LIBERIA COUNTRY OFFICE VISION

The Vision of the UNDP Country Office in Liberia sets out what UNDP wants to achieve in the coming years and how it wants to achieve it, given the national context, its challenges, constraints and opportunities.

Situation analysis

After seven years of a devastating civil war, which caused over 200 000 deaths and displaced up to 80% of the total population, Liberia was faced with the challenges of reconstruction and recovery.

Basic social infrastructure like schools and clinics were not only looted but also in most cases physically destroyed. Massive destruction of economic infrastructures and communication also led to the wide spread disruption of productive activities resulting in the loss of livelihood especially in farming activities. The seven-year conflict left communities impoverished, families disintegrated and individuals traumatized.

Practically all governance institutions collapsed due to the division of the country into factional enclaves with different laws and operational systems. In addition to the breakdown of institutions, the national capacity, both at the local and central levels, to plan development, coordinate assistance and take over projects is very weak.

It is also worth noting that there is no effective transportation system, the railway has been disrupted, and available flights in and out the country are limited and not reliable.

After four years of transition, the country has not made appreciable progress towards recovery. GDP remains below 50% of its pre war level; the unemployment rate in the formal sector is approximately 85%;
All dimensions of human development are low. Nearly 80% of the population are living below the poverty level of US$ 1 per day, with severe poverty estimated at 52%.

The government installed in 1997 prepared a National Reconstruction Plan, which did not receive attention and adequate funding from the donor community nor from the International Financial Institutions. The government, who must cope with an enormous debt burden, is presently unable to generate sufficient resources domestically and internationally to revive the economy and reduce poverty.

Furthermore, the outlook of durable peace and security has been dampered by sporadic fighting with dissidents in the northern county of Lofa, which has resulted in significant displacements of populations. UNDP has to address the humanitarian situation of IDPs.
An estimate of 60,000 displaced now require humanitarian assistance for their survival although only 35,000 are now accessible in different camps. Providing such humanitarian assistance requires leadership, coordination and support.

To make the situation even worse, since May 2001 the country is under selective sanctions imposed by the Security Council for allegedly supporting RUF in diamonds and arms smuggling.

Specific assets and opportunities

* UNDP enjoys critical assets to fulfill its mission: qualified human resources, modern equipment and information technologies.
* Its continuous presence in the country before, during and after the conflict, ensures UNDP a unique knowledge base.
* UNDP enjoys the position of main partner of the government and in light of its neutrality and its substantive development capacity, it can play a unique mediation role to encourage constructive dialogue between Liberia and the donor community.
* In the process of reconstruction, UNDP has the opportunity to support the country to rebuild and develop appropriate policies and institutions and to meet development challenges mainstreaming poverty alleviation strategies and good governance best practices.

Taking into account those constraints, challenges, assets and opportunities, UNDP has identified strategic objectives in this national context: policy advise and development services, strategic partnerships, resource mobilization, performance and people.

1. POLICY ADVISE AND DEVELOPMENT SERVICES
To place UNDP at the forefront of advocacy for sustainable human development and peace building and to build national capacities for good governance and economic management.

Poverty alleviation and peace building

UNDP will assist the government of Liberia to plan sustainable human development and enhance the livelihood of the Liberian people through downstream and upstream interventions.

UNDP assisted the government in the preparation of a national strategy for the next five years. The focus of the Medium Term Plan (MTP) is to accelerate the transition from reconstruction to poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
Furthermore, the preparation of an Education policy and master plan was identified by UNDP as an entry point in poverty reduction strategy.

To support poverty alleviation policies, UNDP also addressed the disruption of basic social services in the country, due to the destruction of most social infrastructures (schools, clinics and access in rural areas).
In this respect, UNDP has developed a community based economic recovery programme, thriving to move from a short-term reconstruction programme to more substantive interventions in rehabilitation and development through micro credit, micro projects and rural housing .

The restoration of basic social services is still a priority. With fewer resources, UNDP will continue to support the recovery process at the community level maintreaming grassroot governance.

The Programme Unit will consolidate the components of micro projects, rural housing and municipal planning in one Recovery and peace building programme in partnership with UNOL and others. This approach will ensure consistency of UNDP activities in the field and will optimize the use of resources. Lastly, UNDP will continue to lend monitoring support to the micro credit programme until it is fully internalized.

The Programme Unit will strengthen complementarity and synergy between upstream interventions (MTP, education plan, governance framework, rural housing policy etc) and downstream activities (rehabilitation of schools, local development committees, shelter reconstruction).

Advocacy for human development

UNDP will continue its role of advocacy for sustainable human development concerns, including the publication of the NHDR, the organization of development forums and theme group discussion.

To better support advocacy activities, a communication strategy needs to be developed for the Country Office to ensure regular media coverage of UNDP success stories. UNDP may call on the services of a communication officer to prepare the strategy and train the staff. At the same time, the Country Office will launch its web page. UNDP will encourage Inter-Agency initiatives like coordinated advocacy activities.

UNDP Liberia must be a facilitator of information exchanges, network building and dissemination of best practices. UNDP is expected to increase its knowledge with regards to identification of partnership opportunities.

Capacity building for economic management

During the transition period, UNDP has been engaged in the provision of direct assistance such as logistical support, expertise and short term training to enable key government institutions (Ministry of Finance, Office of Budget, Central Bank, Ministry of Planning) involved in economic management to restore basic functionning capacity.
However, national human capacities within the public sector remains very limited.

UNDP will therefore be required to provide additional technical expertise on institution building, policy formulation, programme implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
UNDP will notably reinforce the capacity of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs in coordination.

Good governance

UNDP has provided assistance in the preparation of a governance framework for Liberia. UNDP has also provided basic training on human rights and rule of law to some NGOs in collaboration with UNOL. However, the concepts of good governance, rule of law and human rights are yet to be integrated at all levels of the society.

In the prospect of the elections in 2003, UNDP will assist government institutions at various levels to better internalize good governance best practices. Focus will be put on peace building, reconciliation, promotion of human rights and rule of law.
It is needed to complete an assessment of the needs of key public sector agencies in this respect.
At the same time, in the Hinterlands, local leadership structures are yet to be installed and support will be required for the establishment of local governance system.

2. STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
UNDP will reinforce its interaction with key partners in Liberia and will strengthen its capacity of highly networked organization to create development opportunities for the country, connecting people and creating synergies

With limited financial capacity, UNDP cannot achieve any impact with stand alone intervention in the country. Strategic partnership becomes integral of UNDP Country Office's vision in Liberia.
Strategic partners range from governments to civil society, donors, private sector, academia and of course the UN agencies.

UNDP will share the definition of outcomes with strategic partners, such as key government institutions, key donors and key implementing partners to bring them around common development objectives in the country.

* UNDP expects to strengthen relationships with a number of key national partners such as the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs, the National Habitat Secretariat, local authorities and Town development committees and civil society organizations involved in good governance and poverty alleviation.

* UNDP will reinforce its interaction with local donors representatives, especially the EU and USAID, going beyond the public relation stage into substantive technical exchanges through joint monitoring field visits and results based management.

* UNDP will select key international NGOs which have similar activities to explore joint programming or joint monitoring and share lessons learned in community based activities.

* UNDP will select a limited number of key implementing partners and community based organizations for training on basic good governance best practices.
UNDP must also gradually strengthen its staff capacity to work with CSOs.

More generally, UNDP must assist humanitarian agencies and NGOs in infusing a development perspective, including poverty reduction strategy, into humanitarian assistance.

* Within the UN family, UNDP has to play a critical role in harmonizing UN programmes, especially rehabilitation and peace building program and will encourage the creation of a consultative joint programming unit, consisting of technical personnel from key humanitarian and development agencies.

The Programme unit will explore joint programming and technical cooperation with UNICEF, HCR and UNOL as well as with WFP, FAO and WHO. The Programme Unit will devise a strategy to ensure greater use of UNVs.

The Office of the RR/RC will continue to provide the needed leadership to ensure humanitarian assistance is effectively coordinated and delivered to the affected populations.

The Office of the RR/RC will support the preparation of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) to develop a common coherent approach and a strategy for cooperation with the government.

3. RESOURCE MOBILIZATION
UNDP will put additional focus on resource mobilization efforts

Donor response to the first donor conference organized in Paris in 1998 and to the Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal presented in Geneva in 2001 has been desapointing.

UNDP will pursue its resource mobilization strategy based on a project approach involving donor representatives at the early stage of identification of needs and conceptualization and monitoring.

UNDP will develop a user friendly donorprofile for resource mobilization offering data on technical aspects of financial partnerships. UNDP programme and project staff would be expected to be totally involved in resource mobilization efforts.

4. PERFORMANCE
UNDP will increase its performance in delivery and management

The Country Office moves in a culture of accountability for results in which performance is systematically improved and resources strategically managed.

Performance against targets is measured each year in the Results Oriented Annual Report (ROAR) and the Balanced Score Card (BSC).
The Country Office is also expected to conduct survey on partner's satisfaction with UNDP responsiveness.

Programme staff will be expected to integrate results based management in their daily work to be able to constantly monitor progress.
Programme staff will have to provide substantive backstopping and financial monitoring to the executing agencies.

UNDP will continue to provide administrative support to programme as well as to the UN system. The Operations Unit has a critical role to play to provide the needed logistics to ensure the delivery of services in a cost-effective way.

To deliver better services, UNDP will pursue the modernization of the administration, notably with the automation of the registry (electronic filing system) to facilitate the retrieval of information.
The Operation Unit will also focus on the operationality the Country Office Suites sofwares 2001 in order to improve the financial reporting between the PSU and the Finance Unit.

UNDP will reinforce synergy among programme and administration and among human, financial and information technology functions.
The Operation Unit will work to re-engeneer the Country Office work processess (share of administrative budget used for operational costs etc.) and to improve coordination between programme and finance.

Lastly, the Operation Unit will prepare a strategy to improve cost recovery from agencies and institutions that UNDP serves.

5. PEOPLE
UNDP will align the staff profile with the evolving needs and will create conditions to motivate people

People will be put be at the center of the management strategy. This strategy includes a new system of 360° feedback from supervisors, peers and supervisees. This approach will ensure effective participation of all the staff in the decision making process, empowerment and motivation. UNDP management will also ensure the strategy and the vision of the Country Office is shared by each one to promote ownership and team building.

At the same time, all staff will be accountable for performance.
The performance of managers will be measured on their ability to provide vision and strategic leadership and on their management of human resources. The performance of other staff will be measured as their ability to adapt to UNDP evolving needs and accountability culture.

A reprofiling exercise will take place to ensure staff potencial is well exploited and developed.

Learning and experience sharing would be key element to ensure performance of the Country Office. With respect to training and learning, priority will be given to enhancing CO's effectiveness in addressing critical development concerns such as HIV/AIDS, through greater use of the Internet and knowledge management.

UNDP will also ensure the training of the administration and finance staff on the Country
Office Suites.

As a matter of policy, applying to all professional staff (international and national) and in order to infuse proactive and more business like attitude in their managerial, programming and administrative functions, a closer partnership between UNDP and its stake holders at the operational level will be promoted.

As opportunities are provided and subject to a potential for increased professional achievements evidenced by the RCA exercise, selected staff members will be entrusted with direct involvement in program/project/operations in complimentarity to their UNDP job description. They will be assigned to well defined and critical activities in and after consultations with stake holders (government, agencies and implementing partners). This increased involvement will be translated into the projects manning tables and job descriptions. UNDP staff inputs will translate into various capacities: resource person, special assistant to management, backstopping officers in administration, financial monitoring, computer applications, etc.

Time sharing arrangements will be agreed upon between UNDP and the stake holders to ensure that the staff inputs delivery is commensurate with their respective duties in and outside UNDP structure.
The overall objective is to have a flatter and versatile Country Office, responsive to the ever evolving challenges of the country.