Cross-institutional collaboration in times of multilateral fragmentation; challenges and opportunities in IMF-UN collaboration
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Article summary
Notes from the Civil Society Policy Forum titled, Cross-institutional collaboration in times of multilateral fragmentation; challenges and opportunities in IMF-UN collaboration. In the context of fragmenting multilateralism, IMF Directors are underlining the importance of IMF collaboration with the World Bank and UN agencies, building on comparative advantages and respective institutional mandates. While IMF-World Bank collaboration is relatively strong, more significant gaps remain in IMF collaboration with UN entities, particularly OHCHR, the ILO and UNWomen, which is at times hindered by diverging institutional approaches to human rights principles. As the IMF’s impact assessment toolkit becomes better equipped to recognise and address the economic and social human rights impacts of macroeconomic policymaking, this session explored opportunities to strengthen IMF-UN collaboration at the country level.
Moderator
- Emma Burgisser, Economic Justice Lead, Christian Aid
Panellists
- Santiago Rodriguez Goicoechea, Development Coordination Officer, UN Resident Coordinator’s Office (RCO), Mozambique
- Chiara Mariotti, Human Rights officer at UN OHCHR
- Charith Gunawardena, Institute of Political Economy, Sri Lanka
- Robert Powell, Special Representative to the UN, IMF
- Annalaura Sacco, Special Assistant to the Director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, IMF
- Jordi Renart, UN World Food Program
A video recording of this session can be found here.
Emma: today’s session focuses on collaboration between the IMF and UN agencies.
We are in a context where multilateralism is under threat. Ensuring they work and support and complement each other is more important today than ever.
There’s been challenges in the past – sometimes the way the Articles of Agreement have been interpreted has not made it easy.
Particularly as the IMF has developed their work on macrocritical issues, UN agencies have had more to say about IMF’s work.
Today we will try to understand how this collaboration looks like today, what takes us to useful collaboration and what’s at stake
Santiago: I would share experiences with the UN-IMF collaboration in Egypt and Mozambique, also in the context of macrofinance and technical assistance. In Egypt the UN-IDI dialogue platform, in Mozambique the Macri coalition – on both of them the analysis of the state budget has been key.
IFIs share perspective and inform policy advance in these countries – UN analysis is per capita. Methodologies in the budget analysis can help in making the budget transformative for inclusive growth. The UN shares analysis with the IMF for the design and implementation of IMF programmes with the government (like Extended Fund Facility in Egypt). In Mozambique the UN also works on technical analysis for the Resilience & Sustainability Trust.
In Egypt the UN play a key role in INFF (Integrated National Financing Framework), which is key for things like debt swaps, that play a key role in environment issues. It also helps the government for development of business (carbon credits…)
These are examples where the UN and IMF mandate are complementary and supplement each other.
Critical lessons working with the IMF:
- Key to acknowledge the criticality of issues beyond the traditional model. I.e.: climate change, poverty and inequality, and pandemic and conflict preparedness. Understanding the relation between social, economic, environmental.
- Triangulating analysis to support policy making (including IFIS, government, CSOs)
Analaura: how conflict can shut an economy. I help the IMF to better assess the consequences of conflict.
120 ongoing conflicts today – they affect not only tourism, displacements, and other issues. What does it mean for a country being impacted by internal but also spillover or regional conflicts?
People displaced because of conflict – majority stay in neighbouring countries, which are usually middle-income countries.
The IMF’s work is important to open the door to better understand how to support countries affected budget.
Two key areas:
- Data to help workstreams and articles IV
- Programmes: technical assistance and support
Countries that are affected by conflict are affected in their spending. Majority of hosting refugee countries have support from the IMF, in terms of data for example: what’s the impact of public spending, for instance. Also on policy making – what can support the best outcome (like how to ensure refuges have access to jobs)
Post conflict is also imp: reconstruction, policy making to support country reconstruction. This is where UN data is essential (data includes academia and CSOs). Frontliners is where we receive the most accurate information, a reality check.
Jordi: Covid-19 challenged the way we were doing business in the international community, and how we saw an opportunity to expand our collaboration.
Shortly after, other issues such as food security become macrocritical. They provided another dimension for collaboration, how we could support country-based colleagues and authorities.
Data has been mentioned as a key point to entrance for this collaboration. There’re other places where information comes from others, not the IMF. Surveillance is another area to collaborate: develop papers around Articles IV, food security, IMF lending programmes… With lending we inform several structural benchmarks, mostly around how to target social spending, social registry, school meals, which really helps structure the dialogues.
We have 2 phases of what we call pilot countries: In 2022 there were six Sub-Saharan Africa countries where we helped with teams on the ground on how bigger organisations were doing business. Second round with 12 additional countries, including countries in western hemisphere and MENA.
Sometimes we do not realise how much homework we have to do to partner externally – mostly was internal partnerships on how to train our country directors on how to engage with other agencies. We need to strengthen this.
Charith: in Sri Lanka there’s still an undergoing external debt crisis. How can the IMF and UN work together to put people economic cultural and social rights while helping countries to recover as well?
Governments design budget and manage spending, but too often the IMF focus on how to balance budget. Economic recover cannot come at the price of people’s wellbeing.
WB Sri Lanka’s public finance report called austerity painful but necessary.
Poverty level remains higher than before crisis. Collaboration is very important: UN development framework can help the IMF to design programmes that are not only economic sustainable but help and respect social and economic rights of people.
CSOs really help restructure the ways and how to do things to promote inclusive recovery.
IMF country mission should include consultations with IMF country teams and civil society.
Social impact and human rights assessment should be published alongside the programmes to ensure they support life. Provide real time data on how economic reforms help people.
UN-led dialogues next year in Sri Lanka, bringing IFIs and government minister to explore human rights developments – if we can build on this, we move from crisis to develop a human-base framework. The IMF and UN are part of the same solution.
Robert: the IMF is part of the UN system. If I have one message for this room is: we all know the IMF has an economic mandate focused on financial stability, it’s really important to understand this is fully consistent with the mandate of other agencies in the UN system.
The IMF helps members to put in place necessary condition to allow human rights to flourish.
If you want to achieve wider goals countries need resources – we spend an enormous amount of time to find the resources (food, education…)
In my own experience: 20 years ago I was IMF chief for Liberia, after the war. There was a UN peacekeeping force which job was to maintain peace. My job was to help the government to stabilise the economy. They knew they could not do their job of protecting people if we did not do our job. Trust was critical, sharing information, getting a clear understanding on the government goals, getting the right prioritisation.
Last week I was in Geneve with another 15 specialised agencies talking about coherence of the UN system and how to get it right.
Governance changes, AI, GDP+, lots of things that are super important and that can change the path of a government. The UN is very aware of the importance of this.
It’s really important to have the place where all the agencies can hold honest conversations, and the relation between UN country directors and in-country IMF officials, to ensure they all work in a complementary way.
Our work in recent years with the ILO, for example: we’ve been working on social protection on particular cases, to make sure our policy advice is coherent.
In many situations we do much better, and my job is to make sure people are talking and working in a complementary way.
IMF staff have a small budget and need to prioritise, for everything new they take on they need to take something out.
Chiara: I would like to bring back that there’s some tension on what the IMF pursues at the country level in terms of human rights.
Many of policy recommendations and conditionality like fiscal consolidation, austerity, etc., have an impact of what in human rights language refers to ability of states to meet their human rights obligations.
While the IMF may not be obligated to applause human rights standards, the member states that compose it and that it serves, are. It’s important because unlike what may be the common perception, human rights norms and principles are not only abstract ideas but can also have very practical implications and can turn into very practical norms to inform economic practices.
There are areas where collaboration can be strengthened. For instance, impact assessment of economic policies: more and more included in article IV and country programmes. Look at distributional impact of reforms. This is an area where most systematic collaboration with UN and offices in country level can improve, for instance using a human rights approach, like about what the impact of economic reforms are in the state, ensuring people enjoy a minimal level of rights: impact of specific reforms, differentiated impact of specific groups due to a reform…
There are ways even when it comes to human rights in which greater collaboration can be found. This does not mean more work for the IMF.
There are institutional boundaries that need to be crossed, also true for other UN agencies and their own mandate.
In terms of challenges from this collaboration, professional thematic, disciplinary, division and boundaries in language need to be overcome. The UN can be fragmented in their approach to the IMF and IFIs, there needs to be work done to overcome these challenges. From the IMF side, one element that have merged is the limited presence of the IMF in the country level.
In terms of helpful things going forward the role of the CSOs can be strengthen for systematic engagement with the IMFs, for instance in article IV consultations. It seems this is improving but very much ad hoc.
Questions and answers
Kate from Oxfam to Robert: about his comment on the IMF creating the conditions for other agencies to make sure human rights can flourish. Many times, we have heard that human rights are not part of IMF’s mandate. How do these conversations become a reality? Can you share and explain when colleagues have advised IMF not to prescribe a policy because harm of human rights and they have listened?
Robert: regarding austerity. Often countries come to the Fund when something bad has happened (something some sort of external shock or internal situation that lenders have changed terms). IMF does not impose – when there’s no money, countries need to stop spending. The IMF gives solutions to get the best outcome, but the decision is theirs. When there’s not enough money you have to decide how to do things to make the situation sustainable. Strictly speaking the IMF does not have human rights in its mandate, but we all know what they are. In these situation countries know they only have bad options. We give an independent economic advice, helping countries to make very difficult decisions to get to the end of a very bad situation, but we do not impose.
Santiago: UN agencies provide data analyses, so the policy decision can be as optimal as possible. Collaboration between IMF and agencies is key but it’s important not only for information sharing but at the country level, and that the collaboration happens before the design of the programme, not after it has been decided. They need to complement each other mandate, but they need to put the emphasis in the same areas, if they are not complementary you may not have the broader picture and the goals necessary.
Nabil, from Oxfam: labour related conditionality included by the IMF in its programmes. Right to collective group and freedom of association. How would you approach these issues, especially when there’re lots of push over in countries such as in Egypt. Other question is the power dynamics between the IMF and UN? Can you explain a bit more about that?
Jordi: the convening power from the IMF in gathering partners together. Around social protection for example – in Haiti, we saw the IMF aligned partners to make sure the social protection projects they were handling were aligned. Connecting the dots. Our sustainability strategy – like school meal programmes that we are handling out to the governments, key is for goverments to make sure national budget takes this into account.
Mia, of Independent Diplomates: question the UN and other agencies is in an existential crisis due to lack of funding. How does this collaboration look like in upcoming years given this crisis?
Emma: many have mentioned social protection targeting. Are the agencies mostly exchanging data, or are we having a more robust policy conversation? Any insights that any of the panellists would give?
Mahina, CESR: how many of these programmes are really looking at the recommendations of the mandate holders of the IMF? In Egypt for example we know for a fact poverty has increased after the 2016 programmes, targeting is contrary to universal.
Representative of Tax Justice Network Africa: how is the IMF engaging with the UN in taxation issues, especially given the latest developments at UN level and discussions in NY?
Emma: no time to answer given time, so given the floor for closing.
Analaura: the thing that strengthen us is how data is being shared. Other elements like WEO and REO, you will see how the IMF is positioning itself in issues such as migration and displacement, fragility, looking at things that can improve and things that cannot.
Melani (Charith colleague): in terms of arising cost of living and lots of things we are going under IMF austerity. When IMF conditions have been negotiated, public consulations need to be held in local languages, many people do not understand the conditionalities that have been taken. When you talk about working together, instead of trying to fix the issue caused by this unfair global financial architecture, what we need is a human right plan which can be given by the UN. We are trying to address the results of the austerity, but what we need to create is an alternative financial infrastructure that does not need austerity.
