Alfredo Missair took a surprising early decision when he took up the reins as the UN’s new Resident Coordinator in Nicaragua in August 2005. He decided to get political. “The first day I arrived in Nicaragua, there were riots—school buses were burned in the streets, the son of the president received a stone to the head, and the country was in (security) phase 2,” says Mr. Missair, an Argentine architect by training, who moved into urban planning and later into child development, poverty and emergency assistance with UNICEF. The UN development system’s usual response would have been to keep a low profile and avoid a political minefield—knowing full well that once the drama had unfolded, it would be expected to help pick up the pieces. But to Mr. Missair’s eyes this was not the moment to keep quiet, but to be proactive. “Everyone was in a cutthroat mode. But there was no debate in the arena of social issues, human rights. It was more like fighting over nothing,” he says. So he made a proposal to the UN Country Team. “I said ‘Listen guys, why don’t we try to politicize the MDGs’. Usually the UN and UNDP are very shy during an electoral process, but I said ‘don’t worry, we are not going to make politics with it, but rather make policy with it’.” The stakes were high. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, after Haiti, and poverty risks becoming increasingly entrenched. Mr. Missair decided it was crucial to inject these issues into the political arena before it was too late. “We published a big article that said ‘I am coming to stay; I will present to the candidates the UN’s assistance in order to put the MDGs in the political arena, and offer the new government my help to achieve them.” Mr. Missair knew he was on sensitive ground—so rather than calling for dialogue, his first step was to go on a listening tour of all the major players. “I said ‘I will listen to you; not try to bring you to my way of thinking.’” The parties took up his offer. “I started to talk about education, poverty; and then we were able to chart on a matrix who was talking about these issues in their speeches, who was following up on the technical support we offered.” In the meantime the UN was also busy getting its own house in order. Using the results from the MDG politicization process, the UN was working hard on its Common Country Assessment (CCA). The idea was to be in a position to offer a new UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) as soon as the new government came in, wasting no time. “It offered us a period where we could learn about each others’ organizations, and an opportunity to rally around one voice, one team,” says Mr. Missair. “It can be very difficult to get every agency to come to concrete operational modality, and you can end up waiting for a solution that never comes. So it is better to come to a practical solution at the field level.” The UN kept quiet until the new Sandinista government took over. But as soon as it did, “we launched publically the CCA document, printed very nicely—made not only from the ideas of the new government, but also of the opposition. No one could say ‘no I wasn’t in agreement with this’.” As a result, work could begin very quickly on the UNDAF. “The Government was very keen, and prompt in pushing forward the best national minds in order to give their priorities, based on a common analysis with all political parties,” says Mr. Missair. “It was the first agreement with the government. We were very proud. The government proposed to the IMF that it include the MDGs as a way to measure the success of that programme. It was sure of our support, and had the legitimacy.” But the work was only just beginning. The next challenge was to spread the idea of the Millennium Development Goals throughout the country, both in urban and rural areas. One of his first decisions was to redesign the MDG logos to make them more relevant—and therefore instantly understandable—for Nicaraguans, including the many with limited functional literacy at that time. For the MDG on poverty, for example—which was focused mainly on food security and malnutrition—he replaced the soup-dish icon with an ear of corn. “We did that with a local firm, and validated it to see if people were interpreting the message correctly. The results were as high as 98%.” The UN’s headquarters in Managua also got a facelift. Nicaragua has a rich heritage of interesting murals, so the UN launched a programme teaching children professional mural making techniques, and then invited them to paint the UN compound’s walls with MDG related themes. “Our offices are in a neighbourhood that is not always safe,” says Mr. Missair. “At nighttime the walls on the perimeter would be covered in graffiti. But since we put up the murals, there has not been one piece of graffiti. We are now moving into making sculptures with recyclable materials.” In the countryside, he mobilized a team of 54 domestic volunteers in their early 20s—all recent university graduates —to launch a campaign for promoting the MDGs in their municipalities. These volunteers combined the technical approach of the MDGs with creative initiatives to raise awareness through a series of radio spots, banners, murals, local fairs, marketplaces and nutrition and food security forums. They rallied to the cause, and have since started a whole series of new projects in their local municipalities, including a new fireman volunteer corps. When Nicaragua faced a decline in remittances and development assistance in the wake of the global financial crisis, Mr. Missair found himself in the position of acting as a bridge between the government and the donor community, doing his best to keep support for MDG-related projects alive. “Based on the experience of CCA and UNDAF, and because we as a UN country team were extremely coherent, we were able to build a dream team,” says Mr. Missair. “We were able, for example, to secure $39.2 million from Spain for the MDGs. We won six out of eight financial windows that were put out to competition amongst 51 countries for implementation of the MDGs, making Nicaragua the country with the greatest amount of resources through this fund.” He also worked to encourage democratization, while steering clear of political interference. “We work very closely (with donor funding) with the National Assembly, and inaugurated, for example, a debate in the national assembly broadcast on public TV—supported by the development of a parliamentarian TV channel and a website—on sensitive issues such as the legality of therapeutic abortion. We are immersed in the political discussion on the modernization of the National Assembly. We even inaugurated a school for young leaders—The Youth Leadership School, where young people from different political orientations and ethnic backgrounds will be trained.” It was a tricky balance. “I have had to come out into the political arena without becoming a politician,” says Mr. Missair, “helping to bring stability and equilibrium into an environment which is anything but that.” In October 2009, Mr. Missair was appointed Resident Coordinator in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, while former UN Uruguay RC Pablo Mandeville has succeeded him in Managua. “It is a great challenge”, Mr. Missair says. “I feel enthusiastic and full of expectations because Venezuela is experiencing important changes that might create new opportunities for helping the country in achieving the MDGs, enhancing South-South Cooperation and promoting human rights”.
- Mark Turner |