Objectives and Context

Argentina is an upper middle income developing country with a federal economy dividing the country into provinces, which are further divided into municipalities. In general, provinces have a high degree of fiscal and political autonomy, while municipalities are very dependent, with varying degrees of autonomy. Following the reestablishment of democracy in 1983, Argentina has struggled with a series of economic crises which have accentuated regional disparities. Human rights have assumed a central position in the national policy framework during this period, and the civil society sector has grown strong. Civil society representatives and development practitioners have noted that while most local development programming tends to promote participation and social inclusion, this generally occurs within project implementation, and a need was perceived to reinforce participatory mechanisms, particularly in design and evaluation of development programmes. This implies a more thorough analysis of the quality of participation, which must itself be broadly participatory. Towards this end, Targeting MDGs at a local level with a HRBA aims to establish fora and activities that will enable stakeholder participation in local development throughout programme cycles. Municipal processes are targeted for their capacity to influence regional development problems, and the project aims also to coordinate development, MDG and human rights initiatives at the regional and national levels, and between different sectors.

Links, Strategies and Tools

Noting that compared with national or regional government actors, municipalities tend to have direct contact with the population and their needs, but fewer resources to meet these needs, Targeting MDGs at a local level with HRBA aims to engage the participation of local populations, while simultaneously coordinating national, regional and community actors involved in local development. Towards this end, the project partnered with the National Secretariat for Human Rights (NSHR) and a prominent national NGO, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (APM).  The NSHR is a branch of the Ministry for Justice and Human Rights, with Human Rights Offices in some municipal governments.  The project’s launch happened to coincide with the creation of some of these municipal branches, which the project was able to capitalize on, increasing the legitimacy of both parts by linking them the minds of municipal and community counterparts. This was essential for gaining government support for the project and securing municipal cooperation, and was also essential for integrating a holistic human rights element into the project. APM was the project partner in charge of implantation. With a long history of work on civil and political rights during Argentina’s most recent military dictatorship, APM enjoys wide support and recognition among the Argentinean public and civil society. Assigning project implementation to a widely respected NGO added to the project’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public, and helped ensure broad attendance at workshops.

Human rights are often considered exclusively as civil and political rights in Argentina, and this posed challenges to securing the cooperation of some municipal officials in linking MDGs to economic, social and cultural rights.  To meet this need, the NSHR provided technical support, including training sessions on ‘2nd and 3rd generation rights’. To minimize resistance to the project within municipal governments, the project also utilized mixed teams, ensuring that project facilitator teams were themselves representative of all stakeholder interests, including those of each municipality.  The key partnerships with NHRS and APM also helped in this regard.  UNDP engaged with a wide variety of other actors, including many from civil society (over 150 civil society organizations participated in workshops).  In addition to the inherent value of a broadly inclusive approach, this improved the quality of workshops, and increased the potential for future partnerships.

Stimulating dialogue between stakeholders is a primary aim of all workshops in the project, and is seen as instrumental both for building the capacities and engagement of communities, civil society and municipal governments, but also for establishing mechanisms for interaction between them.  This is especially key in diagnostic workshops, which are tailored specifically to each municipality by Municipal Technical Teams.

In the municipality of Morón , for example,  it was noted that while human rights were widely understood and internalized by participants, MDGs were perceived as strange or foreign concepts.  The first workshop thus began with sensitization exercises.  Participants first worked in mixed groups to prioritize the MDGs for their municipality, and then after debating the findings of different groups in plenum, the groups linked the  MDGs to human rights.  These exercises produced shared understandings between stakeholders which were capitalized on by Morón’s second workshop, in which participants again formed groups and proposed policy areas that would help the population achieve the MDGs. These proposals were then compared with the municipality’s list of ongoing public programmes and policies for each MDG. In this way, the participants learned which of these priorities were already being addressed, and which were not, and the government received preliminary input from civil society as to what policy areas they would like to see addressed in the local development strategy.  The government was also able to learn that its programmes were not well known – civil society participants had not heard of 29% of them.   In subsequent workshops, participants evaluated contributions that they could make towards achieving the MDGs, and worked to establish a space for continued debate on the issues raised in the first three workshops

Of course, designing workshops to facilitate networking, strategic partnerships, and coordination among stakeholders requires that workshops enjoy broad participation from all stakeholder groups. In order to encourage the participation of communities and civil society, UNDP regularly published the programme’s progress and results. UNDP also made creative use of local media. For example, when UNDP sent a press release to a major local newspaper, an article was printed describing the project and telling readers how to get involved. The positive tone of the article, and the fact that it was run at all, may be attributable to municipal pride in being selected as one of the project’s three pilot municipalities.  This fits into the project’s general strategy of incorporating new processes or mechanisms into existing ones, instead of creating new fora or mechanisms, which may be redundant or less effective if not connected with existing processes.  Similarly, the MDG planning process in one municipality was incorporated into the development planning processes already underway.  The goals contained in the municipality’s action plan for 2006-7 were restructured to reflect MDGs, and the MDGs were used to set targets for the municipal strategic plan for 2010.  These processes were facilitated by the fact that they were implemented by the same municipal teams established by UNDP, as well as the same municipal government actors.

Another activity underlying all phases of the project is dialogue between stakeholders, and the engagement and capacity building of communities at the diagnostic, assessment and planning stages. This will be continued in the implementation and monitoring stages.  Throughout the assessment and planning stages, Targeting MDGs at a local level with HRBA has also allowed for the detection of management flaws (such as insufficient or ineffective information systems, inadequate or inefficient participation processes). This was initially largely accidental, and municipalities were surprised to learn that specific processes, such as communication processes, were not as strong as they were thought to be.  Self correction and continual refinement of a project may be facilitated, however, by publicizing information and results, and through multi-stakeholder dialogue in workshops. Specific challenges to the project’s implantation so far have also been addressed in a ‘Lessons learned’ workshop for municipal teams. The results of this workshop are being used to draft a methodological guide for other municipalities.

Targeting MDGs at a local level with HRBA has produced the following tools:

• Guidelines for applying the project in other municipalities (Forthcoming)
• Local Plans to achieve the Millennium Development Goals: The added value of the Human Rights Approach in Strategies to Combat Poverty (a report on lessons learned, to be updated after June 2007)

Process and Status

Phase I: Methodology Design and Data Collection

Municipal Technical Teams were created in each pilot municipality, composed of   municipal officials and technical consultants, which then collected existing development data through desk research and interviews. This information was then used to design a participatory methodology for later stages, and to identify existing government policies and initiatives in each municipality. The participatory methodology was then published in a brochure on how civil society organizations can use rights-based analyses to evaluate municipal development strategies. This was distributed to raise awareness on issues, and to stimulate participation in the project’s second phase.

Phase II: Assessment and Action Plans

Information gathered by Municipal Technical Teams was used to design and inform workshops in which stakeholdersperform human rights based analyses and assessments. Municipal Technical Teams design these workshops specifically for each municipality, with assistance from APM and UNDP. Each workshop varies according to municipal contexts, but all begin by relating human rights and the MDGs in local contexts, and then conduct a human rights based analysis of municipal MDG policies, identifying strong points and points for improvement, and the role of municipal actors. (For an example of the workshop structure taken from the municipality of Morón (see the Links, Tools and Strategies). In addition to stimulating debate between stakeholders, the workshops aim to produce agreement on a situation analysis and assessment. These assessments will then guide planning phases, and inform human rights awareness campaigning, which targets the most vulnerable portions of the local population, and promotes further participation.

Stakeholder workshops will then be held to facilitate the creation of local action plans for MDGs with a HRBA. Each working plan will vary from locality to locality, but will all encourage debate among a wide spectrum of stakeholders, and will each include the following common elements:

• Adaptation of MDGs to local context and realities ‘on the ground’
• A human rights based assessment of policies and interventions needed to achieve the goals
• Design of advocacy strategy to be directed towards the institutions responsible for implementing the proposed policies
• Anticipation of follow up measures to monitor the implementation and impact of the activities.

To date, 2 of the 3 pilot municipalities have completed their draft action plans. Progress in the third municipality has been stopped completely by the mayor for complex contextual reasons. UNDP is currently analyzing the situation to see if it is possible to restart or correct the project in this municipality.

Phase III: Drafting Municipal Development Plans

In 2007, the action plans developed in Phase II will be discussed in detail with municipal governments and a select group of civil society organizations. The results of these discussions will then feed into a Municipal Development Strategy which will be drafted by Municipal Technical Teams and a local consultant.  This Strategy will then be presented to the Mayors of municipalities for implementation.

Phase IV: Implementation and Follow up

Implementation will be conducted by local teams established by municipal governments.  Monitoring mechanisms are currently being designed, and will be implemented by UNDP. Negotiations with the National Secretariat for Human Rights are underway regarding the application of the project at the national level. UNDP Argentina has held a workshop on lessons learned in each municipality, and is preparing guidelines for the project’s application in other municipalities.

UNDP has recently received funding to extend the project until June 07, and hopes to remain involved, to provide technical assistance and monitoring throughout the implementation phase. 

Impact

2 of the 3 pilot municipalities have completed draft plans to date, and implementation processes are scheduled to begin in May 2007, though this is an election year in Argentina, and so this may be postponed.  As many of the challenges faced by this programme regard the implementation phase, UNDP Argentina feels that it is not yet realistic to evaluate the programme’s impacts.

Challenges

Human rights are understood primarily as civil and political rights in Argentina, and this makes for conceptual difficulties when trying to link human rights explicitly to MDGs in programming. Even when the conceptual premise is accepted, municipal officials are often reluctant to actually implement and make good on aspects of the programme, by mobilizing resources and implementing changes in decision-making structures or relationships with civil society. This type of reluctance may be more or less visible, and can impede the programme’s progress at any stage, potentially preventing the programme from being implemented at all, even after a municipality is fully committed to do so. Some of the most common manifestations of this reluctance have been insistence on formal participatory mechanisms, failure to include participants and results in substantive political decision-making mechanisms, and restrict the project’s access to information, especially statistical information, which is essential at all stages of programming. In the case of one of the project's municipalities, weak political engagement arrested progress at the quite late stage of finalizing an action plan. For a number of reasons, UNDP was unable to secure necessary political support for the project, and progress is currently at a complete standstill.

Even when municipalities are earnestly engaged in implementing the project, however, they often lack the necessary capacities, or are inhibited by factors related to Argentina’s long standing tradition of centralized government. Municipalities tend to be poor in terms of human, financial and technical resources. Innovative programming is often blocked by lack of staff, or a culture of “passive resistance” among established staff in municipalities, who resist programming that challenges established structures of authority and decision-making processes. This challenge has been especially difficult when programmes have attempted to impose ‘external competencies’ on municipalities. A lack of technical resources is also often experienced as the absence of statistical information at the local level, which presents significant problems for assessment and establishing quantifiable goals, and indirectly appears to contribute to the lack of awareness among target populations regarding their rights and development programming. Moreover, Argentina’s main social and development programmes are national in scope. This also makes it difficult to coordinate national, provincial and local actors. UNDP’s programme team notes that this coordination failure is especially troubling given the inherent paradox that municipalities are in the best position to recognize, assess and meet local needs, but lack the resources to do so.

Nevertheless, the programme team notes that the localization of MDGs presents a unique opportunity to address these issues and include other sectors of society in the process of local development, especially for UNDP, who is a key actor at both the national and municipal levels.

Lessons Learned

Planning and Design:

Addressing essential issues early in the programme cycle can make programming more efficient and avoid potentially crippling complications. The inclusion of target groups and municipal representatives in the early programme phases is strongly recommended.  Ensuring broad local participation in planning stages and diagnostic exercises will increase the quality of participation in subsequent stages, and relevant groups should be targeted from the very beginning of the programme cycle. Similarly, preliminary analyses should include an analysis of political leadership and management structures in municipalities, as this will simplify the processes of identifying duty holders, encouraging cooperation, and assigning responsibilities to municipal actors. Awareness raising among municipal actors at the beginning of a programme is likely to improve the cooperation of municipalities later in the programme cycle. Programme outputs, such as the objective of establishing concrete goals in a coherent action plan, should also be conceptualized from the beginning of the programme.  Considering outputs in the design of diagnostic exercises will facilitate their production in later stages.

When planning participatory workshops, it is important that participants represent the diversity of ‘places’, as well as the diversity of groups and sectors affected by and involved in development processes. Geographical representation at the hyper-local level should even be considered, as different neighbourhoods within a community may have differing needs and agendas. Nor should participation be conditioned on any formal requirements such as the representation through a civil society organization, as this will effectively exclude some members of society. Participation should thus be open to all community members and individuals with no affiliation to an organization. It is also important that the locations for workshops are selected with an aim to promote participation and facilitate access, and for this, it is helpful if locations are considered socially prestigious by the community. In addition to broad inclusiveness, all workshop activities should be mindful of opportunities to establish or reinforce networks and cooperation between stakeholders.

All programme stages, and especially the diagnostic and Action Plan-drafting phases, should be structured so as to allow for the detection and correction of management flaws such as insufficient data sets or inadequate participatory processes. Once agreed upon, municipal Action Plans should be continually updated and adjusted in light of changes in circumstance and information. This requires that assessments are also updated and reviewed.

Coordination:

Coordinating several strategic actors across sectors and levels of government is important for improving the transparency and technical quality of projects, but is only practically feasible if there are clearly defined roles and divisions of labour among different actors. Action plans should clearly identify which party is politically responsible for the implementation of each task. Similarly, facilitator teams may benefit from formalization according to specific rules and formulations, as this will increase an understanding of their role within municipalities.  Equally important is establishing ‘mixed’ facilitator teams, with representatives from different sectors and representing different interests. Representing municipal interests in facilitator teams helps to ensure municipal cooperation and access to essential information, while representation of civil society and other interests helps to ensure the legitimacy of the process.

Coordinating the work of local teams with MDG work at the national or provincial level can avoid redundancy, pool resources, and make programming more efficient. In coordinating across levels of government, it is helpful to utilize the inherent value of systematized information on local rules, programmes and projects to national governments. This may help to secure cooperation, and raise the value of coordination in the perspectives of some actors. 

It is important that discussion between stakeholders and the coordination of action at the local level is facilitated throughout the programme cycle. Fora for coordination and discussion should remain open especially in the execution and monitoring stages. However, this should not take the form of new institutional fora, and a key objective of coordination should be to avoid parallel or redundant initiatives, fora and mechanisms.

A key aspect of coordination is the provision of information.  Top-down information distribution is essential in this context and affects the quality of all aspects of the programme.  Distributing statistical information to communities, as well as information about programming and programming outputs, is fundamental for stimulating broad participation in political and development processes.  In light of this UNDP Argentina recommends regular awareness raising activities and publishing information on the outputs of programmes.   Informing the public of situations and progress at key steps throughout a participatory programme will improve participation in quantity and quality.  This also provides a key entry point for the continual evaluation and refinement of programme methodologies. 

Distribution of information between project partners is also essential, and lack of relevant information due to political or practical obstacles can pose serious challenges.  One response is to use supplementary data sources, either published by other government agencies, or academic or civil society agencies.  Partnering with universities, scientific centres and specialized NGOs can help significantly in this regard, in addition to helping with human and technical resource shortages, and generally reinforcing cross-sectoral networks and participation in development processes.

Another key challenge to project implementation is capacity limitations.  Limited budgets and resources can be accommodated by mobilizing pre-existing resources.  This may take the form of using existing networks of institutional relations to disseminate information or obtain expertise.  It is a matter of including a new planning process into other ongoing ones, using institutionalized implementation mechanisms. Given that many municipalities are limited in their capacities both formally in terms of legal jurisdiction, and practically in the ways described above, it has been suggested that it is advisable to prioritize those MDGs with which municipalities can take the most active and influential role.

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