The RC Interview: Jacqui Badcock, Papua New Guinea
Dr. Jacqui Badcock took up the reins as UN Resident Coordinator in the Philippines in September 2009 following her RC posts in Papua New Guinea and Namibia. With a long and distinguished career in the UN system, Dr. Badcock worked with WHO, FAO and UNICEF before taking up her RC posts. Impact News recently sat down with Dr. Badcock to learn more about her motivations and insights on being a Resident Coordinator.
What motivated you to become a Resident Coordinator?
I became a Resident Coordinator nine years ago after working with WHO, and then UNICEF. At the time I was motivated by a couple of factors—continued career diversification and advancement and genuine interest in pushing the coordination envelope across agencies. I have a public health nutrition background, which necessitates bringing many government Ministries, NGOs and Partners—including UN agencies together for a multi-sectoral response and I felt I could bring my experiences to bear on bringing UN agencies together to bring about a multi-sectoral response to development. I was serving for some time as RC a.i. in Laos during the period when I was the UNICEF Rep, and I figured I could do so much more as a full-time RC than as an ‘a.i.’ It was a natural progression to ask UNICEF to put me forward as a potential interagency RC and to fund my participation in the RC Assessment Centre. I remain on secondment from UNICEF to this day and have served as RC in Namibia, Papua New Guinea and now the Philippines.
Have your motivations changed?
Only that they are more resolute with the UN Reform and Delivering as One agenda, now being a significant priority. I have also grown to love the people-oriented nature of the work—mobilizing teams at many levels around common objectives. I have always been a good team leader and motivator and it seems an increasingly natural role to be in. The role also keeps me in the field. I do not see myself being comfortable in an HQ role even if it is one of leadership. The country level interaction and dynamics with partners is also important to me. My aspirations for career advancement did happen. I was promoted from being a P5 Rep in UNICEF to becoming a D1 Resident Coordinator in Namibia and then two years ago I was promoted to D2 on merit for my work in Papua New Guinea. I am very proud of that.
What have been your most significant challenges as a Resident Coordinator?
Significant challenges have come from some of the additional roles one has. For example, learning to do UNDP business and be proficient in fields outside of my public health, agriculture and maternal/child rights technical focus, dealing with security management in a complex criminal environment, and dealing with humanitarian responses. And as RC, the wonderful challenge given in Papua New Guinea was when we embarked on the road to being a self-starting Delivering as One country. The hiccups were always in relation to trying to innovate too far out of the norm and running contrary to HQ procedures or ways of doing business. Trying to table a Common Country Programme Document for the UNICEF, UNFPA and UNDP Executive Boards seemed like a natural progression after a year of working together on a Common Country Programme Results Framework at country level. But the Boards were not ready to receive such an approach and we had to submit the Board CPDs separately in the end. However after that Board approval, the agencies in-country came back together again and we signed with the Government an innovative Common CPAP document that covered not only the three ExCom agencies as a legal document, but had 11 other agencies sign as ‘indications of intent’ to deliver the programme collectively as One.
Other challenges lie in work-life balance and family—questions which I am sure many people have, especially women. Yes, it does take a lot of time and energy but I am not convinced any job or anyone with career aspirations would find that any different in any other career path. I am also a great believer in sharing my energies between work and my personal life. The latter can never be sacrificed and the former just has to fit into a well-defined work space and not take over everything else. I have very well defined family, work and personal life spaces and I stick to them as much as possible. It’s amazing how efficient that makes you! I am a single mum of two adopted children and they always accompanied me overseas until they were in their teens. I have a family and work lifestyle that works just fine for us all.
A huge challenge, of course, is managing people, massaging egos sometimes and in the One UN world managing agency credibility. On the one hand being an RC is about being a team leader; it isn’t about being the big honcho and telling everyone what to do and having supervisory functions. It’s about building trust among equals and harnessing individual strengths for a collective good; it’s about winning respect and respecting others views. Don’t become an RC if the main thing you want to be is the boss and don’t become an RC if you don’t have good people management skills. Frankly, if you have the latter in good measure you don’t need to be a great expert on anything else—a team will work alongside you and provide that expertise collectively. It is also important to be able to step up to the plate and make decisions quickly when necessary, but to only do this unilaterally when time or the need to make a decision is imperative. Inclusive decision making is generally key to building a good UN country team.
How have you made an impact?
I would like to think I did a lot of team building of UN and UNDP teams in my first two assignments as RC and made huge strides and innovations in Delivering as One/UN Reform in Papua New Guinea at a time when we were all experimenting. There are now many lessons to be learned from the Papua New Guinea approach that can contribute to the growing knowledge pool on UN Reform. That the UN team and our implementing partners—both government and civil society—were able to work on a new paradigm to deliver a common programme comprising of 17 multi-agency and partner programme task forces instead of 62 separate, agency-based projects and project Boards was a hugely fulfilling accomplishment. For me, it showed the sense and advantages of pooling technical, as well as financial resources in contributing to a country’s development agenda.
I have also accomplished a lot in strengthening donor coordination and the aid effectiveness agenda in my first two assignments by advancing the neutral convening power of the UN and building trust in the UN among Government and development partners. The pooling of technical and financial resources can arguably also be applied to all Development Partners. Governments working in the spirit of the Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action have an opportunity to pull all partners around their own common development agenda and encourage greater donor collaboration. The UN can play a considerable role in brokering this approach.
I also believe I contributed to the continuation of the peacebuilding processes in the former strife torn part of Papua New Guinea—the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. The UN and UNDP in particular were at the forefront of support to peacebuilding, reconciliation and disarmament activities. The UN was also mobilized to respond and prepare for natural disasters in a more coordinated way in Papua New Guinea. For the first time were able to lead a coordinated response with the Government when a cyclone hit the North coast in 2008.
What are you most proud of?
As well as all of the above, I am proud of the work I did on Gender in Papua New Guinea. Represented by only one woman out of 109 parliamentarians, I invested a lot of time to work on developing and empowering the local gender machinery, chairing a working group on special measures to promote women to the floor of parliament and in advocating for a better response to an alarming rate of gender-based violence. Gender was highlighted as one of five focal themes of the country’s common programme 2009-2014 and was not simply mainstreamed. UNIFEM initiated an accelerated presence and programme in-country, with plans for a full representation by 2010.
What advice would you give to somebody considering the RC position?
Be prepared to be lonely at the top while you gain people’s confidence; keep smiling and push the reform envelope; get ready to love cocktail parties—a great source of information and informal dialogue; probably learn golf as that is where politicians are often found—but I have survived without doing that; be yourself and if you are a woman—there is no need to prove yourself as a woman prove yourself as yourself and you will win team peers.
Many people are put off by being in the RC a.i. role, especially if for a long period. Don’t be, as you can move forward more definitively once you are full-time. Also, use the UNDP firewall structures in place and don’t be put off having the UNDP RR role simultaneously—come to that, don’t be put off having the Security and Humanitarian hats simultaneously also. You have to learn to delegate fully and with trust. DSS, OCHA, DPA and DPI and UNDP provide excellent specialists to advise you. I also strongly advise working for more than one agency in your career so you understand the differences, but can also call on the commonalities and do it knowledgeably. Working for two ExCom and two specialized agencies in my career, has helped win over a few skeptics more than once.
