Europe & CIS

Case Study - From pilot to policy: Introducing community-based social services in Bulgaria

Bulgaria: Beyond the Facts, December 2007, Issue 26, Special edition

At Risk: Roma and the Displaced in Southeast Europe

This report presents for the first time a wealth of survey data on the situation of Roma, refugees and IDPs in Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia, including the UN-administered province of Kosovo. It offers a comprehensive and statistically rich picture of the problems vulnerable groups face in the region – and puts forward pragmatic, concrete policy advice on what governments, the international community and representatives of vulnerable groups themselves can do to break this vicious cycle of poverty and exclusion.

Administrative Capacity Building in Prospective and New EU Member States. Reference Guide for Horizontal Integration

This guide aims to help improve co-ordination and efficiency in policy making and implementation at the central governmental level in the new and prospective member states of the European Union. It is primarily intended for use by advisors/trainers of public administration decision- and policymakers. This publication was produced with support from the Matra Programme (Netherlands), under UNDP project RER99/003, Building Advisory Capacities in Central and Eastern European States.

8 Goals: 8 Insights

Young people's stories on the Millennium Development Goals. Eight Goals: Eight Insights is the title of Bulgaria's first Youth Report on Millennium Development Goals, launched on the day of the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations. The publication is a result of collaboration between UN agencies working in Bulgaria.

Support to the Formulation of a National Programme for Improving the Living Conditions of Disadvantaged Ethnic Minorities in Urban Areas

This report comprises a fully-costed and timebound indicative National Programme that targets the living conditions of disadvantaged ethnic minorities, concentrating on urban neighbourhoods and with a special focus on the Roma community. It was produced by UNDP Bulgaria in partnership with the Government, and is the product of a broad-based collaboration between policymakers, experts and future beneficiaries at the national, municipal and community levels.

Faces of Poverty, Faces of Hope

Poverty pockets and excluded, marginalized groups exist throughout Europe, depriving whole communities of equal participation in development. The rate of transition in Central and Southeastern Europe varies widely among different socio-economic groups, with some vulnerable populations, such as the Roma, in danger of being left behind. The primary purpose of this publication is to provide quantitative and comparable data on development problems and challenges of vulnerable groups in general, and Roma in particular, in Central and Southeastern Europe.

How to Build Open Information Societies

A collection of best practices and know-how. This publication contains knowledge-based best practices accumulated by UNDP in Europe and the CIS and shows how ICT can promote socio-economic development and good governance. The articles collected here give readers a glimpse of the powerful transformative force ICT can be when deployed wisely. ICT offers the leapfrogging development potential that less developed countries can use to build modern, competitive, mobile, versatile, and ultimately democratic societies – open information societies for all their citizens.

The report can be downloaded in its entirety, or by country article.

Environmental Governance Sourcebook

This publication, which seeks to provide basic substantive knowledge fundamental to improving environmental governance, has been prepared primarily for countries with economies in transition. It describes the linkages between the environment and other fields of the development process (economy, health, human development and standard of living, as well as security), and to bring the reader up to date on global, regional, and sub-regional environmental problems. It further explains international environmental policy framework and standard instruments for implementing environmental policy at the national and sub-national levels. Last but not least, the publication provides a review of various sources of international assistance in addressing environmental issues.

Avoiding the Dependency Trap

This comprehensive study on the situation of the Roma minority in five Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovak Republic) is based on comparable socioeconomic data from a cross-country survey of 5,034 Roma respondents. It addresses such questions as:
• Why has the situation of Roma in Central and Eastern Europe not improved in the last decade?
• What is the status of Roma in the region from a human development perspective? What are the actual levels of unemployment, depth of poverty, magnitude of segregation in education?
• Are Roma actually willing to integrate in their home societies or do they prefer to stay isolated in their cultural uniqueness?
• What needs to be done to improve development opportunities of the Roma in a sustainable way?