Interview with UN Resident Representative Richard Conroy

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is one of the largest development partners working with the Uzbek government and civil society. Still grappling with a plethora of challenges created by the collapse of the Soviet Union 12 years ago, Tashkent has made progress, particularly economically, but there is still a long way to go, as UNDP's Resident Representative, Richard Conroy, told IRIN in a recent interview. QUESTION: Since independence in 1991, Uzbekistan, along with most other CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries, experienced social and economic deterioration that has continued into the current decade. What have been UNDP's main interventions to arrest and reverse this process? ANSWER: It's a little-known fact that the situation in Uzbekistan was actually much better than any other CIS country at independence. Despite the traumas of transition, Uzbekistan actually suffered the least decline in output GDP out of any of the CIS countries, and was the first to recover its previous GDP levels. That was done by 2001. So I think the government actually handled establishing macroeconomic stability quite well. So we don't have the massive problems that other countries actually experience. But yes, there clearly was a decline, and there was a lot of disruption and economic and social hardship as well. In terms of UNDP's work, I think one of the most important areas we are working in is small- and medium-enterprise development, and also in micro-credit. We've been active in both areas for a number of years and I think we can point to some successes in terms of working with the government to set up what we call business incubators, firstly in the major centres and then [we] progressively expanded that programme to the rural areas. These are one-stop shops for small entrepreneurs who can receive advice and support. In fact, the scheme has been so successful that the government is actually funding through us - through cost-sharing - the expansion of this scheme. And that is an indicator of relative success. The other area, of course, that directly affects the economic situation is the development of micro-credit and micro-finance in Uzbekistan. This was an unknown area after independence, and UNDP was the first in fact to set up a micro-credit scheme. This has now been replicated by a number of other donors. We've also been working hard on the policy, and last year there was a new law on the non-banking sector enacted, because everyone was working in a regulatory vacuum. So I think we've been successful in introducing a model of micro-financing that works, and also at the policy level improving the environment for micro-enterprises. Q: What do think are the key development challenges facing Uzbekistan in the next three to five years? A: I think like many other transition economies the question of continued economic reform is one broad area that is of great concern to the government. We've finally achieved currency convertibility in October this year, and I think people believe the government has renewed its commitment to faster economic reform. We're looking forward very much to further developments in this area. Certainly, as we develop our new country programme, support to various aspects of economic reform will be very high on UNDP's agenda. The other areas - certainly agriculture is another area where we foresee liberalisation and change, because it is still very much a state planning system, and we feel, along with many other development partners, that there can be very significant gains, especially to the rural population, through reform of the agricultural sector. Obviously, poverty is predominantly a rural phenomenon in Uzbekistan, so changes in the agricultural sectors will certainly help to improve living standards of the majority of the people who are poor. The broad area of governance is another area where there are clear developmental challenges. The government is introducing a bicameral system into parliament. We are very hopeful that a process of administrative reform and fiscal decentralisation will pick up pace in the next few years. Q: What about human rights? A: The human rights area is an area where we are already seeing change, and obviously UNDP is very happy to support further changes and improvements in the whole area of human rights. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture was invited to visit and he visited in December of 2002. In his report, he made 22 recommendations for improving the situation here. UNDP is central in working with the government to implement those recommendations. We are playing a coordinating role with the government and the international community in supporting the development of a national action programme which is almost finalised and will be approved by the government very soon. We're giving a lot of support to the government and development partners like the American Bar Association and the OSCE [Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe] following up on various recommendations from that report. So we are very hopeful that human rights will be a major area for our future programming. Q: How important is it to build civil society and the nongovernmental sector in a country like Uzbekistan where such sectors have always been weak? A: Like [in] many other transition states, civil society was very small in Uzbekistan, you are right. There has been a process of growth in civil society, certainly, but the capacity of civil society to engage in the development process and be a partner of government is still very weak. In our road map for UNDP's work here, we have identified strengthening civil society and improving the interface between government and society as one of the four priority areas. Many of us here are busy working with NGOs and professional associations, community groups etc, but we certainly see this as an area where more support is required. Q: In a country like Uzbekistan where there are obviously huge development challenges but no obvious emergency, how do you successfully make the case to donors for ongoing support? A: The events of 2001 have increased the attention of the world on Central Asia, from a geopolitical point of view. So there has been increasing interest in the whole area in the last couple of years. It is sometimes a difficult sell, because we are a doubly landlocked country in the middle of Central Asia, so we are very much away from the mainstream of global development thinking. We actually in UNDP here work with over 20 donors, so we have a large number of donors and development partners that contribute financially into our programme. So I think if you look at other countries, we stand up quite well, but we can always improve. Certainly, the amounts of money that do come in are relatively small in most cases. We do need to attract new donors. One area of potential is the emerging donors in central and eastern Europe, like Poland and the Baltic republics, the Slovak Republic and Hungary. These countries are now starting to have development programmes of their own, and certainly Central Asia and Uzbekistan are on their priority list. Next year, we're going to work very hard to develop that east-east linkage. Those countries have a similar history and background, and there is a lot of potential in transferring the experience in economics and other areas.