The Democratic Dialogue Regional Project had an interesting talk with Beat Rohr about his ideas around democratic dialogue. Rohr has recently assumed his duties as UNDP Resident Representative and Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System in Guatemala. According to Rohr, it is important to build dialogues that are “more than talking and chatting”; dialogues with a clear structure and concrete outcomes. Many countries face what could be called “dialoguitis”, and societies are getting tired of so many processes. It is very important to avoid this to happen, promoting that dialogue actors clearly understand that these processes are more than free chats, more than plain discussions, and that they have the purpose of commitment. In many perspectives, dialogue is seen simply as a high level effort for solving issues. Other times, dialogues are used to solve temporary political crises but without a process vision and without including all actors involved. And that is why sustainable results are hardly achieved in benefit of society. When this happens, dialogues do not provide to conflict resolution, but increase distrust and frustration. With regards to UNDP’s role in dialogue processes, Rohr shares with us that some times UNDP gets actively involved in dialogues, becoming part of them, or serving as a technical part supporting contents, or even more: a part involved with strong opinions about the contents. And there, our role is very different from the one corresponding to a program working in strengthening the dialogue field. |
“I think that regarding this issue, UNDP’s main objective should be to strengthen national capacities in order to create a knowledge, a culture for interaction, for dialogue between different parts and at different levels. We should not worry too much about what the dialogue topic is, but about the process and the learning on how to work together”, expresses Rohr. When asked about how to measure the impact of a dialogue process, Beat responds with an interesting question: “What would have happened if there has been no dialogue at all?” That is, he believes it is not imperative to invest many resources trying to figure out the impact of a dialogue, because some times results are far from being measurable or concrete. Many dialogues have failed in their agreements, but the merest fact of having dialogued, has reduced political tensions and has enabled more understanding among the actors. We have seen this in Guatemala: when there is a crisis and the government convenes a dialogue, the tension goes down. Then, the impact of the instrument is really great because the cost of a national strike is extremely high at all levels. To finish, Beat pointed out something very important: “The challenge is for the instrument to be not only a promise, but to manage promoting citizen participation. In general, the impact is part of democracy building; in many senses it is democracy applied. Because you have a broader space involving more actors, and for me, that is very rich by itself. |
“So, I believe the best way is to consider and compare what would have happened without dialogue; and there you start finding some positive things. In many cases, the positive is simply that people understand each other better, that people have the opportunity to express. Many political |