In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstanis dedicated the whole week to the human development issues. This year, they considered thoroughly issues of trade, labor migration, gender and other inequalities.
The Human Development Week launched on June 7 with the presentation of the regular National Human Development Report “Trade and Human Development in Kyrgyzstan” (2016). The expert community of Kyrgyzstan, representatives of the government agencies and international experts actively discussed the Report’s results with its authors. Representatives of the Kyrgyz Government, the Office of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Office of the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic, ministries and departments, representatives of the business community, non-governmental and international organizations and mass media had attended this event.
In his speech, the Deputy Minister of Economy of the Kyrgyz Republic, Abakirov E.K., highlighted the importance of such issues as trade impact on human development and its main components considered in the report.
“Kyrgyzstan is one of the first Central Asian countries that expressed adherence to the sustainable development goals. In witness, Kyrgyzstan developed and adopted the National Strategy for Sustainable Development of the Kyrgyz Republic for 2013-2017. Its implementation comes to the end in 2017. When formulating basic principles of the sustainable development at the Rio+20 summit in 2012, trade was marked as area conducive to advancing sustainable development,” stressed Mr. Abakirov E.K.
According to him, the development of trade and export is a strategic priority for economic development of Kyrgyzstan that will raise the population welfare and decrease unemployment. “Percentage of trade and services in the gross domestic product exceeds 19 percent,” said the Deputy Minister of Economy of the Kyrgyz Republic.
To know more on trade and human development please download the Human Development Report “Trade and Human Development in Kyrgyzstan” (2016)
This very day, Programme Specialist on Green Economy and Employment at UNDP Istanbul Regional Service Center, Mihail Peleah, presented results of the research on environmental goods of Kyrgyzstan. He said about prospects of global market of green goods and development of the Kyrgyz export, and promising niche for the Kyrgyz exporters. The UNDP team presented a tool to analyze export of environmental goods with its further use in trade policy decision-making.
On June 8, the Human Development Week conducted discussions on following issues:
- Inequalities and human development in Eastern Europe, Turkey, and Central Asia: Progress at Risk;
- Gender inequalities in political participation in the Kyrgyz Republic.
Both national and international experts participated in the discussion. Programme Specialist, Poverty and Inequality, Regional Hub for Europe and CIS (UNDP office in Istanbul), Elena Danilova-Cross, presented the Regional Human Development Report 2016 “Inequalities and Human Development in Eastern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia: Progress at Risk”. According to her, the countries with less poverty reduction face the more serious problems of inequalities. The report says the lowest level of inequalities is in Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. To reduce inequalities the Regional Report recommends investing in development of programs and policies to reduce social, legal, gender and economic inequalities. The report suggests applying whenever possible integrated approaches to markets of labor, health and social protection involving the whole state. Measures on reduction of labor taxation together with increase of taxation on illegal financial flows and environmentally unsustainable activities will also decrease inequalities.
In her turn, UNDP Country Programme Gender Coordinator, Elmira Shishkaraeva, presented thematic review on Gender Inequality in Political Participation in the Kyrgyz Republic.
On June 9, Programme Specialist on Green Economy and Employment at UNDP Istanbul Regional Service Center, Mihail Peleah, presented Central Asian Human Development Series “Labour Migration, Remittances, and Human Development in Central Asia”. The study examines human development aspects of the large cross-border labour migration and remittance flows among the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and (to a less extent) Uzbekistan. It concludes that significant benefits could result from: (i) stronger efforts to place the management of labour migration and remittance flows at the center of national development policies and programming; (ii) the adoption of the “whole of government” approaches to migration management; (iii) improvements in the quality and availability of data concerning migration in these countries; (iv) placing remittances and labour migration at the centre of the global post-2015 development debate.