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OCHA United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
The UN Resident Coordinator Frederick Lyons and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the Russian Federation John McCallin visited Chechnya, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia, 27 February-1 March. Representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Office for Coordination of the Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) joined them, as did the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and several NGOs during their mission to Grozny. The purpose of the mission to the North Caucasus was to review the overall situation in Chechnya and Ingushetia. The delegation visited a temporary accommodation centre in Grozny, a tent camp in Ingushetia, and refugee accommodation facilities in North Ossetia. To get a fuller picture it held meetings with local authorities in Grozny, Nazran, and Vladikavkaz. Access to and freedom of movement in Chechnya was one of the main topics discussed with the Chechen authorities in Grozny.
A few days later, on 6 March, the delegation of UNHCR, OCHA, ICRC, and several NGOs returned to the city to continue discussions with authorities there. The Head of the Administration of the Chechen Republic Akhmad Kadyrov assured the delegation that his administration wished to facilitate the work of humanitarian organisations in Chechnya. According to the OCHA representative, the organisations had carried out various programmes in the republic and planned to continue to do so, as long as it was safe. To achieve this, regular dialogue at the technical and policy levels between the administration and aid agencies was needed, as was uninhibited access to and freedom of movement in the republic. The delegation expressed concern that any return of IDPs to Chechnya should be voluntary, and stressed that the main obstacle to return was continued insecurity in the republic. As a result of discussions, it was decided that policy meeting should take place regularly, preferably in Grozny.
The first of the proposed meetings with the Chechen authorities took place in Grozny on 22 March with participation of OCHA and other UN agencies, ICRC, and NGOs. The meeting fell in two sessions, held simultaneously. One was devoted to policy matters, such as the coordination of humanitarian assistance and access to Chechnya, and the other one was a by-sector discussion in the field of shelter, health, and education.
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UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation |
On March 19, 2002, a press conference, arranged by the Foundation of Creative Projects (a Russian NGO) and the UNESCO Moscow Office, and dedicated to World Poetry Day, was held at the Moscow City Duma.
Speaking briefly before the journalists assembled were the poet Yevgenii Bunimovich, President of the Foundation of Creative Projects, and representatives from the O.G.I. Project Poets’ Club, the Union of Young Literati, and the magazines Arion, Novaya yunost, and Znamya. Valerii Shestakov, Programme Specialist for culture of the UNESCO Moscow Office, told the journalists that an evening of poetry, devoted to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet , had been planned by UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to mark World Poetry Day. Mr. Shestakov then read out the message issued by UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura on the occasion of World Poetry Day. The message calls on national authorities , concerned associations and civil society to mobilize their efforts so that poetry has the place it deserves on this March 21, but also in the long term. The journalists were given the full text of the message , which can be viewed at UNESCO’s website www.unesco.org, for publication.
World Poetry Day is now being marked in Russia (and in other countries) for the third year in a row, in accordance with a Resolution by the 30th UNESCO General Conference, held on 15 November, 1999. This celebration is becoming a well-known occasion in the literary life of Moscow, thanks to the energetic support and publicity generated for the poetic arts by the capital’s creative associations, along with a series of events dedicated to World Poetry Day. Thus, for example, as part of the World Poetry Day celebration in Moscow this year, a presentation was given for the project “Starting to Live with Poetry”, aimed at encouraging the poetic creativity of schoolchildren aged 14 to 17. The young poetry lovers had the opportunity to attend an evening of poetry featuring Triumph Prize poet laureates Gleb Shulpyakov and Sandjar Yanyshev, to be invited to the Young Poets Festival, and to visit other events.
A presentation was given during the press conference for the Almanac in Black and White, published by the Foundation of Creative Projects and containing the results of the Second Moscow International Poets Festival, held on October 16–20, 2001.
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A High Technical Meeting was held in UNESCO’s Paris Headquarters on March 25-26, at which a group of experts presented the results of months of work on the Assessment Report on the Educational System of the Chechen Republic. The project was carried out with financial and technical assistance from UNESCO. A large Russian delegation, including representatives from the Chechen Republic’s educational system, took part in the meeting.
The report was highly evaluated by the international experts. On the basis of the report, a multi-year Integrated Program for Supporting the Restoration and Development of Education in the Chechen Republic is presently being drawn up by UNESCO. The report itself will be published in April. Its official presentation will be held in Moscow.
Russia and UNESCO are devoting special attention to the topic of re-establishing the educational system in Chechnya, inasmuch as it is a joint initiative of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and UNESCO General Director Koitiro Matsuura, having been discussed by them during their meetings at the Kremlin and in Paris in July and October 2000. For this reason, the UNESCO General Director expressed his desire to meet with specialists on education from Russia, and Chechnya in particular, in order to discuss the results of the previous sessions. Taking part in the discussion was Ambassador Yevgenii Sidorov, Russia’s Permanent Representative to UNESCO; Grigorii Balykhin, First Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation; Lema Dadayev, Minister of Education of the Chechen Republic; his deputies Zinaida Uspaeva and Ganga Elmurzaeva; and Wolfgang Reuter, Director of the UNESCO Moscow Office.
Mr. Balykhin noted that 200,000 children are attending school in the Chechen Republic; 14,000 teachers are working there; and three institutions of higher education are now completely restored and have resumed their work. It was his conviction that the pilot projects proposed for Chechnya can be used as models, not just for different regions in Russia, but for other countries as well.
In the name of the entire Chechen nation, the Minister of Education of Chechnya Lema Dadayev expressed his deepest thanks to Mr. Matsuura for UNESCO’s helping his homeland re-establish the system of education.
The UNESCO Director General made clear his own personal interest in continuing the collaboration with Russia in this field, and mentioned that it was upon his proposal that the Japanese government provided funds especially for these aims. Mr. Matsuura also said that he would do everything possible to cooperate in the search for other sources of funding for the various educational projects in the Chechen Republic.
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International Labor Organisation |
A strong commitment to equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women in the world of work has long been part of the Mandate of the International Labor Organization (ILO). The ILO has an Action Plan on Gender Equality and Gender Mainstreaming which outlines principles, goals and implementation procedures to ensure effective incorporation of specific gender concerns in the promotion of equal opportunities for men and women to obtain decent and productive work. For the ILO Moscow office, as for all ILO units, gender mainstreaming is a cross-cutting issue in all of the four ILO strategic objectives (fundamental principles and rights at work, employment promotion, extension of social protection, and social dialogue) and their practical realization through projects and programmes in the countries covered by the office.
The Russian Federation and other CIS countries have reached a key historical stage in their respective transitional and development processes, when decisions have to be made and orientations taken towards further progress and consolidation in gender analysis, mainstreaming and equality. As a result of transformation into market economies, fundamental political, economic and social changes in these countries have in many ways affected women and men differently. Gender mainstreaming should be an important concern for the well-being and decent working conditions of both men and women, who indeed share common interests in the labor and social spheres.
Equality between women and men is constitutionally guaranteed in all CIS countries, and there is a longstanding tradition, at least verbal, of commitments to equality. According to international standards, the situation in these countries is far from being disastrous: economic activity of women remains high, 90 percent of women work full-time, unemployment among women is almost on the same par with men. However, women are discriminated against in terms of access to employment, through job announcements, and through unequal remuneration for work of equal value. The dynamics of social and economic indicators reveal a number of negative trends, namely the decrease of women’s share in fast-developing and highly paid sectors, the growth of industrial and occupational segregation. Women are more likely to be released from work, and the rate of unemployment among women entering the labor market for the first time is also higher. The issue of trafficking of women and also of girl children, often for purposes of forced prostitution, is also considered to be an urgent problem in the region.
During the last few years, all these negative tendencies were in the focus of attention of the ILO Moscow office. The necessity to provide ILO constituents with some capacity-building and training tools to combat gender inequalities on labor market and to improve the quality of women’s employment through retraining, small businesses, entrepreneurship and access to better jobs was considered. To this end the ILO Moscow has proposed a sub-regional activity on Gender, Poverty and Employment, which has been implemented in close cooperation with the ILO Budapest and international experts from other units (IFP/SKILLS, EMP/STAT, GENDER, ITC/Turin). Seven countries were selected for the project: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, the Ukraine. Studies analyzing national legislation, the position of women in the labor market, current national programmes to combat poverty and develop employment mechanisms were prepared by national experts. At the same time the ILO Moscow has started the translation of the Modular Package of the ILO Capacity-Building Programme on Gender, Poverty and Employment (GPE) into Russian.
A tripartite sub-regional seminar “Promoting gender equality, employment and eradication of poverty in the countries in transition” was held in December 2001 in St-Petersburg, where the ILO GPE Programme was presented to the main stakeholders. The GPE programme and its Modular Package is a unique instrument for awareness-raising, building knowledge base and skills and facilitating of social dialogue in a three-dimensional (poverty-gender-employment) review of national policy and programmes on poverty and employment. The GPE programme argues that poverty is linked to economy-wide problems of employment and that vulnerability to poverty can be traced to the pattern and quality of employment within different modes of production relations. Poverty eradication through employment calls for removing gender inequalities and advancing women’s equal rights. In this respect the GPE Programme reflects and advocates the ILO’s concept of decent work.
The seminar proved to be successful in terms of the participants’ responses to the topics discussed and the questions raised. Dynamic and stimulating discussions between representatives of the government, employers’, trade unions’ and non-governmental organizations provided a good exercise for social dialogue on the issues addressed at the seminar. A number of recommendations, both at national and international level, were drawn-up to overcome the current situation in respect of gender inequality and employment promotion in the countries. The participants expressed their conviction and support for the necessity to strengthen the national capacities to design policies, strategies and programmes and implement concrete actions for poverty alleviation and employment generation with a gender perspective.
One
of priority tasks on the way to achieve gender equality is participation of
women in management and decision-making at the state level, where it is most
difficult to eradicate existing inequality. Taking into account the acuteness
of this problem for Russia, the Ministry of Labor and Social Development has
proposed to include the issue on promoting career opportunities for women into
a Programme of Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the ILO for 2002–2003,
signed in Geneva last month and to organize a regional conference on Women in
Management and Power Structures. Actually, the ILO Moscow launched the discussion
on the issue a year ago by organizing a round table “Women in management: mechanism
of breaking through the glass ceiling” at the Embassy of Australia in Moscow.
Prominent women, who occupy leading positions in power structures and at the
decision-making level in state and private sectors took part in the discussion,
which was useful for both conducting deep insight research in the field and
for working out practical recommendations for the improvement of women’s status
and enforcing their role at the decision-making level. In accordance with the
Programme of Cooperation, the second round of discussions will bring together
representatives of the regions. In general, the new Programme of Cooperation
contains a strong commitment that gender perspective will be mainstreamed in
all programmes and areas of cooperation.
Also in March this year the ILO Moscow office was engaged in a very interesting and challenging venture – the first ILO gender audit, conducted also in other twenty ILO offices in the regions and work units at the headquarters in Geneva. Indeed, this is the first gender audit in the United Nations system, the main objective of which is to promote organizational learning at the individual, work unit and Office levels on how to effectively implement gender mainstreaming in the policies, programmes and structures of the Office. The gender audit facilitation team stayed in the ILO Moscow office for twelve days, making a desk review of key policy documents, major publications, programming, budget, monitoring and evaluation activities. Two participatory workshops were organized for the ILO staff. Meetings with ILO tripartite constituents, implementing partners and NGOs were an important part of the audit, as it is extremely valuable for the office to have views of its social partners on the ILO’s work in promoting gender equality and to get their recommendations on how to make ILO’s efforts in this field more effective and visible. The lessons and results of the gender audit can be considered as a good starting point and a platform for developing a Gender Mainstreaming Strategy for the office, which the ILO Moscow views as one of the priorities for 2002. As a whole, information about the process and outcome of the audit will be shared with ILO constituents, the donor community, the United Nations system, and other interested organizations. The findings of the gender audit will be used to improve the ILO’s performance on promoting gender equality in the world of work.
