On the way to achieving UN development goals

The United Nations office in Uzbekistan launched its first Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report for the country in the capital, Tashkent, on Tuesday. The study, complied in cooperation with the government, provides a snapshot of how the former Soviet republic is progressing along the road to achieving a series of development-related objectives by 2015. “This report shows Uzbekistan in a good light, except for HIV/AIDS, all the other targets have been achieved or are potentially achievable by 2015,” Fikret Akcura, UN Resident Coordinator in Uzbekistan, said at the launch. The MDGs are a framework world leaders - including Uzbek President Islam Karimov - agreed on at a special summit in 2000. Key goals focus on improving living standards, boosting education and healthcare and promoting gender equality. Others address the growing threat of HIV/AIDS and the need to make better use of the environment. The report highlights near-universal access to primary education and shrinking mortality rates as real achievements, despite the country’s difficult transition in the immediate post-Soviet period. Even when the economy went through a difficult period in the early 1990s, Uzbekistan managed to devote relatively large budget outlays to social protection measures, the MDG report maintained. This foundation has led to an improvement in some important social indicators. In 1995, infant mortality stood at 25.6 per 1,000 live births but has dropped to 15.2 in 2004, according to government figures. Vaccination rates against polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria and other common diseases have also improved significantly over the past decade, the report showed. The MDGs do not directly address issues of governance or economic development, or adherence to internationally accepted human rights norms. Arkadiusz Majszuk, UNAIDS Country Coordinator for Uzbekistan pointed out that tackling the spread of HIV/AIDS – on the rise in the country – was a difficult, long-term task, and that halting its spread by 2015 looked unlikely given the current scale of the epidemic in the region. “In the past three years, Uzbekistan has shown the highest growth rate for HIV/AIDS in the Central Asia region. Young people are particularly vulnerable, reducing poverty and providing confidential testing and counselling are important if we are going to reduce the spread [of HIV/AIDS], Majszuk said.