Impact by Regions, Countries & Territories
UNDP’s Global Programme supports crisis-affected contexts across all regions to strengthen the rule of law and human rights. In this section, we present five regional overviews, detailing our priorities and approach depending on the context, as well as feature select country and territory results from 2021.
Five contexts from the list (Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Mali and Yemen) illustrate the achievements of the Global Focal Point for the Rule of Law (GFP). In peacekeeping missions and transition settings, UNDP’s Global Programme works through the GFP to deliver integrated assistance with our UN partners.
GFP Global Focal Point Highlights
Political
Engagement
The rule of law is essential for sustainable peace and resilient economies, as well as for the prevention or recurrence of conflict. To prevent or address injustice, inequalities or democratic deficits, UNDP works with multiple stakeholders to operate in a way that is consistent with the rule of law and creates opportunities for all individuals to exercise their rights and access justice.
Institution
Building
The importance of strong institutions is more evident than ever as countries and communities respond to disruption, whether because of public health restrictions, climate change or political upheaval. Limitations on public gatherings and travel have revealed the need for institutions that are resilient to disruption.
Community
Security
2021 was a pivotal year that saw various developments affecting peace and security around the world. Civic space continued to shrink and the social contract between states and citizens was increasingly challenged, particularly during and after the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing distressing consequences of climate change, states and communities are forced to manage more cross-border conflicts, triggered by the displacement of people seeking increasingly scarce resources.
Human Rights
Systems
The scope of human rights challenges is widening, from eroded public trust and shrinking civic space to ongoing inequality and human rights impacts in the socio-economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and emerging risks in the digital sphere. National human rights institutions (NHRIs), along with other human rights defenders, are facing rising and sophisticated forms of reprisals for carrying out their work.
Access to
Justice
Sustainable Development Goal 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) of the 2030 Agenda highlights the importance of access to justice for all for the development of peaceful and inclusive societies. Meaningful access to justice can only be achieved when people know their rights, have the opportunities, agency and capacities to claim them, and have access to independent, inclusive and people-centred justice systems that will respond in a timely, fair and effective manner.
Transitional
Justice
Without justice, there can be no lasting peace. In post-conflict, crisis-affected and fragile contexts, truth-seeking initiatives and reconciliation efforts are essential to bring peace to affected communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down transitional processes as states prioritized their response to the health crisis and measures to support the economy.
Gender
Justice
In 2021, the continued erosion of democracy and the spread of authoritarian trends in politics in many parts of the world contributed to a backlash against women’s rights. The COVID-19 crisis has reversed some of the hard-won gender parity gains by exacerbating pre-existing inequalities and power imbalances. It has also caused a dramatic increase in sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). All these challenges have been particularly acute in conflict, fragile and crisis-affected settings.
Innovation
New ideas and new strategies are critical to building sustainable and effective development approaches that really meet people’s needs. Technologies and globalization raise new human rights concerns and threaten the rule of law. Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to limit people’s access to basic services. UNDP connected expertise across the globe to learn and adapt. Creating a culture of curiosity and experimentation, these efforts ensured that local needs and expertise were combined with emerging models to bring strategic thinking to people-centred development goals.
Overview
Latin America and the Caribbean is the region hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of the pandemic and structural challenges deepened many of the region’s pre-existing inequalities, as the most vulnerable were disproportionately affected. This materialized in rising domestic violence (calls to helplines spiked in the wake of lockdowns); growing gaps in educational access across digital divides as in-person schools closed (66 percent of the richest quintile have an Internet connection at home, compared to 23 percent of the poorest quintile); widening gaps in employment and labour force participation between men and women (women are overrepresented in sectors negatively affected by the pandemic); and a divide between formal and informal workers in access to social protection schemes (between 35 and 82 percent of the labour force are excluded from contributory social insurance).1
Despite these challenges, the regional governance and peacebuilding team in LAC, with its network of regional projects SIGOB, CARISECURE, INFOSEGURA, supported more than 25 Country Offices in the region through integrated initiatives.
UNDP in LAC continued to support the governments in their efforts to ensure access to justice for all, including the most vulnerable, one of the main pillars for an effective governance, beyond recovery. For example, UNDP contributed to the development of national strategies on access to justice in Paraguay and Peru, helped implement strategies to enhance access to justice for women in Brazil and Honduras, and co-led transitional justice processes in Peru, Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico through an inclusion and sustainable development lens. Colombia, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru and Paraguay benefited from UNDP’s efforts to improve capacities of judiciary systems to advance inclusive and people centred services.
Regional efforts to fight criminality and increase safety and security brought certain positive results. By the end of 2021, the combined homicide rate of the Central American and Dominican Republic sub-region fell by almost ten points, from 30.7 to 21.0. This rate is now 1.4 points below than the rest of Latin America while in 2015 it was twice as high. Yet, violence, including gender-based violence (GBV), persisted throughout the region.3
In Central America, UNDP supported the development and launch of analytical tools to measure and promote further progress on SDG 16 to improve citizen security. In the Caribbean, a regional Citizen Security Conference offered a unique virtual experience. Over 400 security practitioners shared their knowledge with police and correctional officers on current considerations for the next frontier of digital transformation and the future of citizen security. The establishment of the first Caribbean Crime Observatory and Regional Crime and Violence Data Warehouse were also formalized during the conference. The development of the Police Records Management Information System (PRMIS) was nearly fully completed in the Caribbean region during 2021 and a pilot successfully commenced in Grenada, CariSECURE's flagship country with three police stations.
In line with the Secretary-General’s Call to Action for Human Rights, in Latin America and the Caribbean, UNDP scaled up its partnerships with the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GNHRI) and UN Environment Programme.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, UNDP will invest further efforts to strengthen the rule of law and promote peaceful and inclusive dialogue to place human rights, people-centred justice and security at the centre of its programme and policy support for sustainable development.