Evaluation of the Governance Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean December 1998 1 CONTENTS Page Foreword Executive Summary Introduction Chapter 1: Promotion of Democratic Governance Chapter 2: Consensus-Building Chapter 3: Governance and Human Rights Chapter 4: Democracy and Citizen Participation Chapter 5: Citizen Auditing of the Quality of Democracy Chapter 6: Reform of the Justice System Chapter 7: Public Safety Chapter 8: Reform of the Electoral System Chapter 9: Modernization of Public Administration Chapter 10: The Processes of Decentralization Chapter 11: Conclusions, Lessons and Recommendations ANNEX Projects evaluated Abbreviations and Acronyms 2 FOREWORD The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is committed to helping countries attain sustainable human development, one of the essential components of which is good governance. Achieving good governance demands an understanding of the complex process of linkage between society and the State, and a readiness to deal with its various dimensions: political, socio- economic and cultural. The past decade has seen intense cooperation by UNDP in the area of governance in Latin America and the Caribbean, as an accompaniment to the process of democratization in the region. The importance of the themes involved, and in particular the approaches adopted, make this experience a highly interesting one. The evaluation of it has several purposes: to make the work known in detail, to allow its major lessons to be learned and to help improve the programmes of UNDP in the region and, at the same time to act as a guide for cooperation in other regions of the world. In view of the size of the region, the need to consider the different situations in which the countries find themselves, and the richness and complexity of the topic, it was decided to adopt a thematic approach rather than a technical analysis of each of the 31 projects studied in eight different countries. The intent of this undertaking was to reflect the differing dimensions of governance and the variety of the subjects which it encompasses, and to gather experience in situations of crisis, of transition to democracy and of stable democracy, in order to obtain an overall view of what UNDP has achieved in the region. The task was performed in three stages. The first was one of information-gathering, with visits on the ground, for which three specialists were engaged: Carlos Blanco, Victor Moreno Catena and Leandro Despouy. The subsequent stages, in the hands of Leandro Despouy, covered the selection and amplification of the information at our Headquarters in New York and the writing of this report. Given the complexity, extent and volume of the information to be processed, this evaluation would not have been possible without the efforts, dedication and cooperation of many people. I should like to thank all those who made this task possible, and most particularly Leandro Despouy, who undertook a very large part of it, and Kaarina Valtasaari, who had the responsibility of directing it within the UNDP Evaluation Office (EO), for the effective supervision of the tasks and for ensuring that this first thematic evaluation of the democratic governance programme of the Regional Directorate for Latin America and the Caribbean (DRALC) should have come to a successful conclusion. I am convinced that the lessons drawn from this valuable experience are destined to be extremely useful in improving the work of UNDP in the region, and will also be applicable in other parts of the globe. Khalid Malik Director Evaluation Office 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY When a region has lived through a history of such turmoil and violent changes as have Latin American and the Caribbean, the idea of democratic governance is of enormous significance to it. The concept of democratic governance encompasses an entire range of subjects which directly impact the conditions of people's lives and are intimately linked to democracy and the preservation of it, which explains why it is important to carry out an evaluation of the activities of UNDP in this area. This work is a summary of an evaluation covering the activities of UNDP in the area of governance in the region, carried out during 1997/8. Since the evaluation was to concentrate on that one particular topic, we did not examine the technical aspects of particular projects but instead selected a sample of countries and situations, topics and projects, sufficiently representative to give an adequate picture of what UNDP had achieved. Ultimately, the purpose of this evaluation is that the main lessons should be drawn, and the recommendations made, which the analysis dictates, in order to improve the activities of cooperation in this field and encourage their application in other sets of circumstances. At the time the projects evaluated were drawn up, UNDP did not yet have a defined set of result indicators for projects in the area of governance, which meant that it was not possible for this evaluation to measure such results. Nevertheless, the evaluation does allow conclusions of a qualitative nature to be drawn and does allow us to state that: · Sustainable human development (SHD) has truly become the development paradigm in the region. This applies not only to projects of international cooperation, since the governments themselves have begun to make use of it in their national programmes and it is a term which is becoming ever more frequently and widely used. · SHD necessarily entails the concepts of democracy and governance. This latter idea, which has now become the overall approach, accounts with every passing day for a greater proportion of UNDP's cooperative activities as well as enjoying growing acceptance on the part of governments, contributing to the political debate in the region and spreading through the academic and intellectual centres of the continent. · The activities of UNDP on the basis of cooperation have gone in tandem with the process of democratization of the region, have driven it forward and have contributed to its consolidation. UNDP's participation has been decisive in the creation of a concept of governance that is most clearly articulated around democracy and each of its components. · UNDP does not operate in a vacuum, nor is it foreign to the political problems of the region. This can be seen in the fact that a large portion of its efforts in the field of governance have been undertaken in close association with the democratic leaders of the continent. · The neutral position of UNDP as a United Nations agency and the credibility which it 4 enjoys in the countries mean that it can act effectively while handling sensitive topics and promoting negotiations and consensus. The efforts expended to bring about full observance of human rights and the building of consensus have played an important part in the bringing of peace to Central America, one which they continue to play today during the processes of national reconstruction and transition to democracy. Even more significantly, in certain cases such as Panama, they have served to contain imminent outbreaks and to head off aggravation of a crisis, thus fulfilling, in fact, the function of a genuine preventive diplomacy. · The appraisal of the political and social impact of the macroeconomic measures put forward by UNDP during the transition processes, for example in El Salvador and Guatemala, represents significant progress, in that it is now possible to envisage the involvement of the international financial institutions in the strategies of national reconstruction. This would imply recognition of the need for balance in the measures intended to rehabilitate the economies devastated by war and the social investments which inevitably have to be undertaken for the peace processes to be consolidated and democracy to be brought to fruition. · The processes of bringing peace to Central America and the improvement recorded in the field of human rights in Paraguay, to both of which UNDP contributed, have created favourable conditions for progress in the sub-regional integration currently under way. · The continual encouragement of popular participation, which figures as one of the central objectives of UNDP's activities, has strengthened the very foundations of democracy, in furthering the inclusion of certain sectors which traditionally have been kept out of civic and political activity, such as women and indigenous populations. In the well-established democracies, participation also shows the boundless contribution that it can make, in producing sound diagnoses of the national situation, establishing mechanisms for assessment by the citizenry in order that its quality may be improved. · The activities of UNDP in the justice sector are currently in a state of major flux, since the demand from governments and the welcome from the members of the judicial system have exceeded all expectations. On a continent where a considerable number of people live in poverty and in conditions of marginalization, creating conditions favouring their access to justice is of capital importance. The establishment of the valid State of Law is fundamental, since it is a fact of the region that the absence of the rule of law for long periods of its history called into question the very legitimacy of the State itself. · Taking an overall view of the justice sector, UNDP's projects promote a reduction in the number of prisoners, an improvement in their conditions of detention, resolution of the situation of those held without trial, prioritization of the situation of young offenders and crime prevention and improving public safety. · Being an impartial entity, UNDP plays a major role in support to electoral system reforms, which help to make elections more transparent, help people have greater trust in them and assist in the building of a culture of democracy in the region. 5 · For a long time, UNDP has concentrated the major part of its cooperative activities on improving public sector management.