What is UNDP doing in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Disturbingly similar to my own experience with UNDP and UNOPS in Angola is an evaluation of the UNDP/UNOPS Peacebuilding and Community Development Project in Ituri, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by Ingrid Samset and Yvon Madore from the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), an independent, non-profit research institution.

This is an evaluation of the project “Support To Peacebuilding And Community Development In Ituri,” implemented in the Ituri district of the Democratic Republic of Congo from mid-2003 onwards, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in conjunction with the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The project, which ended in 2006, was co-financed by the Government of Norway (U$D 3.1 million) and UNDP (U$D 400 000.00).

At the end of the report they provide the following summary:

“Building peace through community development: this was the key idea of the evaluated project, which was run in the war-torn Ituri district of the DRC from 2003 onwards. The planning of the project did not take sufficiently into account the difficult conditions under which it would be run. Centralisation of project management tasks to UNDP and UNOPS in Kinshasa, and the shortage of resources that were made available for the project at this central level, complicated implementation efforts on the ground. Strategic management was also weak. Still, many positive results materialised as the local partner organisations welcomed the idea of building peace through community development and acted on it in their micro projects. Thanks to many skilful local partners and a dedicated UN project team in Ituri, and despite considerable delays, the micro projects came a long way towards reaching the aims of reconciliation, reconstruction, local capacity building, and HIV/AIDS awareness raising. As a whole the project contributed to launching the processes of peacebuilding and community development in the district. But given the uniqueness of the project and its weak coordination with other agencies, little ground was prepared for a scale-up and a transfer of results in a subsequent phase.

The peacebuilding and community development project was hence a success – but a success that materialised in spite of an unsuitable organisational framework, weak strategic management, insufficient coordination, and continued violence in Ituri. It was in other words a “success by default”; one that came about despite choices made within the project that were not the most amenable to goal attainment. Yet given the project’s positive results, its still unrealised potential, the need for such a project in Ituri, and the learning of lessons within UNDP; the report recommends that the project continue and proposes a number of reforms that should be made within it in a new phase.”
It may be interesting to note that this project was implemented in the immediate aftermath of this confident promise made by the then UNDP Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown in 2003:

“Today, UNDP has come to the close of the most dramatic four-year internal transformation in our history. We are more capable than ever before of responding to the world’s development challenges because our organization is stronger, more focused and better connected. We seek and achieve results, and underscore accountability in all that we do. We look for new and creative opportunities to help people build better lives, through partnerships and the exchange of knowledge, while ensuring that our resources flow steadily behind our mission to reduce poverty.”

In order to truly understand what this project evaluation summary above really says, it may be important to reflect on the euphemistic way in which many of these reports are written. A statement such as “can be improved” usually means “was a complete failure” and - the personal favourite of many consultants doing evaluations - “at best had no results” almost invariably means that said activity harmed the very people it was supposed to benefit.

This particular report is not all that guilty of these sorts of euphemisms, written as it is by a respected and independent organisation. Nevertheless, as is the nature of these reports, its criticism remains in many ways very general, much understated and with an emphasis on avoiding possible conflict and offence.

In this context one should then perhaps be concerned about statements such as “the shortage of resources that were made available for the project at this central level.” That usually means that nobody knows where much of the funds were spent.

If the resources were not made available to the project, where and/or to whom were they then made available?

The usual criticisms that surface so regularly with regard to UNDP -“unsuitable organisational framework, weak strategic management, insufficient coordination, and continued violence,” “considerable delays,” “choices . . . that were not the most amenable to goal attainment” – sits uneasily with Mark Malloch Brown’s confident promise of an organization “that is stronger, more focused and better connected,” that “seeks and achieves results, and that underscores accountability in all that we do.” An organization that “looks for new and creative opportunities to help people build better lives, through partnerships and the exchange of knowledge,” and (by the way) “ensuring that our resources flow steadily behind our mission to reduce poverty.”

It shows an institution that, notwithstanding the report’s assertion of “the learning of lessons within UNDP,” remains an organisation that is unable to learn lessons, in fact, an organisation almost exactly the same as the one of which I have experience in Angola (in the midst of its so-called “most dramatic four-year internal transformation in our history”). The Angola project was evaluated as such by an observer with thirty years experience in the country:

“UNDP is one of the weakest structures in terms of administering programmes. After almost 4 years, none of the rehabilitation had taken place. Proposals received in late 1995 from communities had still not been processed 4 years later. Due to poor implementation, the international community was further discredited. If implemented early and effectively, this programme could have assisted in the consolidation of peace.

UNDP’s own bureaucratic systems of financial planning, reporting and monitoring - Imprecise and overlapping sets of definitions of programme and project boundaries made budgeting a difficult process for non UN personnel to understand. Government, Donors and Communities each became frustrated and impatient with programme procedures and tended to look for means to circumvent them.”

It shows an organisation refusing to answer the questions of their failure in one country as they already embark on exactly the same failures in another.

Refreshingly for a UNDP project it appears that in spite of the difficulties, “projects came a long way towards reaching” their goals, “thanks to many skilful local partners and a dedicated UN project team in Ituri.”

One is assuming here that the UN project team in Ituri must have consisted largely or exclusively of Congolese, thus leaving the burden for the project failures with UNDP in Kinshasa.

As is usual with these sorts of reports it is very difficult to asses whom exactly had not done their jobs, and what exactly it is that they should have done but did not, and, equally importantly, what exactly they did do with their time at UNDP in the DRC.

From previous experience I would be somewhat concerned with the relationship between what UNDP staff did with their spare time and “the shortage of resources that were made available for the project at this central level.”

In Angola it appears as though key staff dedicated their time to making funds available to their cronies. They then dedicated their time trying to cover up this fact.

One can however, with a bit of effort, come up with some names, names that are useful in some ways, but useless in the absence of accountability systems that would actually hold them accountable, that can explain exactly what they did not do and what they did in fact do, if anything. Therefore I can only speculate, but here all same is the, admittedly incomplete and unsupported, result of my speculations:

Roberto Valent, Deputy Resident Representative, and UNDP Programme Co-ordinator,
Babacar Cissé, Country Director, UNDP,
Daniel Mukoko, Senior Economist, Policy and Strategy Unit, UNDP,
Zenaide Gatelli, Reintegration Expert, the COMREC project, UNDP,
Judith Suminwa, Programme Advisor, Post-conflict unit, UNDP,
Robert Geilimo, Community Development Expert, Ituri Peacebuilding and Development project, UNDP,
Clive Jachnik, Principal Technical Advisor, the MRR project, UNDP.

And as I so speculated I also came across German Hulgich, Co-ordinator, Central Management and Coordination Unit, UNOPS.

What made this discovery so interesting is not the name of the person as much as his title. In 2001, as I wandered around at UNDP in Luanda, trying - unsuccessfully to date - to solicit an explanation as to what had happened to the funds that UNDP was supposed to disburse to a project in Huambo, Angola but did not; I came across this correspondence from Dimitri Samaras, Deputy Director UNOPS, and instrumental in the misplacement of said funds, to Herbert Behrstock, Officer-in-Charge UNDP, Angola on 12 March 2001:

“. . .Lots of money have been spent in Angola and wasted for no reason. . . or reasons beyond my imagination.
We have invested but never capitalised on it. Cost benefit analysis is indeed needed.
I do believe that this office needs a Central Management and Coordination Unit which will implement/ execute and supervise all operational activities.”


Dimitri Samaras is not in my experience a person with much of an imagination, but it is astounding how the same solution he offers for their failure in Angola then becomes complicit in their failure in the DRC.

Surely the solution to their problems must be found somewhere other than in the ability to move blocks around on an organisational chart?

An excellent example of this is how in Angola UNDP in the mid-nineties created an “Economics Unit,” which they announced with a lot of fanfare will contribute towards the consolidation of peace and reconstruction in Angola. When this failed to materialise they created the “Project Management Support Unit.” This consisted of two lost looking individuals, a man and a woman, who with increasing and ultimately futile despair tried to figure out what UNDP had done and was doing with its funds. It did not go to its projects. As criticism of UNDP mounted they responded with the “Advocacy, Partnership and Resource Mobilization Unit,” this time consisting of one pathological liar with an uncanny ability to exclaim, “this is getting more and more complicated” when asked routine questions. This finally morphed into a more conveniently named “External Relations Unit” consisting of the same man being equally confused.

The shocking reality that lies behind the measured tones of this report, and is not even alluded to or acknowledged, is the sacrifices and effort that no doubt had to be made by somebody to make the project a success. It is not “success by default” as the report asserts, it is success because without a doubt, somebody, most likely the local staff members, made an exceptional effort to do what UNDP was supposed to do.

Projects of this type that do have some results, invariably achieve them not so much in spite of the failures of UNDP and UNOPS, but because an effort is made to mitigate the harm that these organisations cause.

In his excellent book “The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good” Prof. William Easterly claims that existing aid strategies provide neither accountability nor feedback. Without accountability for failures, he says, broken systems are never fixed. And without feedback from the poor who need the assistance, no one in charge really understands exactly what trouble spots need fixing. Prof. Easterly adamantly argues that the sort of planning administered by organizations such as the UN will never reach the people that need it most.

True victories against poverty, he demonstrates, does not come from those who seek to impose solutions from the top down, but are achieved through indigenous, ground-level effort that adapts to the real life and culture of countries from the bottom up.

It may be a bit utopian to think that all these small efforts will add up to the big changes required in the absence of fundamental global reforms. The efforts of local actors can be a bit of a racket as well, but to suggest that the project can be continued with UNDP, since it has “learned lessons” is equally naïve since UNDP has demonstrated and demonstrates with each additional failure that it is not able to learn anything.