Responding to crises and tailoring sustainable development interventions in Moldova

From responding to crises to addressing sustainable development needs in the long run, the strengthened leadership role of the UN Resident Coordinator of Moldova, Simon Springett, has played a vital role in steering the UN country team and supporting the Government over the past few years.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first unfolded in early 2020, the Resident Coordinator convened together all 26 agencies, funds and programmes of the UN country team to offer immediate support to the government and deliver a coordinated and well-integrated response plan.

• Based off a wide range of needs assessments and analysis, building on UN entities’ expertise and conducted in coordination with national authorities, the Resident Coordinator led the UN team in designing the Social and Economic Response and Recovery Plan. As the key connector between the UN and the Government, the Resident Coordinator ensured that this plan was directly linked to national priorities, including strong integration of gender and human right issues in the recovery.
• The detailed analysis and statistics included in the plan served as a single reference point for UN agencies and development partners across Moldova, helping them understand better the evolution of the pandemic and its impacts on the most marginalized communities.

Improved coordination has also been critical in ensuring strong and cohesive support by the UN in Moldova to the national authorities through the immediate and longer-term impacts of the war in Ukraine, from the arrival of over 600, 000 refugees, to significant disruptions in trade and increases in food and energy prices.

• At the onset of the war, the Resident Coordinator quickly convened all UN agencies together on behalf of the Country Team to design a UN Development Emergency Response Offer: a joint mechanism to enhance the country’s resilience and ability to meet the needs of refugee and host communities across the country in complementarity to the UNHCR refugee response plan.
• In his position as an independent Resident Coordinator, not affiliated to any specific UN entity, Mr. Springett was able to leverage the collective experience and expertise of all UN agencies in country, including input from regional offices and headquarters to identify a set of key strategic priorities and actions of support. Thanks to this coordination and support from development partners, 22 million dollars have been mobilized to ensure that no one is left behind in these response efforts.

The expertise of the Resident Coordinator’s office has been key to delivering emergency responses and capitalizing on these experiences for sustainable development in the long run. With the critical support of the in-house economist, the Resident Coordinator’s office produced for the first time the UN Common Country Analysis for Moldova which provides an in-depth analysis of the country’s socio- economic development, political context and current challenges; it also digitized the data in a Data Dashboard to facilitate public access to this information and improve decision making across all sectors of society.