Archive for September, 2011
Friday, September 30th, 2011
This post was originally published on the Open Society blog, on 22 September, 2011.
Tynymgul Eshieva
A man restores a swimming pool in Blagoveschenka, where the UNDP project resulted in the creation of 35 jobs to renovate this ethnically-diverse village. Photograph: Tynymgul Eshieva/Open Society Foundations.
This year the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with support from the Soros Foundation–Kyrgyzstan, launched 117 projects to help revitalize Kyrgyzstan’s south. The initiative was a continuation of UNDP projects from 2010 aimed at stabilizing income and providing aid to victims of the June 2010 conflict in Osh that left hundreds dead and thousands displaced.
Local authorities in Osh identified the scope of work, formed groups of workers, distributed payments, and provided security. UNDP provided the necessary materials, technical oversight, and conducted monitoring and evaluation of the projects. Groups of about 30 to 40 people at each building site received salaries of 300 Soms ($6.60) per day.
We traveled to the south to see the projects firsthand and meet with participants.
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Tags:accountability, Central Asia, education, governance, Jalabad, Kyrgyzstan, Open Society, Osh, reconciliation, reconstruction, Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan, Tynymgul Eshieva, UNDP, Uzbek, youth
Posted in Governance | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
Olena Ursu
Young and informed in Ukraine
The most interesting trainings I’ve ever conducted have been with kids. They are the most demanding, high energy, and rewarding audience if you want to achieve long lasting change.
Over the last seven years, they have been part of our campaigns to raise awareness of preventing HIV, promoting gender equality, saving energy, and advocating for consumer rights.
For this, we partnered with our 29 partner municipalities as well as UNAIDS, and UNICEF.
This year, kids are also part of our Every Drop Matters project that aims to educate young students about responsible use of water resources. We want them to know that they can make a difference by being aware of their own individual impact on the environment. The Every Drop Matters project is funded by Coca Cola.
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Tags:children, Coca Cola, curriculum, education, environment, kids, Kyiv, Novograd-Valynskiy, Olena Ursu, school, Ukraine, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF
Posted in Environment | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
Talai Isaev and Parviz Akramov
Who has access to information and who doesn’t makes a huge difference in the 21st Century. Those who have limited access to timely market information are facing problems identifying market opportunities and finding sellers or buyers.
This is especially true in agrarian economies such as in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan where more than half of the population lives in rural areas, with most working in the agricultural sector. Access to online market prices and information sharing are critical for sustainable development of agricultural production,
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Tags:access to information, accessibility, agriculture, Batken, farmers, internet, Khujand, Kyrgyzstan, mobile phones, Parviz Akramov, radio, SMS, Tajikistan, Talai Isaev, trade, UNDP
Posted in Development 2.0, Poverty | No Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
Annie Demirjian
When I first heard about this project I conjured up images of the French Revolution, ‘heads rolling down the hill’, of villains and conspirators of the empire and riots and bloody scenes in the streets! But I am in Yerevan, Armenia and this is about the Armenian Guillotine project. This summer, the United Nations Resident Coordinator asked me to meet with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) representatives, who were kind enough to explain to me the essence of the Guillotine!
So what is behind the name and what is the objective of the project? Colleagues at OSCE told me that an American entrepreneur (obviously with a sense of humour), and a former executive at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) regulatory affairs division – designed and developed a methodology and approach to revise, cut, and streamline all unnecessary and useless regulations to help countries create a friendlier environment for national and international business investors.
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Tags:Annie Demirjian, Armenia, business, business regulations, Croatia, guillotine, OECD, OSCE, reform, UNDP
Posted in Governance | No Comments »
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Ben Slay
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the acceleration of political and economic transitions in what was once known as the Soviet bloc.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we have an opportunity to consider the implications of these events, two decades ago.
Perhaps ironically, this anniversary coincides with the revolutions and (hopefully) democratic transitions now unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa. What might be the implications of transitions in the former Soviet bloc, and Turkey, for the “Arab Spring”?
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Tags:Arab spring, Ben Slay, democracy, European Union, governance, Middle East, North Africa, transition, Turkey, WTO
Posted in Governance | 1 Comment »
Monday, September 19th, 2011
Monjurul Kabir
Refugee centre, Georgia
The principle that all people, public and private institutions, and all states are accountable to laws that are equally enforced and independently adjudicated is fundamental to governance and human rights. However, realities on the ground are less than ideal.
Let’s take the example of the recommendations agreed by United Nations member states through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Over the past three years, almost all countries in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have taken part in the review of their human rights record at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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Tags:CIS, Europe, Human rights, IDPs, legal protection, minorities, Monjurul Kabir, refugees, Roma, rule of law, social exclusion, social inclusion, UN, UNDP, United Nations, universal periodic review, UPR, women
Posted in Governance, Human rights, Poverty, Social inclusion | No Comments »
Friday, September 16th, 2011
Patrick Gremillet
Hot topic: does development assistance make a difference?
With the management of public aid and investment comes a responsibility to ensure these resources are spent effectively and efficiently, and that they contribute to development goals.
What is often overlooked in the debate on the effectiveness of development assistance is the capacities needed to manage programmes and projects.
For instance, donors typically assess the capacities of implementing partners to manage and disburse financial resources, rather than abilities to effectively manage projects that can achieve the results that make a difference in people’s lives.
In addition, when designing programmes and projects, analysis often seems to focus on problems that need to be addressed, and funding. And rightly so. But we also need to make sure that we answer questions such as:
- How can development programmes and projects be implemented so that they deliver results?
- How will we measure results?
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Tags:development, management, Patrick Gremillet, RBM, results based management, UNDP
Posted in Development | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
Sheila Marnie
Consultation with Mahalla committees, Uzbekistan
A recent paper from MIT reminded me of the current debate in Central Asian countries on how to set up – and maintain – effective and affordable social assistance schemes (or last resort benefits), which reach the poor and provide meaningful protection from poverty and insecurity (See: UNICEF’s Protecting Vulnerable Families in Central Asia: Poverty, Vulnerability and the Impact of the Economic Crisis (pdf)).
In particular, it reminded me of a couple of papers which I co-authored in the late 1990s about the system in Uzbekistan of targeting social benefits through traditional local community organizations, or “mahallas.” (See: Targeting Social Assistance in a Transition Economy: the Mahallas in Uzbekistan and From Universal to Targeted Social Assistance: An Assessment of the Uzbek Experience.)
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Tags:Central Asia, Indonesia, local development, mahallas, MIT, poverty, social assistance, social benefits, UNICEF, Uzbekistan
Posted in Development, Poverty | 1 Comment »
Monday, September 12th, 2011
Alisher Juraev
Michael Clemens recently said in the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog that “A world without borders makes economic sense.”
Mr. Clemens has some interesting ideas about free movement of labour throughout the world, arguing that “a modest relaxation of barriers to human mobility between countries would bring more global economic prosperity than the total elimination of all remaining policy barriers to goods trade – every tariff, every quota – plus the elimination of every last restriction on the free movement of capital.”
This conversation is an important one for Europe and Central Asia, which has seen some of the biggest migration flows in the last 20 years. Remittances account for a staggering percentage of overall GDP in countries like Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Armenia. Tajikistan is the highest, with 41 percent of its GDP coming from remittances (Data is from central bank balance of payments and the International Monetary Fund’s April 2011 World Economic Outlook database.)
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Tags:analysis, Armenia, Central Asia, data, economic crisis, economics, Europe, Kyrgyzstan, migration, Moldova, poverty, Poverty Matters, remittances, Tajikistan, UNDP
Posted in Development, Migration and remittances, Poverty | 1 Comment »
Friday, September 9th, 2011
Blythe Fraser
Here’s a quick round-up of fellowship and training opportunities we came across recently which we thought might be of interest to our readers:
Tags:Carnegie, Chatham House, fellowships, Open Society Foundations, opportunities, OSI, Roma, training, young people, youth
Posted in Other | 2 Comments »