This discussion room was a space for you to share your feedback on UNDP’s work in the area of Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights. We learned of an interesting initiative harnessing the power of technology to facilitate reporting of violence against women, human rights and inclusion, and examples of strategic partnerships. Thank you for highlighting the inseparable and indivisible link between human rights and Agenda 2030. 90% of the goals established in the Agenda are human rights commitments assumed by the countries.

Experiences, tools and innovative pathways to support process to improve more knowledge and capacities for NHRIs and civil society and support global, regional and national nets *Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI).

We were challenged to focus more both on anti-discrimination and inclusion. We  learned of Being LGBTI in the Caribbean and UNDP's Being LGBTI in Asia.

We're still receiving messages and comments loaded with experience and leassons learned.  We have decided to extend the consultation by another week through 31 July 2020!!

Muchas Gracias!

Sigamos sumando nuestras voces a la conversación!

 

 

Hello everyone! Here I am sharing a few reflections from UNDP Colombia about our work and challenges on Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights (ROLSHR). I apologize for the length of this post, but I am here compiling the contributions from about a dozen of colleagues responding to the different guiding questions (!)

1. Current work on Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights? (Future trends and challenges are discussed in Room III of this global discussion)

Access to justice

Access to justice at the local level is critical for peacebuilding and sustainable development. With the Ministriy of Justice, we have promoted Local Justice Systems as critical mechanisms to foster joint collaboration between formal and nonformal justice (state and civil society) actors at the local level. Local Justice Systems promote the articulation and coordination of the national, regional and local supply of justice - and in general of the institutional framework - by applying a systemic approach and the development of collaborative practices between state and social actors. They often include common characterization of conflicts, joint prioritization, elaboration of articulated response roadmaps, and execution of joint response activities in rural areas (e.g. multi-actor access-to-justice journeys). UNDP has supported the setting up and institutionalization of 13 Local Justice Systems; 45 mobile workshops in rural areas serving around 9,800 thousand people; over 500 justice operators trained; and 33 roadmaps for dealing with conflicts through mediation, conciliation or remission to the ordinary justice system.

In addition, through the experimental ComunPaz initiative UNDP promoted functional and complementary relationships between citizens, police authorities, and the coexistence and conciliation commissions –CCC- of the Community Action Boards (JAC by its initials in Spanish), to deal peacefully with reconcilable community conflicts in rural Colombia (populated centers). This initiative was structured as a Randomized Control Trial in partnership with the National Planning Department, CERAC, Brown University, Universidad de los Andes, and municipal actors. The RCT covered a sample of 150 towns, out of which 72 were treatment and the remainder control areas, in 3 departments (Antioquia, Meta, and Valle del Cauca). Results of the RCT are being used for new programming in an upcoming prokect on "Justice models for local and rural areas". 

DDR

Historically in Colombia DDR processes with guerrillas and other armed groups have been led by the National Government, while the international community has consistently played a supportive role. As a consolidated middle-income country, DDR in Colombia is characterized by strong national institutional leadership at the political, operational and financial levels. The international community has a key role in political incidence and co-financing, even though most funds are allocated by the Colombian government. Another critical role played by international actors such as UNDP in partnership with donor countries is the catalytic assistance to put into place actions and operations in a faster and effective way, thus supporting a quality rapid response and territorial outreach to the Colombian Government.

The current DDR process in Colombia stems from the Peace Agreement signed between the National Government and FARC-EP. The guerrilla demobilization was coordinated under a tripartite mechanism composed by both parties and the UN Verification Mission, which enabled a phased, solemn and closely coordinated disarmament process certified by the UN and held without major incidents. In the phases of disarmament and demobilization the UN had a verification role through its political Mission.

UNDP alongside international community has been strongly active in assisting technically and operationally the reintegration phase of FARC former combatants, especially regarding the social and economic aspects, focused on productive opportunities, gender and youth attention, and community engagement. Also, comprehensive technical support is being given to tackle the integrality of the Peace Agreement by UNDP, such as the structural development reforms expected to be implemented in the zones most affected by the armed conflict, as well as the Integral System for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition. 

Transitional justice and victims’ rights

Born out of the Peace Accords between the Government and FARC, the Integral System of Truth Justice Reparation and Non-Repetition is a centerpiece in the pursuit of sustainable peace and justice. A major contribution by UNDP, with MPTF funds, was the early setting up (operational readiness and bases for their strategic plans) of the three components of the system before they were officially institutionalized as autonomous state entities: The Truth Commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, and the Search for Missing Persons Unit.

At present, UNDP supports the individual and collective judicial representation of victims in all macro-cases opened by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which includes cases concerning kidnappings, forced recruitment of child soldiers, extrajudicial killings, and other grave human rights violations. Assistance to Truth Commission has focused on instititional strengthening (in communications, field presence, advocacy), social dialogue with emphasis on participation of victims in hearings, and support to specific research and documentation of emblematic cases. With the Search for Missing Persons Unit, technical assistance has focused on supporting governance schemes that allow victims to be involved in the identification and search process, and facilitating the territorial deployment of the Unit to provide counselling to and participation of victims.

UNDP has also continuously supported the institutions that operate after the Victims and Land Restitution Law issued in 2011. In particular, UNDP has been supporting Collective Reparation Program led by the Victims Unit, conceived as a tool of access to rights, restoration of trust in institutions and society, and rebuilding of conditions after the collective harm inflicted during the conflict. Collective reparation takes form through a variety of reparation measures in the areas of education, psychosocial care, economic empowerment and livelihoods, community infrastructure, and sport and culture programmes. All the above is thought and mainstreamed from a gender perspective. To date, the rights to reparation of over 92,000 victims of the armed conflict have been satisfied through collective projects implemented together with 138 communities (collective subjects). UNDP has also supported the Observatory of Memory and Conflict of the National Center of Historical Memory, which transferred to the Integral System of transitional justice the most complete database on the armed conflict in Colombia, documenting about 350,000 cases of serious violations to human rights and IHL from 1958 to 2018.

Beyond institutional support, UNDP works closely with CSOs and victims’ organizations empowerment and participation, enabling dialogue between state and civil society. An example is the work with a network of organizations against disappearance that provided substantive reports to the Unit for Search of Missing Persons (with documented cases and clues for defining regional search plans), and empowered victims with technical knowledge, and psychosocial and legal tools for the enforceability of their rights.

Strengthening the Ombudsman's office

UNDP supported the strengthening of the Early Warning System of the Ombudsman Office, a critical mechanism for motivating response against organizations and criminal behavior that endanger the implementation of the peace agreement. This strengthening is also focused on the promotion and protection of the human rights of the communities within the framework of the implementation of the agreement.

Key limitations and challenges

Major challenges in our work can be synthesized in two areas: (i) better M&E and active feeding of lessons learned back into programming, and (ii) enhanced systematization efforts, which are precarious in our case despite the vast amount of projects and initiatives conducted in Colombia. In both areas we believe that UNDP Colombia could benefit enormously from the ROLSHR Global Programme support.

 

2. Global Programme and CB support on ROLSHR

UNDP Colombia has received support from the Global Programme, both in terms of technical support by the CB global and regional teams as well as seed programmatic funding. The CB is certainly a key partner in our work, and the GP funding has been critical to (i) adopt an integrated rule of law and HHRR approach in Colombia, connecting the portfolio on access to justice, citizen security, transitional justice and human rights, (ii) mobilize partnerships and resources on the ground from a multiplicity of sources, and (iii) undertake critical and underfunded initiatives that trigger larger projects.

A key lesson learned of the support provided by the Global Programme is that flexibility and adaptation to local needs enables greater impact than a detailed planification and allocation of resources. It is not the quantity of funds, but rather the possibility to use them strategically in the framework of a larger ROLSHR portfolio in each Country Office. For that to happen, GP support to UNDP Country programmes may not necessarily translate in comprehensive or self-contained projects, but rather they should fill the gaps in current portfolios or enable pushing forward innovative and risk-taking ROLSHR initiatives. In a way, GP support is most impactful when it the missing piece of a large puzzle, rather than a small puzzle itself.

An area where the Global Programme could focus in the future is horizontal cooperation, to support the operationalization of the Global Practice Network. Beyond the global-regional-country structure (which already helps in this endeavor), CO-CO horizontal cooperation and cross-fertilization across regions could be improved: we should better capitalize on our global reach which is a crucial UNDP comparative advantage.

 

3. Humanitarian-development-peace nexus and ROLSHR

UNDP has been active in supporting the NEXUS approach in Colombia through several mechanisms, such as planning and analysis in the logic of New Ways of Working in coordination with other UN Agencies, international and national organizations. This approach is materialized in the Early Recovery (that seeks sustainable solution strategies that give sustainability to the humanitarian response within the framework of the Humanitarian Country Teams. For instance, in response to COVID-19, where UNDP has been leading the nexus strategy, within the framework of a humanitarian response, the focus has been on health emergency care, but positioning the socioeconomic reactivation, social cohesion and attention to the humanitarian consequences. We have also supported the coordination at the local level through co-leadership arrangements in Local Coordination Teams (UN teams at field level that coordinate humanitarian and peace & development actions, with eventual participation of government, INGOs and CSOs). Under the nexus approach, UNDP and FAO have coordinated several projects such as the Trust and Territorial Peace Project (PBF, 2018-2020). Several agencies participated in this project (UN Women, WFP, UNHCR, UNICEF and Social Ministry) seeking to generate early stabilization, reconciiliation and access to justice strategies in the host communities of ex-combatant populations in 7 different municipalities.

4. Work with the UN System

In Colombia, the ROLSHR team works in close collaboration with other UN Agencies and the Resident Coordinator’s Office. The MPTF for Sustaining Peace has been critical for the promotion of that work. In the ROLSHR area we have joint programmes with OHCHR, IOM, UNHCR, UN-WOMEN and UNODC, and we coordinate closely with the UN Verification Mission on reintegration and security guarantees. Looking ahead, it is important to bear in mind that the actual UN configurations in each country differ, and areas of expertise may not be the same.  A possible way of strengthening UN partnerships could be conducting joint global-level resource mobilization efforts with subsequent joint implementation at the country-office level, paying special attention to overcoming possible operational/administrative barriers to joint programming.

Dear all,

I have read with interest the exchanges in this discussion room and the examples of rule of law initiatives supported by the UNDP Programme on Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights. From OROLSI’s viewpoint, the Programme has not only been a remarkable tool to channel UNDP expertise and resources to countries in need, but also serves as a driver of enhanced cooperation across the UN system.

Through the Global Focal Point for the Rule of Law (GFP), a UN system platform co-chaired by OROLSI and UNDP, GFP partners have strengthened system-wide cooperation to United Nations peace operations and other conflict-affected settings from CAR to DRC, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, and many more. This has resulted in greater impact and better utilization of resources.

At-risk groups and communities in volatile contexts are benefiting from GFP strategic partnerships and support at the country level (Somalia, Liberia and DRC). Furthermore, accountability for human rights violations and survivors’ access to justice has been strengthened such as in CAR and DRC. In times of increased global instability, the GFP delivers efficient and well-coordinated rule of law support to UN field presences and host-States in accordance with human rights standards and the principles of the women, peace and security agenda.

In 2020, the GFP facilitated the establishment of the first joint rule of law programme in South Sudan that will focus on the prevention of conflict-related sexual violence and committed USD 300,000 towards its implementation. This is a joint venture by UNDP and UNMISS (Rule of Law, Human Rights Division) in partnership with OHCHR and the Team of Experts.

In addition, as the COVID-19 pandemic poses unique threats to rule of law institutions, the GFP is providing support to national rule of law authorities including police, justice and corrections. It has also enabled joint webinars and strategic information sharing among United Nations partners.

Lastly, the importance of sustained, predicable funding to ensure technical expertise is deployed in a timely manner, whether the contribution is provided in-country or remotely from Headquarters, could not be understated. Fortunately, in 2020, resources were provided by several Member States and we are grateful for their commitment to continue to fund the GFP in 2021.

Alexandre Zouev, Assistant Secretary-General for Rule of Law and Security Institutions
United Nations Department of Peace Operations

 

 

We started our last week of this global discussion with very important contributions from Guatemala with Claudia de Saravia , from Colombia with Jairo Alberto Matallana Villarreal   and the relevant thoughts made by Alexandre Zouve.

Alexandre Zouve thanks for your contributions and valuable feedback on the role that UNDP is playing. Your timely reflections motivate us to renew our commitment as well as to strengthen our work to deliver efficient and well-coordinated rule of law support with human rights standards and a gender approach. Also, invite us to incorporate more innovative solutions through digital platforms and strategies; supporting data integration and insights for better decision-making; promote more  sustainable and catalytic initiatives, just for mention a few challenges for the future.

Your comments remind us of an important point. In the context of COVID19 we must consider that governments come under pressure to navigate crisis and uncertainty, deliver digitalized services, enable access to information and social protection, and function in transparent, accountable, and effective ways. Governments and civil society will need to work together to advance social cohesion and gender equality while upholding human rights and the rule of law, especially in fragile and conflict-affected contexts where justice and security concerns may be more acute. There is an unprecedented opportunity to make societies more inclusive, just and efficient with higher resilience. This is in line with the intention of Sustainable Development Goal 16 and its dimensions of peace, justice and fairness that leave no-one behind.

Jairo Alberto Matallana Villarreal  we thank you very much for your contributions from Colombia and Claudia de Saravia  from Guatemala. Both experiences complete the picture with inputs from Latin America and brings the opportunity to analyze the results achieved and the challenges we have as UNDP to continue impacting lives. I would like to emphasize from the experience of Colombia that the reconstruction of the social fabric - had already been torn apart by inequality and instability - is the basis for facing the social demands that appear in the context of covid19.

And in this context, all your contributions invite us to reflect on the complexity and scale of the COVID-19 challenge mean that every UNDP colleague has a role to play from policy to operations, to programming. Continuing supporting the GFP will be contributing to a truly global-scale response, that draws on the full depth and breadth of our unique and diverse capacities, as UNDP and as a UN system.

Please join us and let's continue this interesting conversation.

Remember that we look forward to our interaction and exchange of views, ideas, recommendations, and forward-looking thinking.

Dear colleagues,

UNDP has been and is doing well in maintaining peace, managing and reducing conflicts, establishing and capacity building of the state institutions, building democratic institutions, political reconciliation, gender justice, human rights awareness, supporting NHRIs institutions, access to justice and legal aid services.

UNDP needs to improve in supporting national governments in developing an inclusive and participative policy and legislative drafting process that is essential for justice, new social contract, international trade, commercial activities, FDI,  and conflict resolution, UNDP is weak in internal technical resources. It needs to develop internal technical expertise and also coordinate, learn lessons, and share best practices at the Regional Offices leave.

UNDP also needs to focus more on judiciaries, processes, and procedures. Impartial, representative, resourceful, and competent judiciaries are essential for sustainable peace, development, and human rights to respect, protect, and realization.  There is a need for new justice products, new services, new processes that meet the needs of people, youth, women, and excluded communities.  Judiciaries are custodians of the rights of people. We see everywhere protecting interests of the rich, powerful cartels and business tycoons.

Another important area is transparency, accountability, and anti-corruption. Corruption is eating into our efforts to deliver on SDGs and also eroding trust and confidence in state and social fabric. I know this is overlapping with UNODC as the latter is the custodian of the UN Convention against Corruption, 2003. In my experience from Somalia and other countries, UNODC has a limited presence in the audit, oversight, prosecution, and judicial institutions, the collaboration between UNODC and UNDP is essential. UNODC may focus on investigation and prosecuting and UNDP on the prevention side of corruption and capacity building of judiciary, oversight, and audit institutions. The same is the situation in juvenile justice. There are grey areas and overlapping of jurisdictions between UNICEF, UNODC, Child protection.

There is a need for more for NHRIs. The NHRIs in most of the countries lack teeth and recommendations for reform remain in papers. The human rights respects, protection, and promotion are the responsibility of all entities-public or private.

The administrative justice is important in ensuring justice and to control executive. UNDP is not putting adequate technical resources in this area. Administrative justice is equally relevant to peace, development, human rights security society. we must not ignore administrative justice. This is age of regulatory bodies. The grievance redressal mechanism against public bodies is weak. The civil courts are not prepared to resolve administrative disputes as different principles underline the administrative justice than civil justice. 

The National Election institutions are critical for people's voices, human rights, and representation, and conflict resolution. UNDP is doing well in this area. We may focus more on ensuring impartial, resourceful, and competent election commissions and fair and impartial election dispute resolution. 

Freedom of information, participation, media development is another where UNDP needs to focus and work with UNESCO, the latter has very little presence at the country level.

The humanitarian-development peace nexus and integrated solutions are important. However, it needs more consolidation, learning, and efforts to achieve the objectives. It also requires a mindset change. Yes, we may do more in this area and it becomes more relevant and critical in achieving the 2030 Agenda.

UNDP is the only agency able to coordinate the rule of law, security, and human rights. It has a presence and system to support other UN systems and particularly in the realization of the 2030 Agenda for SDGs and has a pivotal role in UNDCF. However. the UN agencies are, sometimes, not happy. it depends on the personal attitude of the staff at a particular Country Office. We can not make everyone happy. What we need to do more is to ensure coordination, information sharing and participation of other agencies in decision making.

in al above traditional and new areas, we need to explore digital technologies, develop new and innovative products and services, and test and learn from new processes and procedures. 

Regards, and thank you for offering this opportunity.

Dear All,

Thanks for sharing very insightful information. Let me also share you few ongoing areas of our work and also ideas for next programme on rule of law and human rights.

UNDP Nepal has been engaged in four areas; first one is about introducing comprehensive approach of legal aid services and providing services to the needy and vulnerable. We have the integrated legal aid policy is in place and now we are supporting the Ministry of law and justice to implement it.

Second one is about capacity building of judicial committees, the body works under local government and provides access to justice to the needy ones in an informal way. It's mostly the capacity building support to them to expedite in a fast track manner  the process against the disputes and complaints received.

Third very important one is about proving support in reviewing and implementation of the current laws called civil as well as criminal codes and procedures. The support is more on to provide policy and technical support in the implementation and in reviewing other laws in line with national and international laws.

Fourth one is about the business and human rights. We have been equally working with private sectors to advance human rights at private sectors.

Besides that we work with conflict victims under transitional justice component in the National Human Rights Commission Project. And through human rights commission project, we basically involve in outreach and capacity building of the human rights oversight bodies to respond the ongoing issues of human rights.

Talking about way forward, we have lessons learned that to work on broader areas of rule of law in additional to the access to justice. Even to ensure access to justice, unless and until we work with other bodies of law enforcement agencies and work limitely with one or two only organic agencies of access to justice, it will be difficult to ensure real access to justice. Hence, we really have two work with court system, client, communities in one hand in other with all other justice sector actors. Likewise, working separately will also not serve the purpose. Rather we need to work in a programmatic manner. The coordination among justice sector actors can really contributing to ensure comprehensive justice.

Areas wise, the implementation of court decision and recommendations of NHRIs would also matter a lot. Likewise working criminal justice system and detention center will be important to look into.

UPR and SDGs should be the reference while developing a new initiatives on rule of law. The accountability, participation and judicial transparency are equally the areas to look into.

With regards,

Tek

 

 

Thanks for this opportunity to join this global conversation. It is more important than ever to share best practices and learn from each other in time of crisis, with rapidly changing development context due to the COVID-19. 

In March 2020, Kazakhstan faced a double challenge: outbreak of the COVID-19 and a sharp fall in oil prices. These challenges put the achieved development gains at risk due to an array of negative consequences to people, businesses and economy. This situation is also a severe test of the nation’s resilience to cope with two complex simultaneous challenges, putting multiple pressures on people, businesses and public institutions.

The current outbreak of COVID-19 also puts additional pressure on the system of internal affairs with police officers at the forefront of the Government response, protecting people, ensuring delivery of critical services and connecting different government institutions. They face a double challenge of enforcing curfews and Government restrictive measures and at the same time servicing people in a right based manner, counselling locals and ensuring public safety is maintained.  

Community police model, which is being introduced with UNDP support, is an important initiative to rebuild trust between people on the ground and police officers to collectively address the real issues on the ground. 

Despite Covid-19 and logistical challenges we continue the pilot project implementation in Karaganda oblast with a view to scale it up to 4-5 regions in the next 6 month. Ministry leadership, regional administration and, most importantly, people on the ground already see the benefits, which is critically important to keep the momentum and advance this transformational challenge further.  

Would be happy to learn from others on this community resilience and community resilience as we continue here in Kazakhstan.

Best regards, 

Konstantin 

 

Dear colleagues, some thoughts/reflections from UNDP Kosovo on RoL/AJ:

Rule of Law and Access to Justice are one of the key areas of UNDP’s work in Kosovo since 2004. UNDP’s work on Rule of Law is based on strong partnerships with Kosovo institutions and international stakeholders working on rule of law. Within its rule of law program, Rule of Law and Access to Justice are among the main political conditions for Kosovo in the European Integration process, which calls for ensuring that courts and prosecution are effective, independent, accountable and impartial, and free from political influence. The UNDP rule of law program contributes to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, specifically goals 16 in relation to promoting peace, justice and strong institutions, and goals 5 to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

By working under one umbrella, jointly with other UN agencies including, UNICEF, UNWOMEN, and UNFPA, the UNDP has managed to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and the impact of the program. This collaborative approach ensured coordination in support to institutions between UN agencies and improved impact of delivery of content and messages during trainings. Equally important, such collaborative approach between the UN Agencies, contributed in implementing addressing certain targets and indicators within the UN Common Development Plan 2016-2020.

Over the last ten years, the Kosovo judicial system has made considerable progress in consolidating the rule of law institutions, developing the necessary legal infrastructure, and increasing the professional capacities of legal actors. As also noted by the 2019 European Commission Report, Kosovo has improved its legal framework in the area of rule of law: the revision of the Criminal Code ; the amendments of the basic laws on judiciary , improving the judicial transparency, accountability, and responsibility; the development of the related secondary legislation ; the new Law on Mediation are all important achievements for improving the efficiency, transparency and accountability of the judiciary requiring now robust implementation.

1. The policy level: addressing the policy and coordination aspects between justice institutions, and harmonization of strategic planning. This results in an increased efficiency on the implementation of reforms and the adoption of legal framework.
2. The capacity development and institutional reform in the justice sector: focusing on providing tailor-made institutional support to increase institutional and individual capacities, efficiency and accountability.
3. Access to justice and service delivery: focusing on increasing access to justice for Kosovo’s population through legal aid, mediation, promotion and implementation of human rights, and the backlog reduction in both courts and prosecution offices.

Rule of law depends on a variety of factors including judiciary institutions, government agencies, non-public legal actors, non-governmental organizations, private sector and citizens. The impact on rule of law is therefore dependent on interventions from all these angles. UNDP’s intervention was primarily focused on supporting institutions, but effort was also placed in empowering non-legal actors and improving access to justice for vulnerable groups. The intervention from multiple angles helps identify issues in depth and address them from a variety of perspectives such as institutional coordination, capacity building, rule of law reform, Mediation and Public Outreach. This approach has also had a positive cross-institutional effect, by way that one institution i.e. Ombudsperson can rely on data from Agency of Free Legal Aid, or vice versa. The joint work with the Academy of Justice and the Court of Appeal in developing the Bulletin of the case Law (guidelines for judicial practice), supported the first instance courts to improve the quality of their work in decision hence increasing  the number of verified cases by the Court of Appeal. The development of the Human Rights database also positively impacted the work of judicial staff, the local and central administrative institutions, including the CSOs, and law students. The support to one institution has positively affected the work of the other institution.

In addition, UNDP has supported the development of (a) case management system for the Agency of Free Legal Aid; (b) E-learning training module for the Academy of Justice, and; (c) Human Rights database for the Ombudsperson. All these institutions were of the view that the such digital solutions have improved effectiveness and efficiency and has enabled the design and implementation of data-based solutions. As such they present an important foundation to build on their relevance and impact through future interventions.

 

What has worked well and what hasn’t

• Staff embedding should be done with prospect of employment: During the course of the rule of law program UNDP has embedded staff in key rule of law institutions. While all of the institutions were of the view that these embedded staff have increased their performance and quality of justice, the effects of this support are visible only during the course of the project implementation and happens to return to point zero when the project is completed. UNDP’s support was often required because the institutions either did not plan or had no funding to deliver a specific good or services. For example, the institutions did not have funding to organize a workshop, or facilitate a training, or to hire a legal expert to help drafting of regulations, or to develop or re-design a digital platform. UNDP’s approach so far has been to fill in the gaps for funding.  In the future, consideration should be given to advising the institutions to plan, allocate and spent own funding for goods and services.
• Capacity building activities should take into account sustainability issues: Judges, Prosecutors, legal officers and practitioners require regular and updated training on matters of judicial practice. The capacity building activities organized by UNDP including civil law trainings with judges, human rights trainings with prosecutors, orientation trainings with Kosovo Serb judges, and Bar exam trainings for candidates who entered the exam, while generally deemed effective by the key informants, are generally limited in reach and scope, and would not fill the gaps and needs for trainings in the long term. UNDP worked with AJ to conduct a trainings needs assessment for the judicial institutions and design training programs and modules, but the extent to which these resources are utilized is questionable. In the future, consideration should be given to strengthening the capacity of AJ to provide trainings themselves, including development of a roster of trainers, allocation of budget for and recruitment of domestic and international trainers  and more precisely to strengthening the communication and coordination on trainings (including, compilation of training programs, organization of trainings, and trainers’ performance), activities between the Academy and the governance bodies of judiciaries, namely the KJC and KPC, among others. Also, to research and analyze feasibility of promoting and enhancing the use of justice E-earning platforms established within the Academy to maximizing training opportunities through distance.

Hello everyone, This is Marina from UNDP Armenia CO ROLJHR cluster. It was great indeed to read through the wealth of experiences and knowledge shared in this space, and to learn how the ROLHR GP and Crisis Bureau were successfully spreading the word across the organization. We at UNDP Armenia CO implemented a number of initiatives with support of ROLHR GP and CO teams, especially during the recent years. The GP team was essential in supporting the implementation of SDG 16 project aimed at development of innovative data collection methods to measure the progress of SDG 16 implementation and alignment of SDG 16 to national strategies. The consultation and best practices shared by CB global and regional teams were of crucial importance to find solutions for the development of innovative data collection platform for SDG 16 and beyond. The support resulted in development of an SDG barometer for visualization of SDG 16 data collection and scale-up to broader P framework. In addition, the CB team was extremely supportive in deploying a scoping mission to assess the situation and needs for justice and rule of law reforms in Armenia in follow-up to the “velvet revolution” and change of Government. In follow-up to scoping mission UNDP CO with support of ROLHR GP and Crisis Bureau teams initiated a broad support to justice reform focusing on key areas, such as integrity-check of judges, starting with merit-based recruitment and e-court/case management aimed at releasing the backlog and raising efficiency of the justice system. The role of ROLHR and JP was indeed crucial in this process both through conducting the high-level scoping mission and revealing the needs but also in bringing the specific expertise to support the reforms. Specific support was also provided to the constitutional review process led by the Constitutional Expert of CB team. This was indeed critical support to the CO in shaping the support to the Government. In addition, some of the areas, that came out as emerging needs during COVID-19 and beyond where the CO would appreciate additional experience sharing from the ROLHR GP team is human rights in the field of AI/use of technologies; using behavior insights in specific thematic areas (discrimination being one of the priority areas); lessons learnt and good practices from the experience of other COs in promoting HR and RoL, including for COVID-19 response.

Hello from Honduras.

It has been extremely enriching to read your contributions and the great work that we as UNDP are doing in different countries, thank you very much for sharing it. In Honduras, we have been strengthening our capacity on a more integrated rule of law and access to justice approach. Though the GP support, a review and strengthening process of the governance portfolio is being developed in order to complement its interventions in terms of access to justice and to complement and consolidate UNDP contributions to ensure impact in people's lives. An analysis on criminal justice system was developed, identifying entry points to enhance collaboration for enable the capacities of the national institutions of the criminal justice system.

We developed an analysis on SDG 16 in Honduras, this analysis covers the practicalities of available data, what sources can currently be used as proxies, current gaps, and opportunities for policymakers to accelerate the implementation of actions and programs that contribute to SDG 16+. You can find it here: 

https://www.hn.undp.org/content/honduras/es/home/presscenter/articles/informe--evidencias-para-la-agenda-2030-y-el-ods-16---sociedades.html

In addition, the CO has continued efforts to build spaces for dialogue and to strengthen capacities of public institutions (Secretary for Human Rights and the National Commissioner for Human Rights), indigenous people and local actors around conflict management (knowledge, tools, experience). 

(I)  Hi, I'm Randall Brenes from UNDP Costa Rica. We have had the opportunity to contribute significantly in strengthening the Rule of Law, Citizen Security with a human rights approach in Costa Rica through various initiatives. Below I mention some of them. In 2010 we received a request from the President of Costa Rica to collaborate in the designing of the Public Policy for Citizen Security (POLSEPAZ). This technical support had two relevant results. From the methodological point of view, a consultation process was developed at the national level that allowed to collect, through different means and channels, the visions, concerns and priorities of the population, the different sectors, public institutions, the academy and the civil society organization. It was an innovative process to break with top-down policy frameworks. The extensive and detailed registry of contributions shows a process of informed and broad citizen participation. The second aspect was the content of the policy itself, based on the etiology of violence, with an emphasis on primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies. This policy represented a milestone in the national context and its results were clearly positive, as demonstrated by the decrease in crime incidence between 2011 and 2013. Throughout the process we received strong technical support from the Regional Hub.

(II). In terms of access to justice, we have had close collaboration with the Judiciary. We have supported, through technical assistance, training, and teaching materials, the implementation of international standards for access to justice, including the Brasilia Rules, with a special focus on indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and migrants. In recent years we have worked as main partners of the Judiciary for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. We regularly facilitate workshops for different areas of the administration of justice: judges, prosecutors, public defense, investigative police, among others. A methodology for training based on SDG 16+ has been developed and it has also been supported in the adaptation of SDG indicators for the Judiciary.

(III). Regarding gender, UNDP Costa Rica has supported law reform initiatives to reduce criminal penalties considering the vulnerable situation of women, due to poverty or social exclusion. We also work on developing strategies for the prevention and care of violence against women. Currently, in the context of the pandemic, we are implementing a public information campaign to prevent domestic violence, exacerbated by measures of confinement and social distancing. This campaign was implemented with the support of the regional project Infosegura.

(IV) Additionally, UNDP Costa Rica is concerned about the exacerbation of anti-democratic positions. We are at a critical moment for the preservation of democratic institutions and mechanisms. We are working to create spaces for democratic dialogue based on evidence and reliable information, with the support of the Regional Hub, in association with renowned national think tanks, and with the participation of the government and all sectors and civil society.