FIRST COUNTRY COOPERATION FRAMEWORK FOR PAKISTAN 1998 - 2003
| Introduction | Development Perspective | Results and Lessons of Past Cooperation | Proposed Strategy and Thematic Areas | Management Arrangements | Resource mobilization target table for Pakistan (1998-2003)
1. The first country cooperation framework (CCF) for Pakistan contains the goals and strategies of the Government for its development cooperation with UNDP for the period 1998 - 2003. Designed to work fully within the context of Pakistan’s sustainable human development (SHD) needs as well as in the framework of United Nations system collaboration and goal setting, the CCF signifies an important step in addressing the issues of poverty in the country.
2. In preparing the CCF, the Government has drawn upon its own development strategies and priorities, presented over the last few months, including at the Pakistan Consortium in April 1997. It has also benefited from the advisory note presented by UNDP in May 1997, which in itself reflected the consensus decisions of the 1996 mid-term review of Pakistan’s fifth country programme. Indeed, the views of the Government and UNDP are very closely aligned as a result of regular consultations, both bilateral as well as in the context of the Pakistan/United Nations/donor dialogue. The Government has also been fully involved in the preparation of the outlines for the programme.
3. The CCF is fully in tune with the priorities for the people of Pakistan and with those of UNDP.
II. DEVELOPMENT SITUATION FROM A SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE
4. The principal characteristics of Pakistan’s development situation have been well documented. The most important priorities may be summarized as follows:
(a) Reducing the trade deficit and re-invigoration of private investment. Macro-economic stability and an export-led growth strategy will continue to need attention;
(b) Redressing macro-economic imbalances. There is a need to prioritize external borrowing rather than relying on domestic resource mobilization; the continuous pressure on the development budget needs to be addressed vigorously.
(c) Improving human development indicators. Pakistan is determined to change its human development indicators, which are poor for a country with its per capita income: in 1996 it was 134th in the international human development index (HDI) ranking despite having a per capita gross national product (GNP) of $420;
(d) Reducing the gender gap. The paper that Pakistan presented to the Fourth World Conference on Women revealed that, in all measures of human development, women are worse off than men, with adult literacy half that of men, and life-expectancy unusually lower than that of men;
(e) Reducing the high rate of population growth. An important element of the Government's SHD policy is to reduce the current population growth rate of 2.8 percent, which, if unchecked would mean that the present population of 140 million would grow to 250 million by 2020;
(f) Establishing a concerted programme to reduce level of poverty. Current estimates suggest that one third of Pakistan’s total population, or 47 million people, live in absolute poverty;
(g) Expanding employment opportunities. Unemployment/underemployment have been estimated at 16 percent of the population of working age, or 5.8 million, increasing by an annual average of at least 500,000;
(h) Reversing environmental deterioration. Pakistan faces a wide range of green and brown environmental problems, from deforestation, soil erosion and soil salinity, to industrial pollution and problems of solid waste disposal. These have become major factors in the incidence of poverty;
(i) Improving governance. This need represents a common feature in almost all development problems that the country faces.
5. The Government believes that these challenges can be overcome. A number of programmes to address them already exist, such as the Social Action Programme and the National Conservation Strategy. The Government, newly elected in February 1997 with a strong popular mandate, is committed to building on these programmes and has already announced a number of additional reform packages intended to bring about structural reform and to establish a sound basis for accelerated SHD. Moreover, the Government believes that the United Nations as a whole, and UNDP in particular, can play a positive role in assisting the Government and people of Pakistan to address the challenges of the future, as it has in the past.
III. RESULTS AND LESSONS OF PAST COOPERATION
6. The Government/UNDP joint issues paper prepared for and adopted by the 1996 mid-term review, contained an extensive analysis of the results of, and the lessons learnt from, past cooperation between Pakistan and UNDP. The most important findings are described below.
Programme focus
7. The fifth country programme was based on four areas of programme concentration: (a) support to the Social Action Programme; (b) support to the management of the environment and natural resources; (c) income-generation, employment and productivity, including support to targeted programmes for the poor; and (d) support to institutional reform.
8. This programme concentration represented an appropriate response to Pakistan’s development priorities and the Government still regards it as relevant to Pakistan’s development priorities. Nonetheless, the mid term review concluded that several elements within the overall thrust merited reinforcement: (a) Poor and disadvantaged people should in all cases be the primary focus of the UNDP programme;
(b) The poverty-environment nexus should be addressed at two levels: that of national needs and in response to global environmental concerns;
(c) Governance should assume greater importance as a programmatic theme and should also inform all aspects of the UNDP programme;
(d) Gender, despite being a cross-cutting theme, needed more focused attention;
(e) Urban poverty should receive more attention than in the past;
(f) UNDP should focus more on the provincial and district levels of the country, in keeping with the devolved nature of most development issues;
(g) The programme should achieve more meaningful national ownership at all stages of the project cycle.
These conclusions are all reflected in the first CCF.
Programme design
9. While increasingly well focused on SHD and poverty alleviation, the programme has largely retained the project approach, dispersed in effort and variable in impact. There is therefore a need to focus efforts on a limited number of programmes and objectives, making more extensive use of the programme approach. This should assist, inter alia, in resource mobilization as a major priority. National execution should become the normal mode for programme management to ensure full national ownership. More reliance should be placed on nationally available expertise, with less recourse to long-term international advisers.
Programme performance and impact
10. The mid term review concluded that UNDP cooperation had had significant catalytic impact but that measurable impact in many areas was difficult to document. Much greater effort should be made in future to design clear performance indicators. One area of particular concern in this regard was that of gender, where treatment as a cross-cutting issue served to vitiate the gender impact. For this reason, the mid term review agreed to establish a separate gender programme, the precise aim of which would be to target women.
11. The mid term review concluded that capacity-building and sustainability is an area that needs to be continually addressed and for which sustainable results can seldom be confirmed. There needs, therefore, to be greater integration of UNDP support into national programmes, stronger national management of the projects themselves and more stress placed on institutional issues.
Programme delivery
12. Although programme delivery has become an issue for UNDP as a whole, the Pakistan programme has demonstrated its capacity for a high level of overall delivery, when resources are available and sustained for a period of time. Provided that there will be some dependability of resources over the next several years, Pakistan will be able to optimize whatever resources UNDP can make available.
Collaboration and coordination
13. It was agreed that national coordination of the programme needed to be strengthened through a participatory approach. In order to maximize ownership and impact, however, management should be as decentralized as possible, at the provincial and local levels. While the resident coordinator system has achieved a high level of collaboration in certain areas, the possibility of joint United Nations programmes should be further developed. A similar joint approach should be adopted wherever possible with respect to programme monitoring and evaluation.
IV. PROPOSED STRATEGY AND THEMATIC AREAS
Structure of the country cooperation framework
14. Based on the foregoing analysis, the CCF will address the issue of poverty eradication and SHD through three programme areas: (a) governance; (b) gender; and (c) sustainable livelihoods. Each of these thematic programmes will have four elements: (a) capacity-building; (b) alliance-building; (c) resource mobilization; and (d) support to advocacy activities. Several programme management and support facilities will be established to underpin this programme structure.
15. The entire programme, with each of its sub-programmes, is viewed as strategic in nature. This implies that substantial impact, particularly in such a large and complex country as Pakistan, will be achieved only over time. Nonetheless, programme design will ensure achievable targets within the six-year time frame of the CCF. Intermediate, three-year targets will also be defined in each case to facilitate an impact evaluation at this juncture.
Poverty eradication
16. Poverty eradication will be the over arching objective of the CCF. Each programme will be directed towards improving the living standards of the poorest segments of society and to take account of the increasing incidence of urban poverty will also include an urban dimension. Individual and community empowerment will be a common thread throughout the CCF. Another common thread will be support to the Social Action Programme, on the premise that basic education and health are essential pre-requisites for poverty eradication, SHD and, indeed, for economic growth and employment-creation. Finally, close links will be maintained with the UNDP regional poverty programme, undertaken under the aegis of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
17. Objectives. A priority of the Government is the creation of an enabling environment within which the people of Pakistan can influence the direction and conduct of their governing institutions. The UNDP programme will seek to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity in areas such as democratic processes, development policy development, development management, strengthening of civil society, and public-private linkages. In all areas, special emphasis will be placed on provincial and local processes and on community empowerment.
18. Strategies. Since no national programme yet exists in this area, UNDP will assist in the development of such a programme for the revitalization of the principal institutions of governance. At the federal level, this programme will include strengthening of the Institutional Reforms Group, which was established in 1995 and further strengthened during the interim government. At the provincial level, it is anticipated that each government will establish its own Institutional Reforms Group, following the lead of the North West Frontier Government, which has already done so.
19. At the local level, the programme will focus its attention on the emerging district management programme, currently being launched in each of the four provinces. Strengthening the institutions of civil society, especially non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs), is an essential component of the programme, as is the promotion of the free flow of information as a basis for decision-making, through, for example, an expansion in the use of the Geographic Information System technology. Special attention will also be placed on strengthening the Social Action Programme, as one manifestation of governance issues.
20. The Governance Programme will be structured in a process-oriented approach, focusing attention on actions for long-term, self-reliant capacity building, as well as on short-term improvements. The programme will be supported by the UNDP Regional Governance Facility, based in Islamabad, giving Pakistan access to both a national as well as an international network of experience and expertise to draw upon. The Government recognizes that governance is an area of considerable donor interest and will explore the possibilities for joint or parallel financing.
21. Expected outcomes. The Governance Programme is intended to produce the following specific outcomes: (a) a capacity for strategic thinking, planning and advocacy at the federal and provincial levels, involving all components of Pakistan society; (b) strategic framework for national and provincial governance programmes; (c) enhanced capacity for participatory development management at provincial and selected district levels; (d) strengthened NGOs and CBOs, as deliverers of development services as well as an expression of a vigorous civil society; (e) enhanced capacity for the management of the electoral process through the Election Commission; (f) initiation of the reform of legislative and legal processes; (g) improved access to development information for citizens; (h) a programme of collaboration between the Government and the private sector in the field of investment promotion and technology transfer.
22. Objectives. The Government firmly believes in the need to advance the cause of women and therefore adopted the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). UNDP will assist the process of preparing a national programme for the implementation of CEDAW while developing specific interventions intended to make an identifiable difference to the lives of women - particularly poor women - in Pakistan.
23. Strategies. The programme will include a component for policy analysis and elements for national advocacy. Individual activities will be developed to address strategic issues, affecting the condition of women in society.
24. The programme will also include elements for economic, social and political change to achieve the above goals. These projects will seek to support practical steps that affect the lives of women, such as providing women’s groups with micro-credit, enhancing women’s mobility in Lahore, or increasing women’s participation in the media and in electoral politics. These sub-programmes are expected to be excellent vehicles for the mobilization of non-core resources since they are of great interest to many donors. By its nature, this thematic area also involves extensive collaboration with NGOs and various informal women’s groups.
25. Expected outcomes. Being the newest component, the gender programme will begin a phased build-up, in collaboration with the Government and civil society, including the identification of performance and impact indicators through a series of provincial and national workshops involving stakeholders at all levels. However, a number of concrete outcomes are expected to be achieved, such as: (a) improved access to credit for selected poor communities; (b) improved awareness of the importance of mobility to women generally, and, specifically, improved mobility for women in Lahore; (c) an increase in the participation of women in the media and an increased sensitivity to gender issues in media productions and articles; and (d) increased number of NGOs working on the political participation of women and increased participation of women in politics and government, at the local and federal levels.
26. Objectives. The issue of poverty and the environment must be addressed in Pakistan at two levels: (a) interventions that address the poverty/environment nexus in a given geographical area of Pakistan, defined principally by the needs of the local community, especially its disadvantaged members; and (b) interventions that address global environmental concerns in the context of Pakistan. UNDP efforts will be directed to adding the human dimension to environmental issues, as well as in contributing to Pakistan’s technical capacity.
27. Strategies. Taking its lead from the National Conservation Strategy the programme will advance environmental policy-making and capacity-building of national institutions.
28. The principal downstream thrust of its nationally driven sub-programmes will be to refine further the area-based programmes that represent the pillars of UNDP practical poverty eradication efforts. The programme will also include interventions in several urban centres, building on the experience already gained on a micro-scale with the local initiative facility for urban development (LIFE) programme. In each area, the UNDP-supported programmes will seek to match integrated planning and resource management with community empowerment.
29. Taking global environmental concerns as its starting point, the Sustainable Livelihoods Programme will also provide the framework within which resources such as the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol and the Global Environmental Facility will continue to be mobilized for Pakistan. This will build on an already quite successful range of activities funded from these sources, in areas such as biodiversity and vehicular pollution. Wherever possible, however, the accent will be on assisting poor communities, consistent with the emphasis of the programme as a whole.
30. Being by their nature decentralized in terms of management, comprehensive in scope and geographically delimited in ambit, each of the sub-programmes will include specific local collaborative arrangements with other donors as well as locally active NGOs and CBOs. It will also expand the close links between UNDP and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), which has agreed to fund the capital requirements for several of the programmes.
30. Expected outcomes. The main outcomes of the programme will include: (a) specific policy and programme recommendations for national debate, based on analysis of environmental issues; (b) quantifiable poverty reduction through a series of targeted programmes, addressing the poverty/environment nexus in some of the poorest communities in the country, in an integrated, multisectoral manner; (c) a similar programme in three poor urban areas, building upon the experience of the LIFE programme; (d) a quantifiable reduction in industrial pollution and consequent ill health in the tannery area of Kasur; and (e) a quantifiable reduction in vehicular pollution throughout the country.