Reports - United Nations Development Programme

4. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESULTS AND UNDP’S CONTRIBUTION
country. Local officials and citizens have displayed
considerable pride in their association with the UNDP
and, through it, with the international community. While
some have questioned the UNDP’s and IULA-EMME’s
non-prescriptive approach to structuring the City
Councils, or structuring their agendas, it is probably
correct to say that maximum community ownership has
been achieved through a process oriented approach.
The LA 21 programme has been a flagship
programme that, along with one or two other notable
initiatives, put the UNDP on the development map in
Turkey. It has gained the UNDP considerable profile and
credibility as a partner at the local level in a programme
that is viewed by the central Government, the local
authorities, donors and national CSOs alike as a success.
ASSESSMENT OF UNDP’S INVOLVEMENT
IN LA 21 AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The UNDP’s LA 21 programme has been process
oriented. The involvement of the UNDP and IULA-
EMME has emphasised the creation of process
management systems, rules of procedure, and the
encouragement of open debate and wide participation.
Composition of the City Councils, focus of the working
groups and sub-committees and the types of issues
addressed have not been influenced greatly by the UNDP
or project staff. This has in part been dictated by the
limited capacity at both the UNDP and at IULA-
EMME, 38 and in part by a conscious decision to
maximise local ownership by allowing implementation of
the programme to take its own course.
The main obstacle to the LA 21 Programme is the
lack of institutionalisation. The fact that the principles of
City Councils are to be enshrined in Turkish law
represents significant progress at the national level, but
there is still a lack of institutional capacity for countrywide
implementation. It is also not yet clear whether the
City Council model will be sustainable in the sense of
representing a lasting forum for citizen participation,
accountability and transparency. For this reason, there
must be a focus on the restructuring of the Programme on
the levels of related national establishments and the
UNDP Country Office.
In order to achieve this goal the UNDP should
continue its capacity building and fund raising assistance
to the Programme by playing a coordinating and catalytic
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38. For much of the period in question, the UNDP had only one national
professional officer involved in backstopping this complex programme. At
present, the same function is performed by one Programme Assistant. At IULA-
EMME, the Programme Coordinator and one Finance Officer are responsible for
the implementation of the entire programme.
role in a transparent and participatory manner. In fact,
what is considered highly innovative in the Turkish
context has already been tried out repeatedly elsewhere in
the world. Participatory, community-based mechanisms
for planning and decision-making have been created with
UNDP assistance all over Asia, the Regional Bureau for
Europe and the CIS (RBEC) region and Latin America
and have been extensively evaluated, with both conceptual
and operational lessons drawn and codified. The
experience gained can easily be transferred and adapted to
the Turkish context with a more extensive and effective
use of both international and national expertise. It is
recommended that project staff, consultants and UNDP
staff from elsewhere should be drawn on to relate and
transfer their experience and provide advice in the
implementation and more particularly, the effective
institutionalisation of LA 21 in Turkey.
Ultimately, the enthusiasm and democratic spirit
created as a result of the LA 21 initiative will survive in
the longer term if the communities themselves have the
ability to influence the use of budgetary and other
resources at the local level. There is a risk that the
benefits of the LA 21 will eventually peter out in the
majority of cities, as has already happened in a few.
However, in order to guarantee the sustainability of the
City Council model, it is recommended that any scaling-up
or continuation of the UNDP’s involvement should include
an explicit consideration of how the City Councils can be
effectively brought into the decision making process on
the use of local Government budgetary resources.
There is also an urgent need to create linkages
between the City Council component of the LA 21
programme and the management of development under
the newly decentralised system of formal Government.
For instance, the UNDP should consider working with
the Government to automate revenue and budget
management by the local Government and to make the
information relatively accessible to the communities being
served. Current draft legislation is also quite vague when
it comes to the role of the City Councils. This could be
further codified and strengthened with more active
involvement of the UNDP in policy dialogue and policy
development with the Office of the Prime Minister and
the Ministry of Interior.
Despite some of the limitations mentioned above, the
experience, respect and credibility gained in the poorer
and more disadvantaged regions of Turkey under the LA
21 programme constitutes a major asset for the UNDP
going into the period of EU accession. Special transfers
within the EU to sub-national regions that are
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