Objectives and Context
Armenia is considered a lower middle income developing country, and has made
a remarkable turn-around following its 1990-1993 economic crisis, by halving
poverty and extreme poverty rates. The Armenian development context remains
challenged by regional disparities, however, and in non-capital
urban areas the poverty is 9 percentage points higher than the national average.
Armenia nationalized the MDGs through the production of the first national MDG
progress report, national MDG targets and frameworks in 2005. MDG
localization is planned for 2006, and UNDP Armenia aims to link
these processes to the Human Rights Approach to Regional Development
Planning project. The project will thus aim to incorporate human
rights aspects and issues into PRSP review and
MDG localization through citizen participation, and to promote mechanisms for
effective participatory decision-making.
Links, Strategies and Tools
The Human Rights Approach to Regional Development Planning aims to capture the perspectives of local communities, use these perspectives to generate debate at the national and local levels, and use these debates to influence policy and development processes. It has also been suggested that the project’s methodology has an inherent demonstrative value, in as far as this process of “collecting data and sharing it with the Armenian government, as well as the Armenian public, can serve as a model for more democratic and rational policy-making in Armenia.”
Human Rights Approach to Regional Development Planning has partnered with a national consultant, the Independent Sociological Centre (“Sociometr”) to develop, implement and report on the public opinion poll. In order that the results of the survey would be perceived as credible by government actors, and thereby support the creation of localized targets for the national MDGs, the survey targets representative samples of each of Armenia’s 10 administrative divisions plus the capital city. The surveys are conducted in person and require approximately 20 minutes each. Approximately 4,800 people have been surveyed on their knowledge of human rights and attitudes toward government policies in areas of poverty reduction, public services, and various policy options regarding the MDGs and basic human rights (rights to health care, education, work, etc.).
In addition to supporting the creation of localized MDG targets, the results of the survey will be used in UNDP programming to stimulate broad discussion on human rights and MDGs at the community and regional level, and UNDP hopes that this may lead to the “creation of local civic coalitions and interest groups.” The UNDP will launch the survey report in coordination with local media in an effort to stimulate grass-roots debate.
This project also benefits from complementary planning. Two UNDP programmes will run parallel with Human Rights Approach to Regional Development Planning, a programme for mainstreaming HIV into revision of the national PRSP process, and a programme for the localization of the MDGs. The programme for the localization of the MDGs will directly benefit the Human Rights Approach to Regional Development Planning programme, as it will provide a forum in which the survey results may influence development planning. The country office also notes a negative aspect of complementary programming. Programme overlap may make it difficult for government officials to maintain distinctions between complementary programmes and programme objectives, which may make bring funding for complementary programmes to appear redundant.
Process and Status
The Public Opinion Poll has been designed, tested, and conducted in approximately 4800 households, reflecting diverse social, gender and age groups of the population. A report summarizing the findings of the Poll is being drafted by Sociometr and will be released at a launch in mid-March 2007, with media coverage and the participation of interested parties Government officials, NGOs and business community, media, international community and public at large.
Impact
UNDP Armenia feels that it is too early to yet suggest any concrete impact.
Challenges
UNDP Armenia noted that complementary, or parallel programming held an inherent risk, as government officials not familiar with the concepts of human rights and human development may not understand distinctions between the complementary programmes, their respective aims and outputs. This may result in complementary programming appearing redundant in the eyes of government officials, and make it even more difficult to secure government funding for complementary programming. This risk was not realized.
Government officials’ lack of familiarity with human rights concepts and methodologies also created challenges for the project. This challenge arose most often when actual political action was necessary to create regional development plans linked to the MDGs. This may have been because, while it is easy to commit to the programme’s objectives, the actual measures and principles implied by such development plans were not clear to government officials when they first committed to creating such plans.
This project was one of a number of pilot projects initiated by the UNDP - Bureau for Development Policy, and also felt challenged by a late start compared to the other pilotcountries. Having joined the pilot project halfway through the pilot project cycle, UNDP expressed concerns that it would only be able to produce limited results before the pilot project’s completion.
Lessons Learned
UNDP Armenia feels that it is too early to assert any lessons learned.
UNDP Armenia
http://www.undp.am; Contact: anna.gyurjyan@undp.org
