Summaries of Presentations made on the “Enabling Environment”, “Unemployment” and “Poverty Alleviation”

    Four main presentations were made at the Civil Society Forum on Social Development held in Baku after the welcoming statements, a review of the Copenhagen process, and introductions by all the participants. All four segments were introduced by a speaker, and followed with a lively workshop discussion open to the NGO participants, in which the speaker was queried in greater depth about issues raised.

Enabling Environment

     David Stubbs, of the Open Society Institute, Azerbaijan, opened with a presentation on the “Enabling Environment.” He observed that a survey had been conducted in 1995 in Central Asia asking NGOs about the obstacles they faced, and the environment in which they worked. The situation had in some regards improved, at least in Azerbaijan, but the Copenhagen commitments remained a long way from being fulfilled. The legal environment also remained problematic, including the registration process for NGOs. While the Geneva Convention provided the right of NGOs to work so long as they remained non-political, many NGOs felt the need to acquire permission to work rather than simply notify governments of their establishment.
     Civil society organizations, in his opinion, should take an interest in creating an open and free market, and involve themselves in the struggle against corruption which remained rampant in the region and occurred at all levels. The mission of his organization could be loosely defined as encouraging the free-flow of information, whether though education or technology, including media. A center for free legal information would shortly be opened in Azerbaijan.

     Mr. Stubbs observed that even when governments tried to block access to information about certain issues, people would still report on them. In fact, governments usually benefited from a more accurate report in a number of ways, including by gaining more international credibility.

Unemployment

     The next segment, on unemployment, was held by Tevfiq Yaprak, of the World Bank. He presented an outline of what economists meant by unemployment under normal conditions, what had happened to the economies of the former Soviet republics that were now in transition, and what mechanisms existed to alleviate unemployment both at the micro and macro levels. Following the precipitous drop in productive output, of up to 50% in certain countries from around the time of independence, a parallel rate of unemployment could be anticipated over the long run. In fact, unemployment was being effectively under-reported, as everyone knew from personal or anecdotal experience. Furthermore, only an indirect link existed now between employment and education in the economy overall since the whole structure – of economic, infrastructure, and information systems – had collapsed.

     A new kind of unemployment had arisen which was termed ‘open unemployment.’ People continued to maintain a relation with the employing organization by which they might gain certain benefits, or even a salary from time to time, though productivity had largely ceased.

     Under such conditions, rapid growth was the only real answer to the crisis in unemployment. But growth depended on macro-economic reform, including restructuring the public sector, and, importantly, greater transparency. The World Bank was also actively encouraging judicial reform to increase the independence of the courts. The overall purpose of these activities was to stimulate greater economic activity by reducing the costs of doing business, which would lead in turn to greater job growth.

     In a separate discussion, it was observed that the mission of the World Bank was to work with governments and did not specifically include NGO capacity building. Nonetheless, the Bank believed that development required NGO participation and monitoring of implementation, and, similarly, urged governments to work more closely with civil society. Additional comments were made about the energy reserves possessed by various countries in the region, and how lack of government accountability could create a situation in which the income gap became even greater in the future.

Poverty alleviation

     In the third section, two country presentations were held on poverty alleviation. Catherine Rothenberger, of Mercy Corps, Azerbaijan, and Gabriela Buttner, of UNDP, Kyrgyzstan, discussed the poverty situation in their respective countries of expertise and followed up with discussions about efforts made by different organizations to combat it. The collapse of the infrastructure had had profound effects on the overall poverty levels. For instance, in Azerbaijan 70% of the agricultural productive land depended on irrigation, which had largely collapsed.

     Mercy Corps focused on refugees and internally displaced persons. While their early efforts had relied on in-kind grants, they were steadily moving in the direction of credit-based systems, whether subsidized or interest-bearing. This had created a situation however, in which some recipients were provided with relief assistance while their neighbors incongruously were offered sustainable development assistance.

     The main lesson learned for Mercy Corps, and indeed for many other organizations, was the importance of the role of the community in devising poverty alleviation programmes. While some confusion existed in trying to bring stakeholders into this new approach, the international community was also challenged by transformation of aid from relief to sustainable assistance. The role of women in enterprises had also been overlooked by the international community, as well as by local stakeholders. Development organizations needed to figure out how to assure equal access to all people.

     There were two key roles for national NGOs in poverty alleviation efforts. The first was to provide non-financial services, especially since there were often legal constraints on providing financial services. Second, national NGOs could partner with international NGOs in their poverty alleviation efforts. For instance, local organizations often had quite a lot of information that could improve the efforts of international assistance, such as, in rural areas. The need to share information in micro-enterprise and other sectors was very great, though the situation was better in the health sector.

     The presentation on Kyrgyzstan opened by noting that the republic remained one of the poorest countries, behind Turkmenistan, though before Tajikistan, at 113th place in the Human Development Report. Unlike most other countries in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan enjoyed few natural resources. Of the total population, 80% were rural, 50% poor, and up to 90% in certain regions unemployed. Still, the country had made great efforts at political reform and democratization, and was something of a ‘favorite child’ of the international aid community.

     On the question of who specifically was poor, the large base of ethnic Kyrgyz in the countryside meant that they tended to be among the most impoverished. Additionally, the aged and migrants (from rural areas to the cities) were to be found among the poor. As in other republics, many of the new poor were unusual in that they had previously been part of the middle class, and so while owning a home and perhaps a TV, they were conscious of a radical diminishment of their income and living standards. This entailed many psychological, as well as physical impacts.

     Women on the whole tended to cope better than men in this situation. Many of the poor were now supported by women as the primary bread-winners, and women were even surpassing men in life expectancy by a ten year margin.

     As to poverty alleviation programmes, there was little humanitarian as opposed to development assistance available. Training, grants and micro-finance were options taken by international organizations, notwithstanding some attendant problems. For instance, training was limited by its aftermath; that is, that there was never enough money to implement training sufficiently into a larger infrastructure of markets and access. As to grants, they were mainly for NGOs and tended to focus on rehabilitation of infrastructure. Micro-credit and credit unions were undertaken by several different development organizations, with the former conducted on the Grameen Bank model.

     In the aftermath of Copenhagen, the Kyrgyz government and UNDP devised a strategy of sustainable human development. While not all of the component strategies had the national impact anticipated, they still energized local communities to take up similar ideas.

     The consequences of conflict in the region, and the very large number of refugees in Azerbaijan, not to mention those in Georgia and other republics, also posed a real burden for those NGOs – whether national or international – working in poverty alleviation.