Archive for January, 2012
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
Marija Novkovic, UNDP in Montenegro
Ministry of Health in Montenegro working towards improved patient rights
Have you ever been in a position where medical services have been refused or delayed because an under-the-counter payment was necessary? Were you given the cold shoulder by your doctor? Has there been a shortage of hospital beds, or scarcity of information about your condition?
There may still be lingering disputes over the legal definition of corruption, but one thing’s for sure: corruption is painfully easy to define once it becomes personal.
Back in 2011, the Ministry of Health in Montenegro requested assistance from UNDP and the World Health Organization to assess the integrity of the country’s health care system (pdf). The research was intended to generate data on effectiveness of the health care reform thus far.
While 80 percent of patients were satisfied with the course of the primary health care (centres) reform, the reform at the secondary and tertiary levels (hospitals) hadn’t fared so well. It seems that doctors at primary level of care forged better relationships with their patients, due to a more thorough insight into personal histories and medical records.
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Tags:accountability, corruption, health, health services, healthcare, Human rights, informal sector, Marija Novkovic, medical services, Montenegro, ombudsperson, patient rights, transparency, vulnerability
Posted in Anticorruption, Governance, Health, Human rights, Social inclusion | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
As world leaders meet in Davos, two UNDP experts weigh in on what they see as the major issues on the agenda.
Andrey Ivanov, our human development expert, sees a direct link between the Occupy movement and the World Economic Forum and asks: are the suits in Davos up to the challenge to fix existing patterns of inequality? Check out: People or $: Will Davos answer the call?
Zack Taylor, our conflict specialist, looks at the discontent that has brought the middle class to the streets, and the largely unsatisfactory government response. Answering the call for a political system that supports the middle class is wise in terms of peace and stability. He reminds us of the power of social media to give voice to the ‘have nots’. Check out: Inequality and the “radical middle”?
Where do you stand on these hot topics?
Tags:Andrey Ivanov, Davos, economy, peace and security, social exclusion, Zack Taylor
Posted in Governance, Peace and security, Social inclusion | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Andrey Ivanov
Last year was marked by an important phenomenon: the reinvention of class struggle. The summer of 2011 saw the London riots sparked by ethnic clashes. The winter brought about a deeper and more fundamental sort of mass protest in which individuals and groups started organizing against the system along a clearly class-driven message.
“Occupy Wall Street!” didn’t fade away with the chill in temperature, and is increasing its geographic coverage involving some countries in Europe and Central Asia as well. This calls for a deeper look into the internal logic of the Occupy! movement and possible implications in the region.
The claim to “occupy” is not intended to “claim occupancy” of office space. “Occupy Wall Street!” is still far from “Expropriate Wall Street!” but the logic is clear and it points in that direction. It may be just a matter of time for the protesters to articulate it explicitly.
The deeper the recession, severity of youth unemployment, or lack of viable prospects for one’s future – the closer expropriation will get to occupiers’ hearts. The “expropriate!” potential of the movement is what brings features of a class struggle – despite its motley constituency.
Today this political message is still in an embryonic form. The occupiers’ main claim is not about overthrowing the system (yet) – it is about inequality and injustice of current patterns of wealth accumulation (or grab and distribution).
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Tags:Andrey Ivanov, capitalism, Davos, economy, human development, inequality, injustice, Occupy Wall Street, poverty, protest, recession, social exclusion, social inclusion, wealth, youth unemployment
Posted in Governance, Human rights, Poverty, Social inclusion | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Zack Taylor
Global leaders are once again meeting this week in Davos, Switzerland to discuss and – one hopes – find solutions to the increasingly volatile economic and political forces shaping our world.
In a marked change from past get-togethers, mainstream economists will be talking about something more usually associated with the development community: Rising socio-economic inequality.
We have known for some time that the world is getting less equal; so much so that, today, we are hardly surprised to learn that one percent of the world’s population controls 44 percent of the world’s wealth (Global Wealth Report pdf).
Even during the heydays of the great industrialists in the United States – when the Rockefellers and Carnegies were carving up the oil and steel sectors – the richest one percent ‘only’ controlled a third of the wealth.
In short, the ‘haves’ have never had it so good, with the trends in southeast Europe and Central Asia mirroring those in other developing regions. Until very recently, the increasing level of inequality was broadly accepted by most of those living in developed and developing societies alike, as the poor and middle class saw some prospect of social mobility and advancement of the type which could pull them up and afford them a better quality of life than their parents.
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Tags:Central Asia, crime, Davos, economy, Europe, G20, Hungary, IMF, inequality, liberalism, middle class, peace, poverty, protests, radical, Romania, security, social media, Zachary Taylor, Zack Taylor
Posted in Development 2.0, Peace and security, Poverty, Social inclusion | 5 Comments »
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
The world was shocked to learn about Kyrgyzstan’s second revolution within five years. The country’s anger resulted in the ousting of two presidents, and the 2010 revolution was followed by interethnic violence in the south of the country – making 2010 a challenging year. Some doubted whether Kyrgyzstan could remain independent and sovereign.
At the time, UNDP sent experts to the country to assess the situation and provide technical support. Jens Wandel visited the UNDP office in Kyrgyzstan to learn about our projects including our support to the elections.
He asked me if I had heard about Ushahidi, a free, and open source software for collecting, visualizing and mapping information. Ushahidi is Swahili for “witness” or “testimony” and was used for the first time in the 2007 Kenyan elections.
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Tags:accountability, Central Elections Commission, democracy, development 2.0, E. Kasybekov, elections, Haiti, ICTD, ICTs, Japan, Jens Wandel, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, open government, open source, revolution, social media, software, technology, transparency, Ushahidi
Posted in Development 2.0, Governance | 12 Comments »
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Justyna Krol, Public Relations Specialist, UNDP in Poland
In our Warsaw office, we’ve started working on a project inspired in part by the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto and MicaMoca Project Berlin.
The idea is this: together with a group of people who are facing the danger of social and economic exclusion (such as people with physical disabilities), we’re creating a cooperative enterprise that’s also a social innovation centre. The coop will mainly be a cafe/bar but three other initiatives will also be running out of the coop building.
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Tags:art, cooperative, fashion, innovation, Justyna Krol, magazine, Poland, social inclusion, Warsaw
Posted in Poverty, Social inclusion | 2 Comments »
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Local development problems often require joint efforts of several neighboring municipalities to find comprehensive solutions.
Ukraine’s current administrative and territorial system is quite complicated; it is represented by over 12,000 local governments of different levels, including 454 urban communities.
Some of the problems that need coordination include solid waste management, infrastructure construction and maintenance, cleaning of rivers, forests, and parks, and developing common strategies for domestic and in-country tourism promotion.
In 2011 UNDP hosted an international mission to promote inter-municipal partnerships for improved public service delivery in Ukraine. The perspectives for inter-municipal cooperation were analyzed and experiences from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (pdf) (in Ukrainian pdf) were shared with the partner municipalities and relevant ministries in Ukraine.
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Tags:construction, Dolnya, FYR Macedonia, infrastructure, local development, municipal cooperation, Olena Ursu, planning, public services, solid waste management, tourism, Tulchyn, Ukraine
Posted in Governance | 3 Comments »
Monday, January 16th, 2012
Clare Romanik
Enjoying several glasses of wine together after an inspiring opening day of European Development Days in the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, my co-conspirators and I get down to business.
There are real revolutions on the street, and agendas for change among donor and development groups are struggling to keep up.
How is it that all of that development aid for years didn’t result in real life improvements for ordinary people?
Could it be that donor money never made it to local governments that deliver services to people?
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Tags:Clare Romanik, Copernicus, decentralization, development aid, local development, local governance, municipalities, service delivery, Warsaw
Posted in Development, Governance | 2 Comments »
Friday, January 13th, 2012
Olena Ursu
Every citizen who has ever had the chance to approach any state institution is worried about observing the rule of law of public administrations. It becomes particularly important when the services are considered essential, yet problems exist.
How can cities measure the level of rule of law in their own institutions?
In Sweden there is a government agency, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, dedicated to improving the quality and effectiveness of international conflict and crisis management.
In 2008 it conducted research on the problems and potential solutions in public administration, demonstrating that in many peaceful and state building environments, public administration reform as well as justice reform, are promoted as separate projects with different objectives.
Given that the rule of law is also a focus area of UNDP, we teamed up with the Folke Bernadotte Academy on a project to measure the rule of law in public administration. The project is being piloted in the Philippines, Sierra-Leone and Ukraine.
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Tags:accessibility, accountability, decentralization, Feodosiya, Folke Bernadotte Academy, housing, justice reform, legality, Lviv, Olena Ursu, public administration reform, rule of law, transparency, Ukraine, UNDP
Posted in Development, Governance, Human rights, Social inclusion | No Comments »
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
Janne Sivonen, Executive Director at Fairtrade Finland
Tajikistan is famous for its dried apricots
When a Finnish consumer buys Fairtrade products, in most cases that product comes from Africa or Latin America. But global poverty can be found closer to home, even in the countries that previously were our neighbors.
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are ranked lower in terms of human development by UNDP than Namibia and South Africa. However, you rarely hear about the poverty in Central Asia (with the exception of Afghanistan) in Finland. The little space the region gets in the papers is mainly devoted to border disputes and internal unrest.
In November I attended the first Fairtrade conference in Central Asia, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The event was organized with support from the UNDP Aid for Trade programme. At the conference local farmers, businesses and Fairtrade International’s representatives explored the opportunities offered by Fairtrade.
The global consumption of Fairtrade products has grown despite the recession, and undoubtedly there is also room for new Fairtrade products from Central Asia. For now the region only has a few Fairtrade certified producers but there is potential for much more. The farmers in the area know how to do their work well and are proud of the quality of their product for a reason.
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Tags:agriculture, aid for trade, Central Asia, fair trade, Fairtrade, farmers, farming, Janne Sivonen, jobs, Kyrgyzstan, poverty, sustainable livelihoods, Tajikistan, trade
Posted in Poverty, Social inclusion | No Comments »
