Your Excellency, Mr. Ahmed Ould Abdallah, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania
Mr. Mounir Tabet, Deputy Executive Secretary of UNESCWA
Mr. Youness Abouyoub, Chief of the Governance and State-Building Section and our moderator today,
Dear Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, it is an honor to welcome you to the Capacity Development Webinar Series on "Leveraging Public Governance & Exploring Innovative Solutions to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Arab Region ".
I thank you for your participation, and I am grateful to our partner, the United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia for this excellent collaboration.
Let me go through some main challenges of COVID-19 in the global context and then I will try to give some pointers on institutions as we see it.
The COVID 19 pandemic has harshly impacted the world, challenging healthcare systems, economies, and societies. The most significant impact is on the lives of people, especially those living in conditions of deprivation or already facing difficult socio-economic circumstances.
Urgent actions are needed to protect lives and livelihoods and prompt a thriving recovery for all countries.
As the UN Secretary General said, "the fury of the virus illustrates the madness of the war." The Secretary General's appeal for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world, including in the Arab Region, is the only way to allow countries at war and in conflicts to tackle the biggest joint battle, the one against the coronavirus pandemic. Ceasing combats would free resources to address the emergency and start rebuilding.
Strengthening multilateral cooperation is essential to rethink and restore peace and civil life in the Region. To this end, participatory and effective regional institutions can help address political issues for conflict resolution and building peace, which in turn gives people the opportunity to thrive.
So, my first message is that this human crisis can be only defeated in solidarity, with a responsible and cooperative global response.
Second, as we observed, recent protest movements from around the world are showing the determination of people, calling for bolder social policies aimed at deeply “transforming society”. Job guarantees, minimum wages, basic incomes, and wealth or solidarity taxes are a few examples of bold policies that governments are starting to consider and enact to fight inequality and expand social protection[3].
The "new normal" that we expect after this crisis needs to be far and different from the “normal” that societies knew before COVID -19. As highlighted by the UN Secretary General, these include "raising inequalities, systemic gender discrimination, lack of opportunities for young people, stagnant wages, runaway climate change"[1].
Third, in many countries the COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered institutional weaknesses in terms of multi-level government coordination and policy coherence. Indeed, this crisis has put to test the capacity of the public sector to deliver services through well-orchestrated national and local strategies and plans. It has also shown that countries with well-functioning national health policies and services have fared better than others.
Fourth challenge, as services have increasingly moved online, Governments are strained in terms of financial and human resources capabilities to develop digital tools to support people during this crisis. The fact that half of the world is still not connected to the Internet, has further exacerbated the digital divides among countries and social groups, particularly in the health and education sectors.
Another global trend, highlighted by the WHO, which is affecting trust in government is the abundance of information, some accurate and some not! This has led some governments to set up public communication units to combat widespread misinformation about Covid-19. Effective and evidence-based public communication has become vital in decreasing the spread of the disease and in containing its devastating effects.
If these are the challenges and trends now, what does effective public governance mean in this COVID context?
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted years of hard won actions towards sustainable development. It has highlighted structural weaknesses in public institutions at all levels. The risk, almost certitude, of a slippage backwards on the progress towards the SD goals is clear. And yet, this pandemic has heightened people’s support for redistributive programs. There is a call for a more active role of the government in the economy and for strong universal systems, including for health and education.
What to do? First, invest more than ever in strengthening the role of government in the economic and social spheres. As highlighted in the UNDP Human Development Report 2019, given that social spending often declines as a consequence of rising military expenditure, public service provision is also weakened—and inequalities grow bigger. Innovative measures to contain the spread of the pandemic and mitigate its far-reaching consequences could also go a long way.
Innovation is needed to ensure that governments become more attuned to the needs and demands of people through, for example new e-participation mechanisms and innovative partnerships with grass-roots organizations. Innovation is also essential in making governments more transparent, for example through open budgets, to allow people to have a greater say in how public funds are spent. It is critical that governments put it in place new processes and mechanisms to include marginalized groups in decision-making processes, through for example the use of online government portals, social media and other channels, such as cell phone services, to give them a voice on what they most need during this crisis.
But we also need to think longer term and strive to build back better! Inclusive, accountable, transparent, and effective public institutions are a big part of this “new normal” we want. They do so by protecting rights, providing social programmes and more equitable access to services, including care, safety, clean water, and other emergency and sanitation services, especially in slums, and informal settlements. According to the 2020 World Social Report published by UN DESA, the share of income going to the richest 1 per cent of the population increased in 59 out of 100 countries, with data from 1990 to 2015. Meanwhile, the poorest 40 per cent earned less than 25 per cent of the total income, in all 92 countries with data. This situation calls for concerted action at the global, regional and national levels. Greater accountability in government, through for example open government data and social accountability mechanisms, is essential to regain trust in government. Effective public institutions, with competent, ethical, and well-equipped public servants, coupled with nimbler and results-oriented public sector organizations, are needed now more than ever. This is particularly urgent as social transfers or unemployment benefits need to be delivered in a timely manner to those furthest left behind.
Finally, addressing inequalities and strengthening institutional capacities and preparedness measures can help governments elaborate immediate responses to uplift the poor and the vulnerable and reduce inequality, including the one in gender. These measures require improving collaborative leadership, data to enable decision-makers to make rapid decisions built on evidence, enhancing partnerships with academia and the private sector to harness open data for actions to attenuate the impact of the crises, and enhancing partnerships with civil society to help reach the poorest and most vulnerable.
In the Arab Region, the pandemic is affecting all Arab countries, especially the ones in conflict, where years of unrest and conflict have destroyed health infrastructure, with limited access to basic medical services.
The pandemic is severely hitting vulnerable groups, especially women, young people, persons with disabilities, and those working in the informal economy with no access to social protection and insurance. According to the 2018 ILO report on Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture , more than 60 per cent of the world’s employed population are in the informal economy. This means that 2 billion people work informally, most of them in emerging and developing countries. The majority lack social protection, rights at work and decent working conditions.
While the challenges are many in addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, this crisis is offering all countries a dramatic, but real opportunity to work together, to rethink the way our societies are governed. It can provide new momentum to radically transform how we ensure that all people live in dignity and are free from the shackles of poverty or injustice.
Building a sustainable recovery and prosperous future means investing in people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. The 2030 agenda and the SDG framework is our roadmap to "create a human-centered, green and sustainable, inclusive recovery" [2] and to implement a transformational change to respond to people's expectation for a more equitable society and economy.
The COVID-19 pandemic represents, therefore, an opportunity for countries to redress structural weaknesses in their public institutions by strengthening governance, enhancing leadership, promoting transparency and accountability, and encouraging participation and innovation to respond to the current and future crises. Understanding and mapping the institutional weaknesses and gaps is the first step towards context-driven solutions.
We, at UN DESA, together with the entire UN system of regional and country offices, stand ready to help the Member States strengthen their institutional capacities and build back better. And this series of regional Webinars on governance is part of this effort.
I wish you a fruitful discussion and a successful webinar, and I thank you for your attention.