COVID response: Governance

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the importance of robust democratic governance foundations anchored on inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, and effectively coordinated, accessible and functioning institutional systems to address pandemics and crises of this scale.   As part of the global COVID-19 response, UNDP in RBEC will continue to strengthen national and local governance institutions and processes to help governments and communities to cope with and adequately respond to the crisis, while also fostering conditions necessary for long-term development, stability and resilience.   Across all its areas of intervention, UNDP’s COVID-19 response will support the principles that guide all its work - realization of human rights, inclusive participation, gender sensitivity, accountability, conflict sensitivity and a focus on the most marginalized and vulnerable, including meaningful participation of young people.  In particular, UNDP will support COVID-19 response and recovery in the governance sphere through:

• Strengthening national and local core government functions, and applying good governance principles and digital tools and technology particularly with regard to essential functions such as strategic planning, coordination, implementation, innovation, service delivery, and financing.
• Addressing the privacy, data protection and broader human rights dimensions of using digital technologies to combat Covid-19.    
• Supporting integration of rights-based approaches to enforcement of states of emergency.

Here's what we're doing

- In Armenia, UNDP brought women who participated in its leadership schools and trainings together in an online community, training them on disaster preparedness and response and creating a new resource cadre for their villages and towns. They are seen as the driving force to help tackle COVID-19-related consequences in local communities, for which UNDP will help provide ‘new-demand’ (digital) services to support them.

- In Azerbaijan, UNDP in partnership with the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies launched an online one-stop platform for all e-services available to citizens quarantined.

- The joint UN programme Dialogue for the Future moved its activities online to help maintain social cohesion work in the sub-region through the COVID-19 crisis and recovery period. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNDP awarded grants to civil society organizations, public institutions and schools to support projects that engage citizens, youth and women especially, around cultural diversity, tolerance and environmental and civic engagement.

- UNDP is helping public agencies in Georgia strengthen people-centred public service delivery and expand access to digital tools. This work is creating a “new normal” with benefits for Georgia’s citizens that will outlast the crisis.

- UNDP is assisting the Government of Kazakhstan in developing a recovery financing strategy.

It also supported the National Preventive Mechanism against torture with development of digital tools to monitor closed institutions. A digital platform allows them to conduct on-line interviews with people in detention places, store the collected data and evidences of torture and cruel treatment, and generate statistics analysis and reporting on monitoring visits.

- UNDP supported the establishment of the Crisis Coordination Management Unit within the Vice Prime Minister’s Office in Ukraine. The CO is finalizing a sub-national vulnerability dashboard to support decision-makers in both government and the international community to prioritize and better allocate resources.

Conflict-affected communities in eastern Ukraine received mobile Administrative Service Centres (ASCs) – vehicles providing administrative and social services - to ensure hard-to-reach people living in rural areas and areas close to the conflict’s “contact line”, and vulnerable groups have access to legal services, especially in a time of restricted movement. UNDP also worked on a set of regulations for the mobile ASCs operation in eastern Ukraine.

It also designed the COVID-19: Ukraine Compounded Vulnerability Index Dashboard, which helps analysis of the impact of coronavirus pandemic on the oblasts and helps identify the most affected regions and inform evidence-based decision-making for UNDP and Government of Ukraine.

- In Uzbekistan, upon government request, UNDP will introduce an anti-corruption management system in the Ministry of Health and the overall health care system (for compliance around core business processes, including procurement, storing and distribution of medical supplies, disaster and emergency preparedness).

In addition, the COVID-19 Recovery and Response offer of UN Uzbekistan will support Parliamentary, government oversight bodies, and civil society organizations to expand their capacities, monitor and assess impact of the national response on vulnerable groups and reduce corruption in social service delivery.