by Edward Mishaud

30 July 2006

UNV: What is the current focus of activities of UNDP and the UN System at large in Yemen?

Flavia Pansieri: The UN System in Yemen just two months ago completed the formulation of the Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) where we identified four key areas of UN interventions. The first is governance, which remains essential to address shortcomings that impede the most desirable utilization of both national as well as external resources for the country’s development.
A second area of focus is on social services. Yemen is a low human development country. It’s 151 on last year’s Human Development Report and needs to focus on such issues as education, basic health, sanitation, shelter and so on. We recognize it won’t be possible to promote better social services for all unless there’s a sizeable economic growth process in the country, therefore a third pillar is promoting sustainable and job-creating economic growth.
Finally, because of the extreme degree of gender discrimination, we decided in the UNDAF to have a special focus on gender, to ensure that it’s mainstreamed in the other three pillars of the UNDAF, while also pursuing a number of activities directly, such as fighting violence against women, gender budgeting, preventing early marriages and changing overall attitudes to women, which will be undertaken as part of this fourth pillar of the UNDAF.

UNV: Within the UN System, as part of UN Reform, there are ongoing efforts to coordinate activities at the country level, to implement the ‘One UN’ notion. Is this taking shape in Yemen?

FP: We are very much working towards that goal. We were together in developing the UNDAF and we identified a number of areas where we want to work together. Most specifically in the area of monitoring the progress of development in the country with a common system of collection, analysis and publication of indicators because we do think there is a lot of duplication that can be eliminated by working together in these areas.
UNFPA is leading this effort with support from the other agencies in using the DEVINFO methodology that was first spearheaded by UNICEF, so as you see it is truly a collective effort.
Another area of work is trying to identify the geographic areas of greater deprivation because we can then focus our efforts in the same areas so that we intervene in health, in education, in capacity building, in agriculture, to bring to bear our respective competencies for greater impact.

UNV: With the Millennium Development Goals as the overall framework of the UN System, which Goals in Yemen are priorities and which are advancing?

FP: All eight are important. We conducted an assessment a couple of years ago of the degree of progress which concluded that, on current trends and with the possible exception of universal primary education, the Goals would all be missed. Of course, this is a source of serious concern. There is a positive development trend in the country. There has been growth, improvement in various indicators but not fast enough to meet the Goals.
In order to ensure that we can progress more expeditiously on making the targets, hopefully reaching at least a large number of them by 2015, it is also important to ensure a greater engagement of the international community in Yemen because Yemen is an LDC but receives a fraction of the ODA that similar level LDCs receive.
This requires also a strengthening of the compact between national authorities and international donors and greater guarantees for these donors that the governance structure, the oversight mechanisms, the accountability and transparency measures are in place to ensure that both international ODA as well as internal/domestic resources are used to the best interests of the people. So, we consider governance as an important premise and necessary area of work to make sure there can be progress on all the Goals. Without that, even an increased financial availability to the country would not be sufficient by itself to bring about the results that we hope for.

UNV: The UNV programme is an active partner in Yemen in helping to achieve the Goals. Please share with us an overview of the programme there.

FP: We have a medium-sized UNV programme in Yemen. Currently, there are 27 UN Volunteers serving and of these 13 are international and 14 are national. They serve in at least three different agencies: one volunteer in WFP and the two agencies that have the majority are UNDP and UNHCR.
UNHCR has a very large programme with the management of refugee camps, mainly refugees from the Horn of Africa, and volunteers have proven to be indispensable to support protection, registration and administration activities that UNHCR undertakes.
In the case of UNDP, the mix of skills is broader, spanning from one volunteer in disaster preparedness to a number who are engaged in providing support to the electoral process. They are working in field locations, essentially national volunteers, supporting the preparation for the forthcoming September elections. We also have UN Volunteers part of the security system and the UN Volunteer doctor to whom we are all indebted for our own personal well-being as well as that of our families.

UNV: Looking at volunteerism beyond the UNV programme, how is volunteerism viewed in Yemeni society and is support being provided to tap into this resource to support the country’s development?

FP: We, UNV, the UN, the international community, need to work much more with our partners in Arab countries to stress how much the concept of volunteerism that we support is something that is already intrinsically part of the Arab culture and of the Muslim religion. The very principles that a good Muslim applies in his or her dealings with those who are less privileged in their societies are an expression of volunteerism. That goes from financial contributions (such as zakat, a duty for all Muslims) to engaging in the set-up of charitable societies, NGOs and voluntary organizations whose essential goals tend to be in general towards promoting the well-being of fellow human beings, be it from the humanitarian side, social services, education, health, and so on. There is a tremendous resource of such riches even in a country as poor as Yemen.
I do think there is more that is needed from our side to branch out to these individuals or small collective efforts and provide them support – capacity building – to make sure they can optimize the impact they can have. But there is already a tremendously fertile ground on which we can rely on to promote a greater spirit of volunteerism.

UNV: Any final thoughts or words you would like to share?

FP: There is one thing that I would like to stress: The UN and everyone of us who works for any UN entity, programme, fund, should really be motivated by an ethical imperative. This is what our oath of office says. We should never look upon our work as just a job, it should be a calling, and ideally, in that respect, all of us who are involved in the UN should be seen as volunteers in one way or another.
Nowhere is this as obvious as it is in the UNV programme. There, the spirit of volunteerism, and the response to this ethical imperative, is also accompanied not just by personal engagement and professional commitment, but also by a very clear and intentional dedication to goals that imply a certain cost to the individual, whether it is forsaken income or whether it is accepting to live under very difficult field conditions. From that point of view, all of us who are not technically UN Volunteers have a lot to learn from UN Volunteers.