A lifetime of learning and action: Reflections on a career with — and a retirement from — the United Nations

Munyaradzi Chenje is currently the Regional Director heading the United Nations Development Coordination Office Regional Office for Africa. Established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this regional office is supporting the work of 53 United Nations Resident Coordinators and their teams in 54 countries across Africa on accelerating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The author reflects on his 30 years career before his early retirement on July 2021.

Two hundred and fifty months!

My full-time United Nations service totals 20 years and 10 months at the end of this month — July 2021. These 250 months represent a lifetime of learning, passion, service, and friendships.

For me, working for the United Nations is not just a job — it has been a calling. The UN’s commitment to making an impact has constantly challenged me to do my very best.

I have learnt from brilliant scientists and professionals. I have also learnt from many people at the community and grassroots levels.

It has been an honour and a privilege to serve with women and men from all corners of the world and from many diverse cultures, and alongside so many talented and experienced colleagues – Resident Coordinators and UN Country Team members, Regional Directors, and UN colleagues and interns.

Supporting UN member states in their collective action on global challenges with massive national impacts is rewarding. The work is sometimes long, arduous, fractious, and frustrating, but the difficulties are well worth the opportunity to witness and take part in historic actions such as “The Future We Want” and the 2030 Agenda.

Working for the UN is a privilege, and my greatest honour was being appointed by the Secretary-General as the founding Africa Regional Director of the UN Development Coordination Office (UNDCO). It is not every day or every year that the UN establishes a new office!

I encourage all of us at the UN to take every day on the job as a privilege. Every day we have an opportunity to contribute to positive change in the world through this organization.

Focusing on integration

As I reflect on my two decades in UN service, I realize that the main thread of my work has been on integration, tackling the interlinkages of social, economic and environmental issues central to human well-being today and across generations.

In the 18 years that I was with the UN Environment Programme, I coordinated both regional and global environmental assessment and reporting work; supported the General Assembly’s Second Committee consultations on sustainable development issues; and supported the integrated implementation of the 2030 Agenda and SDGs through its regional offices.

Working on four global and about 10 regional environmental assessments, I was exposed to diverse views and interests. I came to understand that science and policy are interdependent. Policy needs science in order to be based on observable reality, not just wishes. Science needs policy so as to avoid being merely theoretical.

Consensus can be frustratingly slow, even glacial. For example, it took almost three decades for sustainable development to be universally embraced. With its roots in environmental discourse, sustainable development was often perceived as an environmental agenda to limit economic development. The world has since accepted that integrating the three dimensions of sustainable development — social, economic and environmental — is central to transformation, leaving no one behind.

Listen to the people

In January 2020, I visited the community in Fabidji in Niger, which strengthens social cohesion among farmers and herders in the Dosso and Maradi regions. The women participating in this Peacebuilding Fund-supported project — implemented by UN Women and FAO — were excited to talk about their experiences.

The project helped train women as conflict mediators; and created nearly Dimitra clubs or dialogues groups, providing for the effective participation of women. The role of women as land commissions is increasingly accepted. Women’s inheritance rights are also increasingly recognized in communities.

During the January 2020 field visit, some of the women conflict mediators excitedly spoke to us about their success, the positive impacts among communities, and the need for ongoing UN support.

Their expectation is for the UN to deliver and to get them to their destination — a better life. We at the UN must listen to these women, and to all others “farthest left behind.”

Reflections on the work ahead

COVID-19 has taught some tough lessons, and we must learn them: We are in one world. We are all in this together. We are all neighbours in this world, across national and other boundaries.

The commitment at all levels is to leave no one behind in such transformation, taking integrated action on social, economic and environmental issues and opportunities.

The whole-of-UN-system response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the African Union vision — Agenda 2063.

These two agendas are simultaneously about our present moment and our long-term future. We must keep both these time frames in mind in our daily work.

These agendas call on us to take bold action now to resolve the COVID-19 crisis, and to set the stage for a more prosperous and fair future.

People want their daily bread today — not tomorrow, not next year, and certainly not in 2030 or 2063! This is as it should be. And yet, long-term vision is crucial.

A paradox is at work here, but its resolution may be more at hand than first appears: In order to enlist the support of the people of the world today, and to achieve transformation tomorrow, one thing is clear: We must deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals every single day.

That is our challenge. And, as UN employees, that is our immense privilege. I am grateful to have had this privilege for the past 250 months, and to have shared it with so many dedicated and caring colleagues.

For more about DCO Africa and its recent achievements, read the DCO Africa Annual 2020-2021 Results Report.

This report presents how the DCO Africa team has strengthened the coordination of the UN sustainable development system across Africa in the reporting period between August 2020 and July 2021, in support of 53 RCs, RCOs and UNCTs to deliver on the ground at the country level. 

It also highlights how regional UN entities worked closely under the Africa Regional Collaborative Platform to strengthen the capacity of RCs and UNCTs across the continent, while underlining the role of DCO Africa in the regional coordination of the UN sustainable development system to put a collective focus on delivering results.