As the UNDP Deputy Resident Representative, what is your vision and mission in this country?
My vision is very much that of, I would say, UNDP corporately. I think that UNDP’s main mission has to be in every country to facilitate reforms towards better democratic arrangements and secondly to help the vulnerable sections of the society to develop and come on stream with regards to economic and social development. I am a value based manager and I do not believe that UNDP can do or should do everything. I think that we should stick to our core mandate and that is where our comparative expertise and advantage lies. I think that we have very successfully managed in the last three years to build the programme around these two core goals – better democratic governance and poverty reduction, which for us now is called social inclusion.
Is Bosnia and Herzegovina on the right track in achieving Millennium Development Goals?
I believe that Bosnia is very advanced in terms of the Millennium Development Goals. We do not have extreme poverty in BiH although we have a number of poor people. But it is of course not poverty comparable to least developed countries. This makes it necessary to redefine the MDGs in the context of BiH development. We have been very successful in combining the social inclusion framework, while being faithful to the MDG framework. So the answer to your question is that BiH is on track, but that does not mean that we do not need to focus on poverty reduction and equitable development. It is possible that BiH joins the European Union at some point and yet there are many socially excluded parts of society. UNDP’s vision is to make sure that development is equitable and reaches out to all people.
You touched upon social inclusion. Tell us more about its relation to MDGs.
Why I think that social inclusion basically adds something to MDGs is that a lot of poverty that occurs in BiH is not only related to the economic sphere but to certain political and social fault lines that run through the country and the society that are not necessarily there to the same extent in other countries. We need to remove political and social obstacles to open up economic opportunities to many people who are excluded at this point. Therefore, I believe that social inclusion and MDGs are closely related and that social inclusion as a concept adds something to our ability to address poverty.
All UNDP’s portfolios and projects work to reflect MDGs and deserve the same attention. Can you still single out those closest to you or some of the best results?
I do not have a favorite project in UNDP. I am fond of all of them andI am striving together with the experts on the projects to constantly improve their results orientation and their focus on what we should do, and I said that earlier when talking about democratic change and democratic governance, poverty reduction and social inclusion. I think that our portfolio of projects is now very much streamlined towards those goals and I am very happy that we have adopted a self-critical way of working where we are constantly looking into what could be done better and have mechanisms in place that improve our quality of projects. SUTRA is in the third phase of project implementation. The project assisted institutionalization of all return related processes in BiH, which was a great success. Now we have the central level with leading role in creating and adopting return strategy, while municipalities took lead in implementation of projects.
What do you think about the return process in BiH at this point?
I think that there are different aspects of return process in BiH. In terms of reintegration of returnees in the society I think it was by and large success. It was the result of recent survey that we conducted showing that in fact the economic situation of returnees is not so much worse than that of people that were not displaced. In terms of the demographic shifts however, especially between entities, I think it has not been such success. We know that majority return, return of people into areas where their ethnic group is majority has been quite successful, up to 80%, but minority return has been much less successful. That has led to the unfortunate demographic change from what was called the leopard skin of different ethnic groups living together to a much more defined landscape of ethnic majorities and minorities which is not anymore as diverse as it was. So in terms of integration a success, in terms of actual sustainable return only partly a success.
UNDP has just launched survey The Silent Majority Speaks - Snapshots of Today and Visions of the Future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is very interesting and the largest investigation in BiH of its kind. What was covered by the survey and can you share the most striking results?
The survey asked some 3,800 people for their opinions about different aspects of life in BiH which included the economic situation, the political situation, the social trust but also the vision about the future of BiH. Some of the outcomes are very, very striking. On the positive side, people are fairly happy in BiH but they feel detached from macro sphere, from the political system. They do not have much social trust in the other people and it is very concerning result. What is for me, however, the most significant result or the outcome of the survey and very positive one is that there are not as many differences between different ethnic groups as we would have thought. There are more commonalities among the different constituent people of BiH than there are differences and there is large consensus that there should be solution that integrates people within BiH and does not separate them politically. We know that there are different visions of the political systems for example for the future, but we also know that there is a second best choice that everybody can agree upon. That is strong central system with strengthened regions. When I talk about regions I do not talk about economic regions but the regions to be defined by a large based consensus process. So I think that there are these outcomes that really show that there are common problems by all ethnic groups in BiH and that there is a common way for change in BiH.
As Stefan Priesner, how do you spend your days in BiH? I know about your passion for extreme sports. Is there space in BiH for such activities?
BiH is El Dorado for people who are interested in outdoors and people like me that are interested in, I would say, quite unusual sports. I am a rock climber and ski mountaineer and in the meantime I climbed most of the mountains of BiH. Either in winter on skis or in summer with my rope and over the steepest rock faces. I love the mountain landscape here. It is second to none. And what I especially love here is that the mountains are not as overrun as in my home country Austria where on a beautiful mountain on a beautiful day you will see hundreds people up there. Here, you can experience real wilderness. I do also think that if one is well informed about the mine situation, one can have also lots of walks and hikes and climbs that are not dangerous at all. I really enjoy my time here in terms of exploration. It has been very important aspect of my life apart from my very challenging work.
What are your future professional career plans?
I am firmly placed in UNDP structure and therefore at some point my time will be over in BiH, which will be most likely in summer 2008. I would like to move on to another challenging development situation, possibly as a country director. I am a passionate development worker and I have no intention to change that career path. I think that there is a lot to do in this world and that is where my dedication and my vocation is.
Sanela Nuhodžić, SUTRA Communications Officer