As democratic governance expands downwards into sub-national governments young people have a tremendous potential and energy to promote human development and expand opportunities. There is a reemerging effort to understand the role of youth in shaping policies that affect their lives. Providing youth a voice to influence national and sub-national policy and budgets, as human development agents, has both opportunities and challenges. Political participation is a basic and substantive human right and an important dimension of citizenship, as clearly stated in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the current dynamics and state of democratic governance in many countries, in terms of its quality related to equitable prosperity, citizen security and participation, have prompted a number of international and national efforts to re-focus their attention on youth political participation.

Political participation and democratic governance have become central to

the recent discussions of human development and governance specialists, practitioners and the public at large. Addressed varyingly under civil society, social capital, citizen’s democracy, deliberation, protest politics and governance, this

topic has lent renewed interest to a key question of how to ensure in democratic governance the effective involvement of citizens in the life and decision-making of their social and political communities. When thinking about the participation of young people in contemporary democratic governance, one finds a certain paradox. In theory, the spaces for youth involvement in political and,

more broadly, in public policy life appear to be more numerous than ever. However, there is mixed evidence as whether these opportunities have resulted in more widespread and effective participation of young people. It is

common to read that youth political and policy involvement is not optimal, as evidenced by decreasing levels of youth participation in elections, political parties and civil/community organizations. This view offers a gloomy assessment, as it focuses on a scenario that young people are turning their backs on democratic governance. Other

more optimistic analysis focus on the new emerging dynamics of youth political participation, that steers away from more conventional venues and is closer to analyzing youth political and policy engagement as an innovative phenomena. For example, many recent studies on social media show that contrary to the traditional notion of a technological digital divide, substantial numbers of young

Continue next page

Regional Centre LAC

people across racial and ethnic groups in many countries are engaging in participatory politics — in actions such as starting a political group online, circulating a blog about a political issue, and/or forwarding political videos to friends. Like more conventional political actions, these new forms address issues of public policy. These new forms of youth participation are more interactive and have immediate outcomes, they are peer-based, and do not necessarily involve formal institutions. The faster digital communication platforms facilitate and expand opportunities for young people to participate not only at national levels of governance, but practically any level, as such potentially erasing any existing political and/or administrative divisions.

These two assessments presented above on youth political participation, are probably reflecting two extremes of a much more complex and diverse political process. Nonetheless, these two assessments help to identify key issues in relation to understanding the opportunities and challenges of youth political participation in Latin America and the Caribbean today in the context of the dynamics of democratic governance. In practice, the two described analytical frameworks above, are in fact partial and do not necessarily reflect the underlying complexity of what motivates political participation in young people. The conventional argument is that since the youth condition can be interpreted as transitory, youth political participation cannot be considered an end in itself. The youth condition

does not necessarily structure political participation or constitute actors and political projects. There are specificities of youth political participation that need to be identified and analyzed. In fact, practice shows that youth get involved and/or participate in broader ways within the context and processes of democratic governance. As such, it is important to identify what motivates youth to participate, and how and where do they participate. Recently as part of a Workshop on Social Audit for Young Caribbean

Leaders and Entrepreneurs organized by the UNDP Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in Panama and the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean in New York, a survey on democratic values was applied to the participants representing 23 Youth Organizations of 13 countries. An interesting finding emerged from the responses to questions related to youth participation. For example, despite the fact that 88% of respondents indicated a desire to participate, the majority (53%) of the participants felt there were few opportunities to do so. Similarly, some 47% of respondents (the majority) felt that youth do not

participate as citizens because of a lack of resources, while 31% felt that youth had other better alternatives than participating as citizens through activities that took less effort and offered greater benefits. In spite of a certain level of skepticism about opportunities for participation, respondents indicated that they were active in several activities in their countries (for example, charity/voluntary work, community development, cultural, religious and sports). According to the results of the survey, the young leaders were active in more than one

activity. Interestingly, despite their involvement in a variety of activities, and the fact that a totality of respondents said it was important to vote in elections, most indicated low to medium levels of participation in political parties (81%) and two-thirds (59%) said they participate moderately in influencing public policy. Another interesting finding was that a majority of

respondents considered themselves group-oriented (91%) and were interested in innovation (97%). When both sets of choices are correlated, the results showed that all those who were predisposed to collective or group action were also predisposed to innovative objectives. There is emerging evidence that shows that many young people areincreasingly avoiding traditional forms of political involvement, such as voting and political party membership, and instead turning to more direct and innovative mechanisms such as volunteerism,

Continue next page

cultural and artistic expression, sports and social audit exercises. Despite evidence that young people may have low levels of electoral participation and party membership, there is little understanding of whether this is due to economic and social conditions or reflects dilemmas of democratic governance. As active political participation plays a vital role in the improvement of both human development and democratic governance, this represents an important gap in knowledge.

As such, when analyzing youth participation in terms of opportunities and challenges, it may be as important to focus on the broader inputs they bring to democratic governance, individually or collectively, rather than only in the formal aspects of democratic governance. It may also be important to understand how youth are able to provide inputs, and under what condition. That is, the extent to which young people perceived democratic governance institutions are open to their concerns and demands, interests and involvement, and to what extent their engagement and participation depend on whether or not they see their voice reflected in the political process and its results. Conversely, the dynamic of democratic governance also challenges young people to recognize, understand and engage institutions and decision-making processes through their own participation, even if topics, processes and results are not always what they expect. Thus, youth political participation requires permanent accessibility, transparency and accountability on the part of democratic institutions, but also

sustained engagement on the part of young people. Also, it requires sustained engagement on the part of democratic institutions and decision-making processes to young people, but also strategies on the part of

youth to hold their governments accountable. These contrasting perspectives may indicate a need to better understand these relationships. Moreover, an array of participatory expressions among youth is taking roots in the reality of democratic governance in the Twentieth First Century, where the so- called “glo-calized” platform is generating new modalities of expression and participation that are more appealing and natural to young people than those they inherited from their parents and grandparents. Information, communication and technology have not only expanded the participatory space, but have also exposed youth to “glocal” issues that seem to have appeal in their political communities. This perspective points to an apparent inadequacy of traditional democratic governance participatory arrangements for the youth of today. But it can also be pointing to another nuance that involves strong tendencies towards individualism among young people, at

the expense of a more conventional view of democratic governance that is about collective action and collaboration. Youth might see politics and policy through a prism that emphasizes more practice over

power, and thus their reaction is less institutionalized and more individualized. However, a key question remains in terms of how these new forms of youth political participation relate to more conventional democratic governance institutions and actors. The analysis of youth political participation has been constrained by pre-conceived,

adult-oriented, often narrow and formalistic conceptualization of politics as institutionalized processes of decision making, and thus of participation. Democratic governance places a more encompassing framework of politics as a means to enhance the public policy process, and offers a broad array of tools, contexts, and forms of expressions that constitute the public engagement of young people. Thus reviewing, some of the fundamental assumptions, concepts and approaches to youth political participation are timely and necessary to understand opportunities and challenges.

To comment on this article, please click on the Teamworks Logo

teamworks

Indigenous Government and Provision of Services in Indigenous Municipalities in the State of Chiapas, Mexico Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor UNDP Mexico, 2012

This publication shows the results of a research that was done for the United Nations Development Programme´s Bureau for Development Policy of (BDP/DGG) to better understand and have an in-depth analysis of the element that converge in this context. This publication “Indigenous Government and Provision of Services in Indigenous Municipalities in the State of Chiapas,” takes into account the local, state and national institutional structures, and also analyzes all aspects of governance in indigenous territories (indigenous rights, self-determination, normative indigenous systems, etc.). The document contains two parts: the first is the assessment of service provision in 3 municipalities in Chiapas, as well as the indigenous Governance. The second addresses a proposal to enhance and improve the effectiveness of these services.

[To download click here] Towards Climate Finance Transparency Maya Forstater with Rachel Rank Aidinfo and Publish What You Fund, 2012

This paper maps the broad landscape of funding to enable adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and the systems for monitoring it. These include systems which label the money as “aid” as well as those that have been developed to assess climate finance specifically. This paper seeks to provide a background and framework on transparency and reporting that makes sense to both those focused on tracking climate finance and improving aid transparency. Greater transparency can help to reduce the high transaction costs, inefficiencies and fragmentation associated with multiple tracking systems covering overlapping actors, objectives, activities and financing streams. The document proposes a set of recommendations which would offer a pathway towards appropriate convergence around a more coherent set of tools for publishing and sharing data, while maintaining the proper role of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in agreeing definitions and setting the terms for Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of action against international climate finance commitments. A key lesson from aid transparency is that while high quality statistics are crucial, so too is detailed, accessible and timely information to meet the needs of different information users.

[To download click here]

Open Data: A New Challenge for Governments in the Region Gastón Concha and Alejandra Naser Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES), 2012 This document presents good practices that have been developed in

some countries of the world along with a proposal for a

methodology to measure the results of the establishment of an

Open Data Policy. The intention is to motivate decision makers in

governments regarding the enormous changes that this new

paradigm is bringing for citizens. Also to show the new challenges

that this new wave of change is bringing, which breaks with the

trajectory that the evolution of electronic or digital government has

had until now. The document shows how open data is broadening

its scope to reach beyond the simplification of paperwork, towards

more transparency in information regarding government

administration.

[To download click here]

How Close Is Your Government to Its People? Worldwide Indicators on Localization and Decentralization Maksym Ivanyna and Anwar Shah The World Bank, 2012 This paper is intended to provide an impact assessment of the last three decades of silent revolution on moving governments closer to people to establish fair, accountable, incorruptible and responsive governance. To accomplish this, a unique data set is constructed for 182 countries by compiling data from a wide variety of sources to examine success toward decentralized decision making across the globe. An important feature of this data set is that, for comparative purposes, it measures government decision making at the local level rather than at the sub-national levels used in the existing literature. The data are used to rank countries on political, fiscal and administrative dimensions of decentralization and localization. These sub-indexes are aggregated and adjusted for heterogeneity to develop an overall ranking of countries on the closeness of their government to the people. The resulting rankings provide a useful explanation of the Arab Spring and other recent political movements and waves of dissatisfaction with governance around the world.

[To download click here]

The 2012 UN report “From Transition to Transformation:

Sustainable and Inclusive Development in Europe and

Central Asia” highlights that despite growth in Gross

Domestic Product over the past decade, the region has

witnessed a deterioration of the social conditions of

vulnerable segments of its population, widening of the

income gaps between rich and poor

as well as a growing army of young

unemployed people. Growing

inequalities are found in the access

to health, housing and education.

Prevailing gender inequality in the

region has contributed to the

growing inequalities in both

economic and social sectors. Gender

stereotypes keep hampering a better

use of men and women’s potentials

that could increase economic growth,

reduce poverty, and enhance social

well-being of all. Major challenges

towards achievement of gender

equality such as equal access of

women and men to economic

resources, including equal pay, and

equal access to the decision-making

positions both at local and national levels impede the

transformation process towards sustainable and inclusive

societies.

Implementing sustainable development at the local level

requires a certain level of devolution of authority to local

governments so that they are empowered to work with

their community on addressing priority issues, and yet

very few countries in the former Soviet Union have taken

significant steps towards decentralization. In the countries

of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, decentralization exists

from the legal perspective, but local governments are still

severely constrained by their limited staff

professionalization and in many cases by the very small

population sizes of the jurisdictions, known as

fragmentation. This inhibits their ability to specify policy

goals, introduce efficient and computerized operations or

manage land use, physical planning and investment

efficiently.

The experience of Eastern Europe shows that four

strategic issues need to be incorporated into sustainable

local development programming. These are fostering

political will and right

incentives, creating capacity

for collective action,

supporting multilevel

governance and scaling up,

and enabling partnerships

and inter-territorial

cooperation. The last two in

particular are key elements

to any local development

strategy. Multilevel

governance implies a flexible

and participatory form of

governance which allows

different levels of

government to participate in

the decision making

processes. This should be

mutual strengthening of the

institutions involved, and not create unhealthy

competition. Multilevel governance requires a certain

level of decentralization or subsidiarity (meaning that

policy is created and applied at the most appropriate

level), including sufficient financial independence of the

local governments. Multilevel governance is another way

of saying that a bottom-up approach needs to be

combined with a top-down approach to achieve “policy

coordination, budget synchronization and a shared

commitment.”1

Scaling up refers to expanding, adapting and sustaining

successful policies, programmes and projects on different

places and over time to reach a greater number of people.

Continue next page

Scaling up may refer to a horizontal process, which

extends the benefits of the programme to a greater

number of people, as well as to a vertical process, which

implies helping building an institutional capacity and

policy framework for a broader effect. One way to scale

up local development project results is through replication

of activities using project funding. A more effective way,

however, is to use multilevel

governance to harness political

and financial support from

higher levels of government to

address the issue in

cooperation and coordination

with local government.

Sustainable development will

require new policies and new

allocation of investment funds;

the best manner for achieving

this is to integrate a strategy

for multilevel governance into

the program approach.

According to the UN Guidance Note: Scaling Up Support

for Local Development for MDG Achievement, the success

of the scaling up can be illustrated through the following:2

1. Empowered communities and local governments,

enabled to demand and address their own

development priorities.

2. Strong national-local connections, feedback and

linkages.

3. Improves accountability systems for service

delivery and access to information.

4. Strengthened capacities of local governments and

service delivery providers.

Also, Horizontal Integration, through partnerships and

intra-territorial cooperation can also be an important pillar

of sustainable local development in particular aimed at

rural areas or secondary cities. Furthermore, the

involvement of the private sector in the formulation and

implementation of local or regional development

strategies is essential.

There are economic, social and ecological arguments for

coordinating decision-making among groups of regional or

local governments, with

the most common form

perhaps between an

urban area and its

hinterlands. The

economic argument

follows from regional

economic geography.

Some joint economic

development districts will

share tax revenues among

the jurisdictions to be

used for infrastructure

investments that address their joint issues. Others have

joint investment promotion strategies. Typical among the

social reasons to cooperate is the provision of social

infrastructure such as schools and hospitals as rural areas

may neither have the resources to fund these, nor the

level of demand for such services that require specialized

expertise. The ecological argument for such cooperation

rests in natural boundaries for watersheds and

environmental externalities such as air pollution or

contamination of water resources from mining and

industrial activities. Protecting migration routes of animals

is another area in which jurisdictions should cooperate.

The European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC)

is an opportunity for municipalities, regions and states to

establish cross-border, transnational or interregional

cooperation with similar players of another member state

and to fulfill their common objectives this way. The EGTC

Continue next page

is the first legal instrument of the European Union that

provides legal personality and frame to the cooperation of

European municipalities and regions and the efficient use

of Union grants.

In 2006 the Committee of Regions initiated the creation of

a new European legal instrument, the EGTC to facilitate

the cooperation of local players and the more efficient use

of Union sources. The aim of the Grouping is to follow a

non-distinction policy: local actors must have equal

opportunities on national and cross-border level as well. It

is a legal entity, it has its own budget, it employs people

and it can sign agreements. Some Territorial Cooperation

projects have created:

Cross-border hospital

Joint strategies on spatial planning, socio-

economic development, employment, tourism etc.

Collaboration on water treatment plans for rivers

Cross-border education, sports events, cultural

events

Inter-municipal cooperation can take more or less

complex forms. The most commonly used types of inter-

municipal cooperation arrangements are:

Joint service production (joint agreements)

Joint (shared) administration

Selling and buying of services (service agreements)

Joint planning and development

Joint funding

Within UNDP, concerted efforts have recently focused on

how local development should be integrated with the

participatory processes, institutional capacity

development, and decentralization policy work happening

under the local governance portfolio. The approach is

being analyzed further in a forthcoming Handbook for

Sustainable Local Development Programming being

produced in our region, and it is compatible with the new

(now being elaborated) UNDP Strategy for Integrated

Local Governance and Local Development.

Sustainable local development is a systemic and a cross-

practice endeavor, necessarily bearing certain

ramifications to those who are involved to make sure that

the initiatives are managed in a holistic manner. We hope

aspects of the Easter European experience can provide

inputs and lesson to promote it.

Notes 1 Committee of the Regions. (2012). Delivering on the Europe

2020 Strategy: Handbook for Local and Regional Authorities. 2

United Nations. Guidance Note: Scaling Up Support for Local

Development for MDG Achievement

*Policy Specialist, UNDP Europe and the CIS, Bratislava Regional Centre

The Democratic Governance Practice Area of the United

Nations Development Programme´s (UNDP) Regional

Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean and the

Regional Office for Central America and the Caribbean of

the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

organized the First Regional Workshop: “From the United

Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) to Anti-

Corruption Policies in Latin America,” was held in Panama

City on August 23rd and 24th.

It is worth noting that the UNCAC entails the recognition,

at the global level, of the negative consequences of

corruption, as manifested in

the erosion of government

institutions and the

insufficient allocation of

resources. These entails an

obvious obstacle to equitable

human development

processes. The UNCAC is

broad and covers aspects of

prevention and

criminalization, dedicates several articles to international

cooperation and anticipates the recovery of assets. It is a

valuable tool that allows the eventual re-allocation of

resources that have been obtained illegally. Following the

lead of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development´s (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery

of Foreign Public Officials in International Business

Transactions and the Inter-American Convention Against

Corruption of the Organization of American States (OAS),

the need to implement a mechanism for follow up for the

UNCAC was recognized to be of great importance at the

First Conference of States Parties in 2006 and was later

approved as a Review Mechanism. Since the UNCAC is

binding, the Review Mechanism provides the opportunity

to show the progress that has been made in the

implementation through national revision processes

while, at the same time, providing an opportunity to

involve government, academic and private sector

institutions as well as civil society organizations in

discussions about the need for legal and institutional

change and reform.

The rich regional experience of the last few years shared

by the workshop participants, helped the goal of

exchanging national anti-corruption policy experiences

institutional and legal frameworks related to preventive

measures to fight against corruption. In fact, government

officials, civil society representatives and UNDP and

UNODC practitioners, with the support of experts, who

facilitated the workshop, were able to analyze national

progress through the prescriptions of the UNCAC.

The main aspects of the discussion covered the Review

Mechanism, specifically Chapter II, which includes policies

and practices to prevent

corruption, anti-corruption

prevention bodies, codes of

ethic/conduct for public

officials, access to public

information and civil society

participation, and Chapter IV,

which is dedicated to aspects

of International Cooperation.

A significant portion of the

workshop was allocated to the analysis of the existence,

the design, the scope and the challenges of anti-

corruption policies as well as the importance of the access

to public information as a policy to prevent corruption.

Key questions were: What makes an anti-corruption policy

effective and sustainable? What still needs to be done,

and taking into consideration the current experiences with

anti-corruption policies in Latin America, and current

opportunities? These and other similar questions were an

important part of the deliberations during the workshop.

Additionally, the role of UNDP and UNODC supporting

national efforts to implement the UNCAC were analyzed.

What follows are key aspects and consensus issues that

were covered throughout the Workshop. The Review

Mechanism is a useful tool not only to monitor the

fulfillment of the obligations assumed by the States

Parties, but also because it creates an opportunity to

strengthen national anti-corruption policies. In terms of

Continue next page

publicity and promotion of the theme and on-site visits,

the mandatory inclusion of both would have been

desirable. States do not have major impediments to

complete national reports.

On the other hand, advances in the implementation of the

UNCAC are not uniform throughout the region. In most

cases, the States have established some policies to

prevent corruption – sometimes as part of other policies –

and they have established specialized agencies to

implement them. However, even though that several

countries have experiences in the design and

implementation of anti-corruption policies, these are not

encompassing of all public sector areas. Similarly, the

level of institutional development of these specialized

anti-corruption agencies. In some cases, their functional

and budgetary autonomy is not guaranteed, thereby

limiting the sustainability and independence necessary to

fulfill their assigned functions.

The effectiveness of the implementation of anti-

corruption policies was broadly discussed and there was

agreement about the need to use indicators to measure

the advance and impact of the measures that have been

adopted. The existence of legal and institutional

frameworks to guarantee access to public information,

values education, transparency and accountability are

some of the key elements that should be considered when

evaluating the results of anti-corruption policies. Some

countries have invested significant financial resources in

campaigns to promote transparency in public

administration and the fight against public and private

sector corruption. However, there was no agreement as

to what or how much these activities have achieved.

Finally, progress in the classification of crimes according to

the international standards set in the UNCAC has also

been diverse. Some countries have including behaviors

such as bribing national and international public officials,

money laundering, misappropriation of funds, etc., as

criminal offenses in their legislations. In other cases, it is

difficult to meet international standards due to

constitutional and/or legal restrictions.

At any rate, the UNCAC offers to the State Parties the

possibility of requesting technical assistance with national

implementation and the evaluation of results. It is here

where the United Nations System (UNS), through its

different specialized agencies, particularly UNDP and

UNODC, has the capacity to contribute to national efforts

to honor international commitments.

The contribution of UNDP in this area is derived from the

mandate to support countries in their efforts to overcome

the obstacles to human development, including the

provision of technical assistance to strengthen capacities

within the framework of democratic governance. In this,

UNODC and UNDP play complementary roles. While

UNODC focuses on intergovernmental processes and the

enforcement of the Convention, UNDP emphasizes

prevention by means of development.

The scourge of corruption weakens democratic

governance, has a disproportionate impact on already

vulnerable groups and hinders the achievement of the

Millennium Development Goals. The Rio +20 United

Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

produced a document adopted by the States Parties that

affirmed that “...national and international corruption and

the illicit flow of funds inhibits effective mobilization of

resources and diverts funds from development.” With the

adoption of this document, the State Parties committed

themselves to “combat corruption in all of its

manifestations,” recognizing that “strong institutions at all

levels are necessary.”

In this context, the organization of workshops to share

experiences, technical assistance, South-South

cooperation and the promotion of expert networks, could

be effective means to support countries in their fight

against corruption.

*Coordinator, Democratic Governance Practice Area, UNDP-Argentina.

I'm a City Changer

I'm a City Changer is a worldwide campaign with the aim of sensitizing

and creating awareness among citizens on urban issues to achieve

better cities and better life fostering proper sustainable urban

development through six key core components: a) Resilient City: to

prepare cities for change, managing adversity, resilience and take

action to reduce risk; b) Green City: to build environmentally sound

and carbon efficient cities; c) Safe and healthy city: to make cities safer

and healthier; d) Inclusive city: to build socially inclusive, accessible,

pro-poor, equitable and gender sensitive cities; e) Planned City: to plan

the cities of tomorrow for sustainable decision-making processes; and

f) Productive City: to make cities more efficient and better places to

ensure decent work. The website allows share and spread individual,

corporate and public initiatives that improve the live in cities. To date,

the website has over 140 stories around the word, and also has a Blog

which the city changers can post news, events and topics to discuss.

According to the Word´s Bank Report What a

Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste

Management, which analyzes the state of municipal

solid waste around the world (SMW), the amount of

municipal solid waste (MSW) will rise from the

current 1.3 billion tons/year to 2.2 billion tons/year

in 2025, this represents a significant increase in per

capita waste generation rates, from 1.2 to 1.42 kg

per person per day in the next fifteen years, with

much of the increase coming in rapidly growing

cities in developing countries. It estimates that the

annual cost of solid waste management is projected

to rise from the current $205 billion to $375 billion,

with cost increasing most severely in low income

countries. In the case of Latin America and the

Caribbean Region, the total amount of waste

generated per year is 160 million tons, with per

capita values ranging from 0.1 to 14 kg/capita/day,

and an average of 1.1 kg/capita/day. The largest per

capita solid waste generation rates are found in the

islands of the Caribbean.

Central America and Dominican Republic Forum for Transparency, October 10th and 11th, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Democratic Governance Community of Practice, October 16-18, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Fifth UNDP Global Anti-Corruption Community of Practice. November 5-6, Brasilia, Brazil.

15th International Anti-Corruption Conference 2012. November 7-10, Brasilia, Brazil.

“Governance and Accountability in the Water Sector,” Regional Workshop. November, Panama City, Panama.

Inter-Agency Training on the United Nations Convention against Corruption, December, Panama City, Panama.

We are pleased to welcome Adriana

Ballestín who since September has

incorporated to the Democratic

Governance Team in the Regional

Centre. Adriana was born in

Valencia, Spain, and holds a

Bachelor’s degree in Law and

Political Science, and a Master

degree in Development and

International Cooperation.

Local governments and decentralized aid have been part of her

professional experience in last years. She made an internship in the

Secretariat of a City Council of Manises (Valencia-Spain) and worked as a

technical assistant in project management in the International and

Cooperation Area of the Generalitat Valenciana. Through these

experiences she gained more knowledge in the public sector and in the

development field. Additionally, she has experience in the private sector

as a lawyer in civil, commercial and banking law.

http://www.regionalcentrelac-undp.org/en/