26 January
2015 – The United Nations main development programme spotlighted today its
string of successes in 36 countries and territories in the Asia and Pacific
region in the areas of poverty reduction, conservation of natural resources,
democratic governance, and crisis resilience.
“The report
documents the achievements of UNDP’s $2 billion delivery in the region during
the past two years, focusing on key priority areas: innovative solutions to
persistent development challenges and scaling up those solutions for greater
impact,” UNDP Administrator’s Helen Clark said
in a statement today.
Innovative
solutions go hand-in-hand with efforts to strengthen local level partnerships,
UNDP says. An example of that is the Programme’s work with Baidu, China’s
largest internet service provider, to develop a mobile application to encourage
responsible recycling of electronic waste.
“UNDP will
strengthen partnerships and ensure that we are fit for purpose to continue
achieving high quality results in the region,” said Haoliang Xu, UNDP Assistant
Administrator and Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific.
With its
programmes, UNDP also assisted people in strengthening livelihoods. From the
help of governments and development partners, more than five million people now
have access to social protection in the region, half of them women.
Additionally, UNDP supported three million urban poor women and men in
Bangladesh to gain financial security through loan schemes.
This is
critical because economic empowerment is closely linked to the creation of
community housing development funds and the various models of land tenure
security, ensuring people are secure and can invest in their homes, UNDP said.
On crisis
resilience, UNDP supported debris removal efforts, helped to restore social
service centres and rebuild infrastructure following Typhoon Haiyan, the
biggest natural disaster to hit the region in the two years. Since then, UNDP
has been working with local and national authorities to improve early warning
systems. The Philippines Government’s impressive preparatory action meant that
the death toll from Typhoon Hagupit was just 18 as opposed to the 6,000
casualties after Haiyan.
In the area of
strengthening democratic governance, UNDP provided electoral assistance which
led to 16.7 million new registered voters across the region. In Bhutan, where
it can take up to a week for parliamentarians to visit voters in remote areas,
constituents can now interact with their parliamentarians virtually. And in the
Maldives, selected community members are testing a new scheme to use mobile
phones or log on to a website to report problems with public service delivery.
“It’s a new
way for citizens to communicate with policy makers. According to a global
survey responsive government is a key priority for more than three million
people in the region as the post-2015 development agenda is being formulated,”
said Nicholas Rosellini, the Director of UNDP’s Bangkok Regional Hub.
