Date June 2010
Resident Coordinator/Resident Representative Post Profile

1  Country: Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR)

2  Duty Station: a) Location: Vientiane, Lao PDR

b) Classification: C

c) Family or Non-family: Family

3  Required Language(s): English

4  Languages that would be an asset: Lao, Thai, Vietnamese, French, Russian

Country Situation: Lao PDR is a unitary state. Classified by the UN as a Least Developed Country (LDC), Lao PDR is one of the poorest countries in Asia. It has a population of 6.0 million people [1], a land area of 236,800 km2 and an estimated per capita income is US $630[2]. Landlocked and increasingly becoming land-linked, Lao PDR shares borders with Thailand, Viet Nam, China, Cambodia and Myanmar and most of these neighbours are growing rapidly.

The Lao PDR has been successful in sustaining robust economic growth, with real GDP growth of 7% and above, and this is well beyond the economic performance of other land-locked least developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region.With the rising rate of economic growth, poverty rates are also declining. Lao PDR has significant natural resources, including forestry, minerals, and hydropower. In spite of a declining share, agriculture is still the largest sector in the Lao economy, contributing 42% to GDP in 2006 and employing nearly 80% of the labour force. The challenge for continued poverty reduction in Lao PDR is to sustain the level of economic growth achieved over the previous decade while enhancing equitable distribution across provinces and to rural areas.

The Lao PDR is also one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, with 68 official ethnic groups belonging to three main groups: Lao Loum (lowland), Lao Theung (upland) and Lao Soung (highland), and comprising some 200 ethnic subgroups.

5  The overarching national development goal of the Government of Lao PDR is to graduate from the Least Developed Country status by the year 2020 through a strategy of sustainable economic growth and people-centred equitable development. The National Socio-Economic Development Plan (NSEDP) 2006-2010 is the Government’s principal medium-term planning instrument, which sets out the key tasks, guidelines and targets for the country’s development. The Ministry of Planning and Investment currently led the development of the new 7th National Socio Economic Development Plan 2011-2015 (7th NSEDP).RC/RR’s assignment starting date: ...... 2010?

6  Will there be additional coordination functions, e.g. Humanitarian Coordinator? Humanitarian Coordinator, UN Designated Official for Security

7  Is RC also the Director of UNIC? No. There is no UNIC in Lao PDR. The Resident Coordinator and her office, however, facilitate the UN Communications Group set-up.

8  Is there an SRSG or other Special Envoy of the SG assigned to the country? No.

9  List all represented UN Funds, Programmes and Agencies (incl. Regional bodies):

Resident UN Agencies: FAO, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNODC, WFP, WHO. UNV is represented in Lao PDR, working through UNDP. Three international financial institutions, ADB, IMF and the World Bank, are also represented in Lao PDR and full members of the UN Country Team. While UNIDO, UN-Habitat, ILO and IOM do not have country offices in the Lao PDR, their senior project staff represent their agencies on the UN Country Team.

Non-Resident UN Agencies: IFAD, ILO, IOM, ITC, OCHA, OHCHR, UNCRD, UNCTAD, UNESCAP, UNESCO, UN-Habitat, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNIFEM.

10  Inter-Agency Task Forces and/or UN Theme Groups operational in the Country:

·  UNDAF Theme Groups: Health, Education, Sustainable Livelihoods, Governance, HIV/AIDS

·  Working Groups: Operations Management Team, Food Security and Nutrition, HACT, IASC Committee for Natural Disaster Response Preparedness, Cross-Sectoral Influenza Working Group, Extended Working Group on Human Trafficking, Communications, Statistical Indicators/MDG Monitoring, Gender

·  Time Bound Task Forces: REACH, Joint Sustainable Livelihoods Programme, UNCT Analytical Study of Socio-Economic Impact of Higher Food Prices in Lao PDR, National Assembly Joint Programme

11  Status of Development Planning Instruments:

a)  Country Strategy Note (CSN): N/A

b)  Common Country Assessment (CCA): Yes. The first CCA was published in 2000, and second in early 2006.

c)  Harmonisation of Programme Cycles: Yes.

d)  United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF): The first UNDAF cycle was from 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2006 and the second UNDAF cycle is from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2011.

12  Key political and socio-economical issues significant for UN System development assistance:

Governance and Human Rights:

(a)  Participation - Strengthening participation of citizens, especially women, in the review of public policy, local governance and as partners in development.

(b)  Rule of Law - Increasing the effectiveness of the legal system through support to legal reform and capacity development; increasing equity in access to legal services.

(c)  Public Administration and Decentralisation - Developing capacity at national and sub-national levels; strengthening policy development, strategic oversight and monitoring of governance reform; strengthening human resource management and human resource development

(d)  Continuing to tackle corruption;

(e)  Human Rights and International Law - Ensuring national laws are consistent with the obligations under international treaties which Lao PDR has ratified; regional and international integration; supporting the Government to realise universal human rights.

Population and Poverty:

(a)  Data Quality and Monitoring - Improving national capacity in data collection, research, and analysis and use of data; ensuring quality of data for improved planning and monitoring.

(b)  Policy Formulation and Implementation - Improving national capacity to implement multi-sectoral programmes in linking economic growth, population, and poverty reduction issues.

(c)  Reproductive Health Behaviour - Addressing early marriage, high adolescent fertility and low contraceptive usage, especially among poor families, no use of health care provider for delivery, under utilization of emergency obstetric and newborn care, resulting in high maternal and neonatal mortality.

Food Security, Nutrition and Agriculture

(a)  Awareness and Promotion - Increasing awareness of nutrition and food security including education and information on diet, sound breast-feeding, food preparation, and dietary practices.

(b)  Policy Formulation and Implementation - Ensuring the formulation of appropriate policies and incentives to promote sustainable, intensified, and diversified food production increasing agricultural productivity and efficiency, and support labour saving technologies - especially in upland areas - that increase agricultural output, conserve agricultural biodiversity and reduce women’s workload.

(c)  Financing and Resources - Ensuring adequate financial allocation and long-term funding to the agriculture sector, and establishing long-term investment strategies with particular provision for recurrent costs.

(d)  Community Mobilisation - Encouraging small-scale and participatory development schemes; supporting rural savings mobilisation and credit extension services; ensuring implementation of community health schemes; ensuring cross-sectoral institutional and community participation.

(e)  Strengthening responses to tackle chronic malnutrition at all levels.

Natural Resource Management and Environment

(a)  Policy, Regulatory and Institutional Framework - Improving implementation of environmental policies, including sustainable forestry; fisheries law, law on wildlife and aquatic animals, pesticide legislation, national obligations under international conventions on environment; environmental impact assessment regulations; other legislation, policies, strategies and action plans; institutional strengthening; capacity building.

(b)  Poverty-environment mainstreaming - Promoting the sustainable use of natural resources and biodiversity to ensure the socio-economic development, poverty eradication and the protection of the environment; integrating management and sustainable use of natural resources and environment into broader development planning and pro-poor policies; promoting and developing financing mechanisms for environment; enhancing private sector involvement; and enhancing local level involvement in resource planning and management.

(c)  Promoting Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), green agriculture policy and organic production, and integrated pest management.

(d)  Climate change - Mitigation, adaptation and response.

Infrastructure

(a)  Access - Providing access to markets and social services despite physical and topographic difficulties and sparsely distributed population.

(b)  Need for accelerated integration of social and environmental concerns and enforcement mechanisms into sector planning. Harmonization of development support in the sector needs further efforts and to involve all partners.

(c)  Sub-regional cross-border cooperation well developed - Strengthening sub-regional cooperation to minimise losses and costs associated with border crossing traffic and cross border migration, which is particularly burdensome for a landlocked country like Lao PDR.

(d)  Expanding rural electrification coverage.

Trade and the Private Sector

(a)  Regionalisation and Globalisation - Assisting WTO-accession and regional trade negotiations especially AFTA; improving trade-related infrastructure and expanding trade with neighbouring countries; encouraging private sector growth and export related activities.

(b)  Policy and regulatory framework - Establishing a regulatory framework for investment and eliminating impediments to investment, an investment promotion strategy, and promoting institutional development.

(c)  Private Sector development - Fostering sustainable outward-looking private sector development; ensuring greater transparency and accountability in decision-making processes to help generate business confidence and higher levels of broad based economic growth.

Education

(a)  Improving service delivery - Enhancing availability of, and equal access to, quality primary and secondary schooling as well as non-formal education, particularly for girls, ethnic groups and migrant children; addressing low enrolment and chronic repetition and drop-out rates.

(b)  Moves in the education sector towards a sector wide approach - Through the commitments and momentum generated by the Vientiane Declaration. Donors will increasingly have to work together on pooling resources to maximise effectiveness of aid and this will require flexibility and the need for compromise.

(c)  The development of a single education strategic plan for the whole sector (which sets out priority policies, in line with the National Socio Economic Development Plan, and costs these accordingly – difficult decisions will need to be made by GOL to accelerate progress towards Education For All and Millennium Development Goal targets).

(d)  Growing emphasis on regional integration (e.g. ASEAN and the need to ensure the education system produces graduates with the right kinds of skills for the labour market)

Health

(a)  Service delivery and access - Improving the quality of health care services with a focus on service delivery, and emphasis on maternal health, child/newborn health, and communicable disease control; improving the coordination and planning of health care services; ensuring equitable access to and appropriate utilisation of health services.

(b)  Awareness and promotion - Improving health promoting behaviours at all levels.

HIV/AIDS

(a)  Leadership and commitment - Increasing, sustaining and broadening political commitment and leadership at all levels; including HIV/AIDS related activities into national development plans; increasing resource allocation, including new partners and stake-holders; actively engaging ministries and national authorities outside the health sector; translating commitment into meaningful institutional mechanisms that can lead and coordinate an expanded national response; committing to a rights-based response, choosing supportive strategies rather than punitive approaches; addressing denial, stigma and discrimination; providing an enabling environment and targeted interventions.

(b)  National responses - Rapidly scaling up the response of well prioritised and targeted interventions that focus on the most vulnerable groups; improving the quality of interventions; establishing an effective system to track the epidemic, and to monitor and evaluate the response and impact; building capacity at all levels; re-launching an effective and functioning multi-sectoral national coordination mechanism; expanding the coverage of treatment services; facilitating access to means of protection; integrating HIV/AIDS prevention and care activities into other nationwide systems (e.g. education, uniformed services), promoting greater involvement of people living with HIV.

UXO/Mine action

(a)  Signature on the new convention on cluster munitions (CCM) in Oslo in December 2008 and ratification in March 2009. Laos will host the First Meeting of States Parties of the CCM, which is scheduled to be held in Vientiane from 9-12 November, 2010.

(b)  UXO Sector Evaluation

(c)  Review of the National Strategic Plan for the UXO Sector (2003 to 2013)

(d)  Development of a comprehensive UXO database and data collection system

(e)  Accidents occurring from intentional interaction with UXO such as scrap metal correction

(f)  Resource mobilisation - Mobilising resources for UXO programme; improving the integration of UXO/Mine action with other development activities.

Drug Control

(a)  Opium elimination - Creating a sustainable human development environment that will enable illicit opium production to remain eliminated with due understanding and concern for the living conditions of the communities involved.

(b)  Treatment and support -Ensuring that coping strategies adopted by former opium farmers are consistent with proper environmental resource management practices; providing treatment to recovering addicts and preventing relapse.

(c)  Preventive measures - Ensuring that other drugs do not replace opium and become a major health and social problem; preventing cross border and transit trafficking of illicit substances.

Migration and Human Trafficking

(a)  Cooperation with neighbouring countries on promoting legal migration channels

(b)  Protection - Improving measures to identify and protect trafficking victims; halting punitive responses (fines, re-education) to returned victims of trafficking..

(c)  Legal Frameworks - Continuing to support and strengthen legal frameworks to help prevent and respond to human trafficking.

(d)  (Support existing linkages between regional and domestic government ministries, UN agencies and INGOs to ensure a comprehensive and sustainable response).

Avian and Human Influenza

(a)  Strengthening capacity of the Government of Lao PDR in preparing for a pandemic, coordinating internal avian and human influenza actions and external assistance, and responding to the pandemic.

(b)  Ensuring well-coordinated assistance from development partners to the Government of the Lao PDR to implement the National Avian Influenza Control and Preparedness Plan (2006-2010) through a cross-sectoral approach.

13. Highlights of Collaborative UN Assistance:

Strengthened UN Coherence and Reform: The UN Country Team gives special attention to becoming more coherent and harmonised in its operations. Examples of initiatives undertaken to facilitate strengthened collaboration and team building include joint missions together with government to learn about experiences related to One UN and aid effectiveness in Viet Nam; and to share information, discuss critical cross-border issues and ensure coordinated UN responses with the Country Team in Thailand. UN Country Team annual retreats were held in 2007,2008 and 2009, which brought about better collaboration among UN agencies including through the development of joint programmes. To support the implementation of the UNDAF, UNDAF theme groups were established and the first annual review of the UNDAF carried out in early 2008. UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF rolled out the Harmonized Approach to Cash Transfers on 1 July 2007. HACT aims to help the UN rely increasingly on the Government’s systems and procedures for the delivery of technical assistance.