Interview
“Nepal will only win if every part of the society wins” D
r. Thomas Gass is a seasoned diplomat and development expert. He has recently been appointed as the Assistant Secretary General at the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs in New York, responsible for policy and interagency coordination. He served as the first residential Ambassador of Switzerland to Nepal. Prior to coming to Nepal he worked in New York as Head of the Economic and Development Section at the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations in New York. Dr. Gass began his development career in the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research and later joined the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation as a Policy and Programme Officer. He also worked for UNDP in Guyana as the Deputy Resident Representative. Development Advocate Nepal caught up with Gass as he was leaving to take up his new assignment in New York. In this interview, he minces no words and offers constructive critique of the development process in Nepal and on the role of UN and international development community at large. He says that it is right that Nepal set the target to graduate into a developing country by 2022, not because Nepal owes it to the international community but because it owes it to its people. He believes that “Nepal, as any state, will be only as strong as the weakest members of its society”.
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How would you describe the role of the international community in Nepal and visà-vis the development process here? For many of its Development Partners, Nepal is located far away and holds only moderate importance in terms of its economic linkages. The relationship of the international community with Nepal is therefore relatively rather impartial with no strong vested interest or agenda. Nevertheless, the international community is at times very ambitious and impatient in terms of the changes it wants to see in Nepal.
So in a sense national interest of development partners does not have a direct bearing on the development process in Nepal because they are a bit far away? Yes. Of course Nepal has two immediate neighbors who logically have vested interests here. But for rest of us, the distance to Nepal is relatively great so what happens here doesn’t affect us directly in terms of our economy, politics,or migration. Our relationship with Nepal is therefore mainly influenced by our respective commitment to support the socio-economic development in this country.
Do the donors work as a coherent group or do you see them working at crosspurposes at times? There are times when there is disagreement among development partners. But in general, compared to how donors work in other countries, they work together quite well in Nepal. Cooperation and coordination is strong and information is shared readily with each other. As you know the development partners have agreed to pool their funding in sectors such as health, education, rural transport infrastructure, but also transversally for the strengthening of local governance and for supporting the peace process.
What are your country’s development priorities in Nepal? Switzerland has recently approved a new cooperation strategy with Nepal. This strategy includes two main domains. Within the first domain the objective is to help develop an effective and inclusive federal state, based on human security and the rule of law. Within the second domain our objective is to contribute to improved wellbeing and resilience of people, especially disadvantaged people living in rural areas and in small urban centers. So we will measure our success by how the socio-economic status of these people improves and we will achieve these