Iniciative: Support to electoral processes throughout the electoral cycle
Support is provided to UNDP country offices in the all the phases of electoral support to the national electoral authorities: participation in the Needs Assessment Missions (NAM), support in the design of the strategy and the production of the project document as well as on the setting up of the project (through identification of experts and working methodology).

Activities: In 2015, technical support has been provided to the EMB in Haiti, Guyana and Guatemala. Support to the UNDP country office in matters related to electoral support has been provided to Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Grenada, Guatemala, Honduras. Discussions on the framework of the support provided have taken place with the offices of Paraguay, Peru and Colombia.

Beneficiaries: UNDP country offices. Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs)

Initiative: Conflict Prevention and Democratic Dialogue
This initiative contributes to Crisis Prevention by reinforcing Latin American and Caribbean countries´ capacities to prevent and manage conflicts as well as the risks of social and political tensions. The overall strategy of the project aims at strengthening democratic institutions by making them more responsive to citizen’s needs and demands through the provision of tailored technical assistance and innovative social methodologies and capacities to prevent conflict, manage crisis and build consensus in Latin America and the Caribbean.
UNDP’s and other institutions’ experience in the region and globally have shown how democratic dialogue participate in the strengthening of democratic institutions and their capacities to respond by providing and facilitating spaces for citizen participation where stakeholders can share their vision and understanding of complex problems. By developing a comprehensive understanding of a problem, dialogue processes help foster deliberation, strengthens social links and capacities, and allows sustainable and creative options to emerge in a participatory and inclusive manner.
As stated by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, natural resource extraction and other major development projects in or near indigenous territories are one of the most significant sources of abuse of the rights of indigenous people worldwide, and an initial step to change that is to establish a dialogue and common understanding between indigenous peoples and governments. This type of assistance will be a priority intervention area for the project.
One of the main guiding principles of this approach is inclusiveness, which refers to bringing together in a dialogue all those who may be part of the problem since they are the ones who will be able to find the solution. Inclusiveness is important in contexts where there has been exclusion, particularly of women, because the dialogue process gives voice to actors who are not normally considered in decision-making processes. Furthermore, inclusiveness opens the door to equitable and effective participation for all actors. When designing the contents and implementing capacity building and reflexive and/or generative dialogue processes, gender analysis is a priority in order to incorporate the differentiated interests, aspirations and needs of women and men, fostering commitment to transformational change.

Activities: The project is organized along 3 work areas:
1. Strengthening existing infrastructure for peace.
The UNDP has worked on different mechanisms that encourage conditions for the creation of peace infrastructures through:
• A demand-driven support to key institutions promoting dialogue processes in the region with a strong emphasis on support to national strategies. UNDP works on and supports other institutions on dialogue process design, facilitation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of dialogic processes.
• Technical assistance for strategic conflict prevention and resolution interventions. Through this, the UNDP has participated in more than 80 prospective missions, assessment of conditions , conflict analysis, and technical support or evaluation of the existing institutions for prevention and conflict management in countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Development of Conflict Analysis Tools, such as conflict and development analysis, the analysis of prospective policies and scenarios, or feasibility missions for dialogue processes.
• Early Warning Systems and platforms to monitor demands that could generate conflicts.
• Design and implementation of protocols of intervention for conflict management.
2.Capacity development among key stakeholders. An articulated capacity development strategy aimed at providing social and political leaders, facilitators and UNDP/UN personnel with dialogic/facilitation skills and raise the capacity of leadership to promote and structure dialogic processes and approaches to face collective problems.
3. Knowledge production and sharing. A continued systematization/documentation process aimed at consolidating and packaging materials/information from past experiences including lessons learned and main challenges and its circulation within a Community of Practice and Learning which acts as a pool of expertise able to guide the support given at the national level. This enormous heritage of the project that includes methodology, experts, compared experiences and extremely useful materials could be shared internally and with other BCPR regional bureaus and countries outside the LAC region.
UNDP possesses a wide selection of conflict prevention and democratic dialogue materials: methodologies, case studies, systematization of concrete experiences, data bases and an updated website (www. democraticdialoguenetwork.org).

Beneficiaries: Public institutions and private sector, national, regional and local governments, civil society organizations, academia, woman, youth and indigenous peoples, Ombudsman's offices, electoral bodies, political parties.

Partnerships and Financing: National Governments, Multilateral and national cooperation institutions.

Initiative: Transparency and Accountability
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through their Regional Hub for Latin America and the Caribbean is supporting national and sub-national governments through UNDP County Offices, in promoting transparency and accountability inititives. Technical assistance, advocacy, S-S Cooperation, knowledge management, and capacity development is provided to mainstream integrity into national and local public policies.
UNDP in LAC supports a number of regional initiatives focused on addressing more effective, responsible, accountable, transparent and inclusive institutions at all levels as a mean to strengthening democratic governance, improving service delivery and access to information, making more responsive policies and institutions to citizens demands and enhance civil society engagement and monitoring, specially women and youth.
UNDP as a multilateral partner of Open Government Partnership (OGP) also support national counterparts (governments and civil society) to advance open government.


Activities: - Capacity development on transparency and corruption risk management in water sector.
- Virtual course on prevention and corruption risk management on public sector
- Social Audit & Youth Workshops
- Technical backstopping and advisory services to Anti-Corruption Authorities (ACAs) and other public institutions at national and sub-national levels.
- Promotion of high level policy dialogues and multi-stackeholder spaces
- Elaboration of knowledge products:
http://issuu.com/cprundprsclac/stacks/6480e121e78a4d35abf901b5e2a39e7c
- Support to design and implement instruments to measure and improve public management and strengthen transparency for institutional effectiveness and citizen engagement.
- Support to facilitate dialogue process with civil society in OGP processes.
- Technical assistance to promote transparency and integrity in Parliaments (Open Parliament, OGP).

Website: www.anti-corruption.org/
www.latinamerica.undp.org/

Beneficiaries:
Public institutions at all levels
Civil servants
Civil society organizations
Youth

Partnerships and Financing: The UNDP Global Anti-Corruption Initiative GAIN, joint its global activities and partnerships with more than 15 internal (UNDP units and UN agencies) and external partners such as Australia, Norad, OECD, World Bank, U.S. State Department, GIZ, U4 Resource Centre, Basel Institute on Governance, Transparency International (TI), Integrity Action, Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), and Huairou Commission.

Initiative: Support to citizen participation and inclusion for Local Governance and Territorial Development
UNDP supports governments in promoting local governance and territorial development in a process that links the local, national and international dimensions, implementing and enhancing planning activities; facilitation dialogue among territories; and creating mechanisms to boost local economic activities, improved service delivery and equity in access to public services. This approach aims at generating more resilient state-society relationships at the local level, expressed through more robust formal and informal institutions that are based on the principles of participation. Based on UNDP’s Local Governance and Local Development approach, the support provided in LAC is focus on facilitating participatory processes for the formulation and implementation of territorial development initiatives with a plurality of actors (public, private, social and academic sector) of a territory that jointly work together to define priorities, plan and implement SHD strategies at local level, based on local potentials. It is also about the integration of various sectors within a comprehensive response at territorial level.

Activities: In 2015, technical support and assistance has been provided to foster local governance and territorial development initiatives through participatory and inclusive processes to Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Uruguay, Honduras, including peace-building initiatives at the territorial level in Colombia. Support has been provided to various countries in the organization and carrying out local economic development regional and global activities and participation of national and local LED practitioners in Regional and Global Events Regional Territorial Economic Development in Quito, and 3rd World LED Forum, Habitat III). An on-line platform to promote SSC and Triangular cooperation to support to Local Development exchanges has been developed to tap into the knowledge, experiences and innovations embedded in local institutions and actors.

Website: . www.undp.org
• http://www.ledforumtorino2015.org/
• http://issuu.com/artpublications/docs/art_del_-_esp

Beneficiaries: National Goverments, Local and Regional Governments, Local and Regional Governements Associations, CSOs, universities, private sector.

Partnerships and Financing: National Governments, Regional Networks of local and regional governments, UNHabitat, ILO, BID/FOMIN

Initiative: UNDP-SIGOB
UNDP’s regional project “Strengthening Management Capabilities for Democratic Governance“ better known for its acronym SIGOB (systems for governance in Spanish) is a well-established UNDP initiative. Its mission is to foster more effective, accountable and inclusive public institutions through innovation in management methods and information technology tools, in all State organizations to enhance institutional capacity to respond to citizen expectations for voice, effective development, the rule of law and accountability. UNDP-SIGOB team of management, governance and IT experts work with high-ranking government officials to change the way people work in public organizations. UNDP-SIGOB has focused on finding practical and innovative solutions to tackle specific challenges in public management: How to operationalize a government program into an actionable work plan. How to align day-to-day activities across the government to deliver on commitments with citizens. How to improve the management of the office and scheduling of time for top level public executives. How to improve management of official correspondence, documents and archives. How to improve coordination across government institutions how to better support cabinet meetings for making more effective. How to improve relevance and timeliness in communicating with citizens. How to improve internal process to provide better services for citizens.
Through collaboration with hundreds of political leaders and high-level public managers, UNDP-SIGOB has synthesized a portfolio of thirteen (13) development products (approach, procedures, information and software) to address strategic alignment of organizations to commitments with citizens, results-oriented management, coordination, proactive communications and accountability, time management, process management and knowledge management, among others.
Over the years, the UNDP-SIGOB teams has carried out more than 180 projects with 95 institutions in18 different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Activities: In 2015, SIGOB has implemented 16 projects in 8 countries in Latin America. SIGOB is available to OAS member States through UNDP Country Offices in the region.

Website: www.sigob.org

Beneficiaries: Governments and public institutions of OAS member States, ultimately beneficiaries are citizens as UNDP-SIGOB intervention strengthen capacities to respond to citizen expectations for voice, effective development, the rule of law and accountability.

Partnerships and Financing: UNDP and LAC public institutions.

Initiative: Support to electoral processes throughout the electoral cycle
Support is provided by UNDP to National Electoral Institutions (EMB) in coordination with UNDP country offices in all phases of the electoral cycle. Technical assistance is adjusted to specific demands identified in Needs Assessment Missions (NAM). Support is provided to strength electoral institutions and develop capacities to expand citizen participation and representation, particularly of women, youth, indigenous peoples and afrodescendants. Also on civic education and communication strategies for transparency of electoral processes.

Activities: In 2015, technical support has been provided to the EMBs for elections in Haiti, Guyana and Guatemala. Technical assistance has also been provided to counterparts in Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago and Honduras. A project on capacity development for EMBs in the Caribbean is on going with CARICOM.

Beneficiaries:
Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs)
Civil Society
Citizens (focus on women, youth, indigenous peoples and afrodescendants)

Partnerships and Financing: Multilateral (EU) and bilateral cooperation (USAID, European Countries)

UNDP and the OAS produced a Second Regional Democracy Report that underlines three fundamental challenges in order to strengthen democratic governance in LAC: develop new forms of political participation to respond to the representation crisis and to genuinely include cultural and ethnic diversity-; reinforce the State’s republican structure, the independence of powers, their mutual control and their accountability-; and increase the real political power of the State within the framework of republican checks and balances. Improvements should be made on strategic public policies on fiscal management, social inclusion and public security to advance more sustainable democratic governance. The diagnosis and conceptual framework of the Report has served as the basis for providing strategic support to countries in the region. UNDP has promoted analysis to strengthen democratic governance, assisted stakeholders to develop multisectoral dialogue spaces, and contributed with management systems for transparency and accountability of national and local governments. UNDP also contributes to strengthening capacities for inclusive participation of women, youth, indigenous people and Afro-descendant populations, and furthers participation in local communities of vulnerable populations promoting dialogue and leadership development.
Currently, UNDP is developing a regional Report on the State in LAC, to systematize good practices in the area of political and social citizenship to share among governments in the region.