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    United Nations Development Programme's Regional Centre offers support to Country Offices to strengthen their capacity in project management, and to endorse the creation of strategic alliances and distribution of knowledge in high-priority areas of Latin America and the Caribbean.


    The Centre is integrated with a growing team of professionals and experts working in initiatives that promotes human development in focus areas such as Democratic Governance, Energy and Environment, Crisis Prevention and Recovery,  HIV/AIDS, Capacity Development, and Poverty Reduction and MDG. Additionally, the Knowledge Management team is also consolidated to fortify the capacity of governments and communities, to promote the sustainable development, and to support the completion of the Millennium Development Goals.

     

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Gobiernos Locales y Pueblos Indígenas PDF Print E-mail

16/01/2012

Local Governance and Indigenous Peoples


Local Governance and Indigenous Peoples is the topic of the new knowledge product of the UNDP Democratic Governance Practice Area. The aim of this new product is to systematize and to analyze the local governance and indigenous people experiences in seven countries in the region (Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru) taking into account their own political contexts, actors and challenges.


It is a product that has been configured within an analytical framework, which at the same time serves as a framework for action for UNDP, policy makers and academics.  It complements concepts and turns them into a tool for action and dialogue in order to contribute to the ongoing discussion on local governance and indigenous peoples. In the product a basic framework is elaborated to understand the design, implementation, critical issues, and other necessary elements to support local governance and indigenous peoples. The analysis focuses on the processes, in order to identify useful lesson for those who are promoting this activities or expect to promote it in the future.. The quality of the processes is not judged, since they are a work in progress.  Rather, through the examination of the processes, the document seeks to contribute to policy dialogue.


The content of this knowledge product nourishes from the lessons learned in the initiatives that UNDP has developed in Latin America, the best practices identified, and also from the rich discussions that were promoted in the framework of the Regional Seminar on Local Governments and Indigenous Peoples, held in Chiapas, Mexico on April 2010, and the different approaches, topics, challenges and opportunities that were identified in the various dialogue exercises.
The Seminar provided a space to exchange experiences and to generate a shared frame of reference, offering inputs for a regional strategy in the topic of local governance and indigenous peoples. In the Seminar not only UNDP Country Offices participated, but also indigenous leaders and academics, representatives of FLACMA and UNDP advisors both from  Regional Centers and the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean in New York. This is a joint initiative between UNDP- Mexico, the Democratic Governance Practice Area in the UNDP Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean (Panama) and was made possible thanks to the support of the Bureau for Development Policy of UNDP (BDP/DGG).


The publication is also available in Spanish, to download the product click here.
 
The Regional Centre Commemorates the International Anti-Corruption Day Sponsoring a United Nations Inter-Agency Regional Forum

14/12/2011

In collaboration with the regional office of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), on December the 7th the UNDP Regional Centre LAC organized a forum with several United Nations´ agencies to reflect on the challenges to fight corruption and identify ways and means to collaborate.  Freddy Justiniano, the Director i.e., of the Centre moderated the forum.


The forum started with a presentation by Gerardo Berthin, Governance Policy Adviser of the UNDP Regional Centre, who provided a number of perspectives to understand the extent and scope of corruption, and offered some suggestions on how to address both challenges and opportunities.  Carmen Rosa Villa, Regional Representative for the Central American Regional Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, focused her presentation on the issue of impunity, and how the lack of strong and effective judicial institutional can increase the risk of state capture of political power by a small interest (political and business) groups..  Sebastian  Hamel Rivas, the Anti-Corruption Mentor of the UNODC Regional Office, focused on the preventive measures and the criminalization and law enforcement components of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, and in particular the Review Mechanism, to monitor compliance by States that have ratified the convention. In the region, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru and the Dominican Republic are schedule to undergo a review.


Then the Forum had three commentators who provided new insights and inputs.  Kim Bolduc, the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Panama, provided great insights from her vast experience, focusing particularly on the challenges that are brought by such a complex and multi-dimensional phenomena as corruption.  Using practical and valuable examples, Ms. Bolduc provided useful inputs for the discussion.  Nadine Gasman, the Senior Manager for the Latin America and the Caribbean regional initiative of the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, from UN-Women, provided several insights linking corruption with the role of women, in preventing as well as on evidence that shows that corruption disproportionately negative impact on women.  Enrique Delamonica, UNICEF´s Regional Adviser on Social and Economic Policy, focused on how corruption affects children and adolescent rights, the role of the private/business sector, and how simple elements such as lack of universal birth registration and the lack of information and vital statistics can affect the development of programmes and adequate public policies for corruption prevention.


Participants also had a chance to interact and provide inputs and questions that provided for a fruitful and very informative discussion.  Anti-Corruption is one of the few issues that encourage collaboration of United Nations agencies.  As the Secretary General stated, “...all have a responsibility to take action against the cancer of corruption.”


The event was part of a global and regional campaign.  In collaboration with the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), this year the International Anti-Corruption Day global campaign was commemorated under the theme: ACT- Against Corruption Day. UNDP directly supported 46 countries (including more than a dozen in LAC) to mark December 9th and estimate to reach over 100 million people.
 

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