UN

13 April: Multilateralism failing us? Big techs saving us?

Posted on April 13, 2020 Leave a Comment

OECD Angel Gurria is clear: there is not enough international cooperation between governments to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. To be sure, we did not enter the crisis on a strong multilateral footing. And according to Oxford University Ngaire Woods, nationalist responses and competition have so far prevailed. International organizations have also shown the limits of their power – largely a reflection of that given to them by their member states. Stephen Buranyi, for instance, gives a great historical account of why the WHO can’t handle the pandemic. So it was refreshing to see 200 former presidents, ministers and heads of international organizations come together to ask the G20 to step up its game. Initiated by Gordon Brown with LSE Erik Berglof holding the pen, the letter calls for heightened global cooperation in response to the twin health and economic crisis and a $8 billion package to help prevent the second wave of Covid-19. Let’s see if/how finance ministers respond this week when they regroup at the 2020 World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings.

In “How Chinese Apps handled Covid-19”, Dan Grover gives a good overview of the key role played by Chinese big techs in the crisis response. They provided information through integrated tools, helped triage patients towards fever clinics and coronavirus hospitals, scaled telemedicine services, and developed health QR Codes for reporting and tracing. His blog post was published a few days before Apple and Google announced their partnership to develop a new contact tracing platform. Does this further feed into reversing the tech backlash trend flagged two weeks ago? It’s probably wise to take the long view on this one by, for instance, watching the 3-episode PBS “Networld” of Niall Ferguson [available on youtube if you are not in the US]. Little is new in the documentary but I enjoyed thinking about the parallel between today’s digital networks and ancient analog networks used to foster revolutions, and learning about network theory.

My picture this week is from MIT Tech Review Will Heaven’s “Why the coronavirus lockdown is making the internet stronger than ever”. It shows that, with the lockdown, internet connections moved from city offices to suburban homes, ie from highly powered hubs to scattered locations with low bandwidth and outdated cables. According to Heaven this has accelerated traffic capacity upgrade, infrastructure expansion, and data plan loosening – making the internet stronger for more. This is not how I was thinking about this before reading this article. I was thinking about how the lockdown amplifies digital inequalities between urban and rural, and between rich and poor.

My quote this week is from Brookings Kemal Dervis: “A clear parallel between the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change is becoming apparent. Both feature emergence, path dependence, feedback loops, tipping points, and nonlinearity. Both call for eschewing traditional cost-benefit analysis in favor of drastic mitigation to reduce exposure. And, both highlight the need for much closer, forward-looking international cooperation to manage global threats.”

Core funding of the UN, the end of an era?

Posted on December 3, 2017 Leave a Comment

Browne and al’s “Sweden’s funding of UN funds and programmes: analyzing the past, looking to the future” reviews the funding patterns of the UN development system (UNDS). The paper was commissioned by the Swedish Experts Group on Aid Studies, an independent policy evaluation/analysis function kick-starting topical conversations within the Swedish government.

The background for the study is the rise of earmarked funds to UN funds and programmes: from 58% of the total budget in 2007 to 80% now. Its findings and recommendations were discussed this week with Sweden’s State Secretary for International Development, a panel of respondents in which I participated, and about 100 civil servants from different ministries and SIDA. A key issue was the funding strategy Sweden should adopt moving forward. A key concern was whether, by being one of the last long-standing core-funding supporters, Sweden was being “taken for a ride” (the title of the event).

The report reviews the finances and effectiveness of funds and programmes. It uses CEB data cross-referenced with data from agencies. UNICEF is portrayed as an exemplary agency having grown in size thanks to non-core contributions, but having strategically redirected these resources towards pre-identified needs to service its mandate (pp 58-61). The recommendations, presented by the authors as “doable” and received by the State Secretary as “helpful”, go from an ask for harmonized definitions to a call for Sweden to “withdraw its non-core funding from UNDP with the aim of encouraging it to emphasis its original central funding and coordination role within the UNDS rather than its role as an operational competitor within the system.” Ouch.

Other recommendations ask Sweden to (i) redirect its core support towards the most effective organizations and humanitarian work, (ii) champion predictable funding for normative activities, and (iii) request agencies to improve their messaging around the importance of core funding. Part of the discussion this week picked up on these. The Secretary of State noted how powerful field results were to advocate for core funding. Several speakers underlined the critical role of core funding for normative and humanitarian work, two functions presented in this report (and many others) as the undisputed comparative advantage of the UN. I used UNICEF illustrations to show how core funding supports universality, the role of first responder in crises, long term investments, the bridging of humanitarian and development work, and the delivery of results for children on the ground.

A thought-provoking table in the report (see below) was used to remind the audience that the core/non-core funding trend was not affecting all multilaterals similarly. One speaker argued that the UN should consider adopting a replenishment system akin to International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and most global vertical funds. Several participants supported this idea while others wondered whether the decrease of UN core funding was more a matter of political will than of technical fixes.

Another recommendation of the report is for Sweden to sponsor an independent international commission on UN funding. Having worked for several such commissions including two financed by Sweden, I was asked to react to this suggestion. The proposed mandate of the commission being rather narrow (“to review definitions and rationalize the allocation of UN funding”) and the terms of reference rather prescriptive, I suggested a more strategic and forward looking framing. Indeed, the report did not, in my view, do justice to the second part of its title: “looking to the future”. What are the key drivers of change that will influence development finance, and UN funding, in the coming 10-20 years? What would the UN funding debate look like in a future where financial technology combined with digital peer-to-peer platforms could become the norm for international financial transactions? How will more frequent disasters influence the nature of UN funding in particular as these shocks also affect richer countries potentially reversing their aid-eligibility? Could traditional donors increasingly channel their resources via IFIs transforming UN agencies as mere implementing partners in a shrunk UNDS? Could new donors increasingly channel their resources via multilateral organizations and revitalize the UNDS? Etc

My main take away from this conversation and what I read on the topic in the context of UN reforms, is that we should develop “what if” funding scenarios, one of which focusing on a further decrease of core funding and direct support to UN operations.

23 June 2017

Posted on June 23, 2017 Leave a Comment

Youseff Mahmoud et al’s “Entrepreneurship for sustaining peace” is the curtain raiser for one of the International Peace Institute conversation series on prevention and sustaining peace. Mahmoud is argues that the UN refocus on prevention be accompanied by a shift away from deterring conflict towards sustaining peace. Conceptually this means moving away from a highly politicized and securitized approach to prevention. Operationally this means moving away from crisis management tools only. Adopting the sustaining peace approach, this article looks at how economic opportunities contribute to peaceful societies by offering more dignified lives and countering sentiments of marginalization for entrepreneurs, their families, and their communities. It uses two examples to illustrate how that works: Colombia and Tunisia. It highlights the unique potential of youth entrepreneurship by pointing to the correlation between positive peace and the Youth Development Index and arguing that the demographic dividend could also contribute to sustaining peace. And it provides 3 operational recommendations for UN field operations and country teams: map existing entrepreneurial initiatives that have explicit peacebuilding benefits; develop an integrated entrepreneurship development strategy; and encourage host countries to create environment supportive of youth-led social entrepreneurship as part of peace operations.

Several people shared the IOM’s “UN-biased” video with me this week. It speaks of decision biases in the work place and how they affect hiring decisions, in the United Nations. Some numbers. Where equally qualified candidates are considered, mothers are 79% less likely to be hired. Women take 5.4 years to be promoted to a P4 level whereas men take 4.6 years. In performance reviews, women receive 2.5 times more feedback about aggressive communication styles than men. Overall 62% men work in hardship duty stations, and while 30% of applicants are women, they are not selected. At senior level, 16% of males versus 40% of females are more likely to be divorced, separated or single. The video also suggests 5 very practical recommendations to counter biases in recruitment. Just take 5 minutes and watch it. Go IOM!

My graph this week is from CBInsights’ “Google is ramping up pharma activity” and shows that google has made as many pharma deals (6) in the first half of 2017 as it did during the 2010-14 period. While all eyes are on Amazon investing in the food industry, google is moving in the healthcare space with expectations of transforming the sector. What strikes me is tech giants strengthening their monopolies with one hand while growing their philanthropic arms with the other: over the same week Amazon Bezos bought Whole Foods, he also crowdsourced ideas for how to spend his billions.

My quote is from Mark Zuckerberg’s opening speech at the Facebook’s first Communities Summit because, as flagged earlier, it marks another step in how the social media platform is being transformed into a new type of global governance entity: “The idea behind our new mission is to bring the world closer together. Ending poverty, curing diseases, stopping climate change, spreading freedom and tolerance, stopping violence: there is no single group or even country that can take these things on alone. So we have to build a world where people come together to take on these big meaningful efforts. This is not going to happen top down […] We want to help one billion people join [Facebook] meaningful communities and bring the world closer together.”

17 March 2017

Posted on March 17, 2017 Leave a Comment

Sebastian Strangio’s “Welcome to the post-human rights world” shows how the global rise of populism takes a toll on the human rights movement. He also points to areas of dynamism in the civic space where NGOs are rethinking their strategies and narratives. This led me to a lecture by Philip Alston who paints a bleak picture: “These are extraordinarily dangerous times, unprecedentedly so, at least in my life time.” He asks the human rights community to be innovative and offers 4 strategies to international NGOs: (i) create more synergies between international and local human rights movements, (ii) embrace economic and social rights (in addition to civil and political rights), (iii) use persuasion techniques that go beyond stating principles, and (iv) engage with new actors such as large corporations. Alston was in my “purist human rights guru” mental box so this made me pay attention. It also led me to another human rights guru, John Ruggie, who in a recent speech, asked businesses to step up their game and go beyond do-no-harm and “shared value creation”. He argued that the single largest contribution businesses could make is to drive respect for human rights throughout their global value chains as this could impact over 2 billion people. I felt that these were important readings at a time when the UN leadership reflects on the future of the normative agenda while the World Economic Forum ponders on the future of human rights.

Meyers et al’s “The nexus of microwork and impact sourcing: implications for youth employment” reviews 90 documents and interviews 40 stakeholders to give the latest picture of the microwork landscape. Microwork refers to outsourced online micro-tasks such as data entry or image tagging and is a market projected to grow to $2.5 billion and to provide work for 2.9 million people by 2020. The hype around the microwork potential for development peaked a few years ago when many warned of a possible race to the bottom with very low pay rates and no benefits — the creation of digital sweatshops. This paper looks at the combination of microwork and impact sourcing, a business model where companies work with intermediaries who deliberately employ disadvantaged or vulnerable populations. The paper also gives interesting illustrations of impact sourcing intermediaries training their workers, introducing them to the formal economy and serving as bridges towards better employment opportunities. But this remains a space with little regulation and no social safeguards. Connecting this conversation to Ruggie’s call for action, one can see how the promotion of human rights through these digital outsourcing platforms could have a big impact on young people and their employment prospects.

My graph this week is from Ben Parker’s “US funding for the UN in chart” illustrating the break-down per agency of the $10 billion annual US contribution to the UN. To be read in light of the announced (but not yet specified) cuts to the UN system.

In line with the overall theme this week, here is a quote from Kara Swisher in her Ezra Klein interview [47’35”]: “Whatever you think of Silicon Valley, at least they make stuff, stuff that changes lives. IMB was one of the first to do integration and gave their employees rights, so did Apple. I put less of my faith in policy makers than I do in businesses.”

24 March 2016

Posted on March 24, 2016 Leave a Comment

“Global_Risks_and_Opportunities_Survey_Report” analyzes the results of a perception survey conducted with 460 UNICEF staff working across the globe. The highest risks children experts see in the 15 coming years are climate change and environmental degradation, rising inequalities, and political instability and conflict. The main opportunities they list are science and technology, the elimination of contemporary scourges, and the exponential power of girls. It was interesting to see that some key areas of UNICEF’s work like education and communicable diseases were not ranked high on the lists of risks and opportunities; and that, overall, respondents were very technology-optimistic. All background data including some regional perspectives, are available here.

There is a growing interest of international organizations (IOs) in foresight work. Foresight units are popping up in IO headquarters and an increasing number of field and regional offices are looking at ways to integrate foresight in their planning exercises. This is really exciting. This year, our unit is teaming up with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to take stock of global trends and their impacts on children, develop scenarios and hold a couple of foresight workshops with country offices. There is also a push to further integrate foresight work in UNDAF business. The rationale behind this is captured in Tully’s “Applying foresight and alternative futures to the UNDAF”. Some countries, like Montenegro, have already undertaken interesting foresight exercises, see here. There are expectations that some of the 39 countries starting to craft their UNDAF in 2016 will also do so. This is a space to watch.

8 January 2016

Posted on January 8, 2016 Leave a Comment

The most important document I read over the past couple of weeks is Deschamps and al’s “Taking action on sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers”. This is the report of an independent review on sexual exploitation and abuse by international peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic. The brutal facts: In 2013-14, several children from the M’Poko IDP camp aged 9-13 were sexually abused by peacekeepers in exchange for military food rations and small amounts of money. The report is appalling. It shows how the UN system systematically failed to timely and appropriately protect and care for these children, and to properly investigate, report and follow up on the violations. Many parts of the UN are judged at fault. The report describes a machinery caught up in the implementation of its complex procedures and the fragmentation of its responsibilities where action and accountability are always someone else’s business. It shows how the system ends up not delivering its most fundamental human rights functions. Shockingly, more staff time was devoted to assigning blame for a leaked document than to caring for the abused kids. This should be mandatory reading for every UN staff member.

Davis and al’s “Do socially responsible firms pay more taxes?” looks at the relation between corporate tax payments and corporate social responsibility (CSR). I read it after this Economist article whet my appetite. Using data from a large set of US companies, Davis and al analyze links between tax and CSR behaviors between 2002-11. They show that high CSR firms are avoiding taxes the most and are spending the most on tax lobbying. This indicates that CSR and tax payments are used as substitutes not complements by [US] firms. These findings are important because UN CSR approach and guidelines (including our Children Rights and Business Principles) view corporate tax payments as positive contributions to social welfare. As the authors conclude: “If policy makers are trying to improve social welfare, understanding this trade-off is important in the design of tax laws”.

My visual of the week is Sander and al’s “The global flow of people”. It depicts migration flows within and between regions. It shows that the largest movements happen between South and East Asia, Latin to North America, and within Africa. The authors also have a “Global flow of refugees” version which clearly shows that most movements are regional in nature.

My quote this week is from Lucy Kellaway’s ”Big brother management: Farewell performance review, hello data systems”: “In 2016 the job of management will be taken away from managers. […] The most visible sign of the new world will be the end of the annual career appraisal. […] The end started half way through 2015 when Deloitte and then Accenture announced that they were getting rid of their performance review. Deloitte let slip that it spent an unconscionable 2m hours a year to produce yearly reports for its 65,000 people—making it among the biggest corporate wastes of time ever invented.”