Information and stories about United Nations.

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The UNDP in Rural Belarus


Despite the fact that Belarus has one of the lowest poverty rates of the post-Soviet states, poverty, though not extreme, threatens the welfare of her people. Only 1% of Belarusians are living on less than $1 a day, but a more concerning 27.1% are below the poverty line, with 17.8% living below the minimum subsistence level. The “minimum subsistence level” is defined per the Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs as “a minimum level of income, which is considered to be necessary to ensure sustenance and other basic personal needs at a level allowing the individual to survive.” The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Belarus identifies the “rural population, children, and single-parent households” as the most vulnerable victims of poverty.

Fortunately, the UNDP is executing a poverty reduction plan in Belarus that fosters the development of small businesses and, therefore, encourages a vibrant private sector. The plan is spearheaded by multiple players, from the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank to the Belarusian government and small rural Belarusian businesses. The UNDP hopes that the installation of an agricultural business sector will rejuvenate rural Belarus and bring an end to poverty in the Eastern European country.

Rural initiatives are especially necessary in former Soviet territories where local economies have declined due to the rocky transition from collective to private farming that occurred after the fall of the USSR in the early 1990’s. Agricultural workers were completely unprepared to grow crops on their own. This resulted in a situation in which uneducated farmers with limited resources in a now free-market economy were unable to maximize the productivity of their land.

Part of the UNDP’s strategy has included the establishment of the Rural Business Development Center outside of Minsk, the nation’s capital. The Center is the legal hub for the development of former Soviet collective farms into efficient private enterprises. The director of the Center, Alla Voitekhovich, describes the day-to-day activities of the Center as including the “registration of small enterprises, the conducting of market surveys, (and) the facilitation of job creation,” among other efforts. The RBDC also holds workshops for small business owners and entrepreneurs and has recently begun to encourage local farmers to exploit agro-tourism as a means of job creation in the region.

The UNDP says that rural poverty has been significantly reduced in Belarus in the last decade, stating “From 2000 to 2009, the share of poor households dropped by 7.4 times in rural areas.” Surely, the UNDP has made great strides in Belarus, breathing new life into an agricultural system that only a short time ago seemed irreparably broken. The success of the UNDP in rural Belarus is truly a testament to the resourcefulness and efficiency of the United Nations.

– Josh Forgét

Sources: UNDP Belarus, CIA World Factbook, Czech Republic Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs
Photo: Spotlight

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What is the UN Foundation?

The United Nations Foundation is a partner of the United Nations, though it is not directly involved in achieving the UN’s goals on the ground. It was started after multimillionaire philanthropist Ted Turner donated $1 billion as a show of his support for the UN’s objectives. Primarily a funding body, the foundation was established in 1998 –- long after the UN’s 1945 inauguration –- to ensure governments adhere to the commitments they have made to the UN and to secure funding for UN projects worldwide. Additionally, the UN foundation works to connect other organizations, individuals, and businesses in partnership with the UN.

The UN Foundation recognizes the role enterprise has to play in development. Accordingly, it has formed 300 partnerships and garnered over $2 billion in direct aid for UN projects. Examples of the Foundation’s work include partnerships with Vodafone to assist in capitalizing on the spread of technology as an aid to development efforts, with Expedia to protect and increase education about World Heritage Sites, and with multiple US corporations, such as Orkin, Hewlett-Packard and United Airlines, to support the Nothing but Nets campaign which provides mosquito nets in malaria prone regions.

The UN Foundation’s work is particularly important as one of the notorious pitfalls of development projects is the disconnect among organizations working on the same issue. The approach of disparate entities working separately on the same issue breeds inefficiency. Without coordinating past and current efforts, institutions often use the same flawed approaches, compete for resources, and waste energy on unnecessary projects. The Foundation’s work streamlines efforts, capabilities and resources to create a single, coordinated powerhouse initiative on a given project, which has the potential to produce far better results.

Though the UN Foundation is not itself an intervening body, its services have proven invaluable to the continuing efforts of the United Nations in alleviating poverty and instituting programs for sustainable development worldwide.

– Farahnaz Mohammed

Sources: UN Business, UN Foundation
Photo: UN Women Flickr

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What the UNHCR is doing for Refugees

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Abdel is a refugee in Choucha Refugee Camp, Tunisia. He arrived there in 2011 after years as an orphan in Libya. Originally from Cote D’Ivoire, Abdel’s parents had to flee that country for unspecified reasons, and his mother died before he turned five years old.

During the Libyan uprising against Muammar Gaddafi in February 2011, Abdel was held captive for ten months, during which time he and his father were forced to watch his sister’s rape and murder. After the ten months, he was freed and fled to Choucha in the city of Misrata, which at its peak held tens of thousands of Libyan refugees (most of which have been relocated to other countries).

Abdel soon decided that he could not tolerate sitting around in the camp all day, being bored and lonesome. That drive inspired him to apply for a pilot skills training program organized by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Danish Refugee Council, located about 87 miles from Choucha.

Abdel’s enrollment not only gave him something to do other than sit in Choucha, it also gave him a bit of hope for the future. In an interview, he admitted that for the first time in years he is sleeping well and that he’s looking at opportunities to continue his studies beyond Choucha.

In his class, Abdel is learning to make jewelry. The refugees eat and sleep in dormitories during the program, and the close quarters allow them to form friendships that help with feeling lonely or helpless. The program consists mostly of young males, but as the classes have begun to soar in popularity, young women have started to apply as well.

Abdel isn’t the only success story of the pilot programs. Danish Refugee Council project officer Gianmaria Pinto expressed in an interview that at the last session before the end of year break, all of the refugees were excited about that prospect of learning and did not want to return to Choucha.

Choucha is scheduled to close at the end of June 2013. Spokesperson for UNHCR Ursula Aboubacar insisted during a press conference in Tunis that the closing of Choucha will give the 900+ refugees still living there a better life. Though many of the refugees have nowhere to go and are still waiting to be relocated, the closing of Choucha will force them to make arrangements to support themselves.

Choucha housed many North African refugees in a time of violent tumult, and in the cases of young men and women like Abdel, has even given them skills and resources that they can use to generate some sort of revenue or self-worth. UNHCR and the Danish Refugee Council have put together a program that will help refugees and Tunisians alike get on their feet and build futures for themselves that, if all goes well, don’t reflect their pasts.

– Lindsey Rubinstein

Sources: Libya Herald, UNHCR
Photo: Demotix

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Extreme Poverty Has Been Cut in Half Since 1990

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In 1990, 43% of the world’s population subsisted on less than $1.25 per day. By 2010, that number had shrunk to 21%. This success comes 5 years before the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal of achieving such a number by 2015.

The conversation has now shifted to the remaining 21%. Optimists hope to achieve similar success by 2030. However, there are several unique obstacles to addressing that 21%, and the economic conditions that allowed such a rapid decline before are unlikely to be replicated in the coming decade.

Much of the success of the last two decades was achieved by slightly elevating the conditions of those living just below the $1.25 per day line. Pulling a person living at $1.15 per day over the $1.25 line is much easier than pulling someone living at $0.25 to over $1.25. In other words, much of the remaining 21% was the bottom half of the original 43 percent. The challenge of the next decades will be to improve the lives of the most impoverished people on Earth.

China’s growth over the past decades was instrumental in lowering the extreme poverty rate. In the twenty years, from 1981 to 2001, China pulled 680 million of its own citizens out of extreme poverty as it rapidly developed. With China’s extreme poverty rate now at low levels, the focus will now shift to new developing countries, primarily India and Africa. The challenge will be to replicate the economic conditions for such an achievement in vastly different governmental and cultural contexts.

Should such a success be achieved by 2030, however, the fight against poverty will hardly be over. The $1.25 a day figure is simply an accepted global standard of extreme poverty, and does not account for those living in poverty in developed countries. In the U.S., the poverty line sits at $30 a day–a marked difference. However, with extreme poverty levels eradicated, the world would be able to focus anew on those living just below the line.

– Andrew Rasner

Sources: The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist
Photo: The Economist,

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Malala Proves Education is Key to Empowerment

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Malala Yousafzai is a young education rights campaigner from Pakistan. Malala will soon be celebrating her 16th birthday, a miracle after she was shot by extremists for her outspoken beliefs on education. Malala will celebrate her birthday by traveling to the United Nations where students from more than 80 countries will join her.

Malala and the other young activists will be assembled to call for global education for everyone in the world. She and the other young diplomats believe that education is a right for all – one of the Millennium Development Goals, and a vital component of the path to global citizenship. This belief is well founded in the fact that universal compulsory education represents a future that the world wants. Malala was the first person to sign on to a new worldwide petition calling for urgent action to ensure the right of every child to safely attend school. The petition serves as an initial step in focusing the UN agenda on education.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon supports Malala’s mission to bring education to the world. He states that education is an essential step in a world without poverty, violence, discrimination, and disease. He also recognizes that in order to achieve these objectives, the global society needs to continue pushing forward. The secretary general recognizes that we, as a global society, have made progress on this issue, however, there is much more work to be done. Ban expresses that no child or woman should have to consider going to school as an act of bravery.

Ban states that too many girls around the world are subjected to extremist threats for trying to obtain an education. The benefits of educating women in developing countries have been proven time and time again. Ban explains that when women and girls are educated, a society develops at a more rapid pace than without their education. Additionally, education increases future earnings for women, allowing them to provide their families with additional resources, over time, lifting them out of poverty.

If education is key to empowerment as the path to economic stability and development, why is it so widely contested in many developing countries? The answer lies in fear. If we as a global community continue to fear education for all, we will fail to grow as a global economy. More steps must be taken to ensure each child has access to education.

-Caitlin Zusy
Source: Huffington Post, UN News Center
Photo: Stanford Bookhaven

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Economic and Social Council Focuses on Science

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The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) kicked off its annual forum at the start of this month, focusing on the importance of science and innovation to achieve development goals. The top UN officials, who were in attendance at the forum, stressed that technology and science are crucial for tackling todays global challenges, from reducing poverty to ensuring sustainable development. Some of the key speakers on the first day of this forum were ECOSOC president, Ambassador Nestor Osorio of Columbia, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and President of the UN General Assembly, Vuk Jeremic.

“The steadily increasing pace of technological innovation makes ours an era of a long profound change…So many fields of human endeavor – medicine, energy, agriculture – have made significant, even drastic, improvements in just a few generations. Yet in the field of development, despite our progress, there are still over one billion people living in extreme poverty. And tonight many, if not most, will go to bed hungry,” said Osorio.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed the importance of science and innovation as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) come to a close in 2015. While some of the MDGs have already been met, there are several that need extra attention if the international community wishes to achieve them by 2015. “We must intensify out efforts, particularly to tackle the disparities across regions and between social groups…the future we want is within reach. Let us innovate together to achieve it,” stated Ki-moon.

Finally, Vuk Jeremic, President of the UN General Assembly, spoke about the need for a renewed commitment from Member States to face these development challenges together. He urged for a revitalized General Assembly and a renewed ECOSOC to lead the UN in setting the world on a more equitable, prosperous and environmentally sound path.

The ECOSOC forum will last for 26 days, but this assembly on innovation and science will last for four, including several more speeches from world leaders as well as collaboration meetings between several international institutions.

– Catherine Ulrich

Source: UN News, UNOG
Photo: Ventures

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Importance of Small-Scale Farmers

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With a rising population and a high demand on food production, our world is looking for solutions to increase food production. Small-scale farmers play an important role in the dilemma of feeding our world. Currently small-scale farmers produce the majority of food for the developing world.

There are millions of success stories about these farmers reaching out and sustaining whole communities. For example, in Brazil there is a food security policy known as Zero Hunger. In this program the government buys products directly from small-scale farmers and distributes the products to day-care centers, hospitals and community associations.

However, the UN and FAO in a report, Smallholder Integration in Changing Food Markets, highlight the challenges still ahead for small-scale farmers. The report calls attention to the importance of policymakers in the growth of small-scale farmers. The report focuses on the fact that most of these farmers are removed from the market. It calls for policymakers to create greater market integration and more inclusive value chains. The report concludes that by doing these things, these farmers will be more inclined to adopt new technologies to grow productivity.

The report stresses the two main ways to link small-scale farmers to the market are to provide better access to credit and insurance, and to strengthen the links between farmers and buyers. The report discusses the fact that, in many countries, transportation is too costly, infrastructure is inadequate, and the cost of storage is too high. These farmers are unlikely to risk producing a surplus of products if they think that their products would go to waste.

“High levels of price, production risks and uncertainty, and limited access to tools to manage them deter investment in more productive new technologies that would enable smallholders to produce surpluses for sale in markets,” according to the report.

Policymakers must focus on the inclusion of small-scale farmers into the market. They are important to the future of our world and must be supported.

– Catherine Ulrich

Sources: FAO, International Institute for Environment and Development, UN News

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The World’s Most Oppressed People: The Rohingya

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The Rohingya people represent a small Muslim minority in the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar. They are denied citizenship, forbidden from colleges, and have suffered mass killings and violence that the government has done nothing to halt. And recently, Myanmar passed a law restricting Rohingya childbirths, an action which may qualify as an act of genocide.

The Rohingya people have lived in Myanmar since the eighth century. However, their existence was wiped from official record in 1982 with the passage of a citizenship law. The law had the effect of making the Rohingya stateless peoples, illegal immigrants in their own country, with no rights or international recognition.

Rohingya people have experienced harsh violence and now will suffer an enforced two-child limit. The limitation is officially claimed as an effort to ease tensions between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority, however the policy serves as a frightening indicator that genocide may not be far away. Genocide Watch has even gone so far as to issue a “Genocide Emergency Alert” for Myanmar, and the United Nations has also expressed similar concerns.

Genocide Watch breaks down genocides into eight distinct stages. In order, they are as follows: Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Extermination and Denial. Myanmar is quickly ticking stages off the list.

Rohingya people are regularly forced to live in ethnic enclaves with enforced curfews. They experience intense violence which the government has done little if anything to prevent. They are becoming increasingly isolated from resources and from the outside world. If nothing is done to stop these policies, the Rohingya may be removed entirely from their country. The international community must act now to hold the Burmese government responsible and stop the eradication of the Rohingya ethnic group before it is too late.

-Caitlin Zusy

Sources: UN Dispatch, News.com
Photo: News.com

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Refugees: The Forgotten Problem in Central Africa

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In Central Africa and the Great Lakes region, countries with already large numbers of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are burdened with refugee influx from neighboring conflicts. Many of the IDPs and refugees in Central Africa are served by U.N. camps across the region. Others are housed by local populations or public buildings. With recent outbreaks of violence humanitarian services have become unavailable in  regions.

In April, a UNHCR spokesman gave the number of Central African Republic (CAR) refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at 30,000. Many of these were forced to flee the violence in the capital Bangui. UNHCR also estimated that the number of IDPs in CAR reached 173,000. While this situation is grim the added strain on refugee camps and humanitarian services is exacerbated by the refugees crossing into CAR. Driven by conflict in the Western Darfur region and recent fighting in the DRC capital of Goma, Sudanese and Congolese refugees are seeking care in CAR. In April UNHCR estimated 21,000 refugees from the DRC and Sudan have sought refuge in CAR.

Despite peace talks currently taking place between the DRC government and the M23 rebel forces, the environment in the DRC remains uncertain and rife with tension. Rebel troops briefly held the capital, Goma, in November 2012 but lost control again to the government after a short period. The current standoff between the two sides has boosted the potential for forced recruitment in the countryside. Citizens fleeing the conflict and young men trying to avoid forcible recruitment spill into neighboring countries. In the last six months of 2012 UNHCR estimates that 60,000 Congolese refugees fled to Uganda and Rwanda. Many more were internally displaced.

Recent violence in the DRC has led the U.N. to deploy troops with one of its strongest mandates yet: counter insurgency operations. Despite a 20,000 U.N. peace force deployed in the region the rebel forces took and held Goma for 10 days last November, committing many atrocities including mass rape. The new U.N. deployment, consisting of troops from South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi is intended to prevent new atrocities. The effectiveness of this newest deployment is uncertain. Troops will be engaging in joint operations, requiring coordination in an unfamiliar setting and already logistics and bureaucracy have delayed troop deployment.

Other military forces also have a presence in CAR. South Africa deployed 200 soldiers in January this year with the potential to deploy an additional 200. These forces will assist in training the CAR army and are not intended to engage directly with rebel forces. Ugandan soldiers with U.S. Special Forces support are also deployed in CAR. The Economic Community of Central Africa has authorized forces to deploy in the country as well. And France recently boosted their troop presence in CAR from 250 to 600.

The global and regional community recognizes the need for military intervention in the region demonstrated by the troop deployments. Whether this leads to a cessation in violence or even a lasting peace is uncertain.

– Callie D. Coleman

Sources: IRIN, The Economist, UNHCR
Photos: IRIN

UN Report Says MDGs are Within Reach

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A new report launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, celebrates the success of achieving some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but acknowledges that others need to be addressed in order for them to be realized. The MDGs, established at a UN summit in 2000, identify eight areas of focus: poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental protection, HIV/AIDS and malaria reduction, and a global partnership for development. The report demonstrates how the combined effort of the government, civil society, and the private sector have made significant progress in meeting many of these goals.

Already, millions of lives have been improved – global poverty rates have been cut in half, access to safe water has increased and gender equality in primary schools has improved substantially. Advances in global healthcare are particularly notable; malaria fell by more than 25% globally between 2000 and 2010, saving 1.1 million lives. In addition, between 1995 and 2011, 51 million TB patients were successfully treated, saving another estimated 20 million lives.

However, the report also urges more action to be taken with regard to maternal healthcare and universal access to education. In particular, environmental sustainability is under threat, as global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to increase, with 46% more CO2 being emitted today compared to 1990. The report also notes that there has been uneven progress; there is disparity not only between regions and countries, but also among population groups within countries. In particular, people living in rural areas remain at a disadvantage – 83% of those without access to an improved drinking water source live in rural communities.

“Redoubled efforts are urgently needed, particularly in regions most behind to jump-start advancement and achieve maximum gains”, the MDG report says. While the global community should be proud of its efforts and accomplishments, the report encourages governments, organizations, and individuals to continue “building on existing momentum to reach as many goals as possible by 2015 and to realize gains for all”.

– Chloe Isacke
Source: All Africa, UNDP