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The Society and The Poverty

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  • The Society and The Poverty

    Noyan Tapan Highlights #30 (532)
    02 August 2004

    THE SOCIETY AND THE POVERTY

    By Haroutiun Khachatrian

    Last Friday, the ministry of economy and finance hosted a group of people
    who are not typical in that building. The group included the representatives
    of trade unions (which is not so unexpected), of business NGOs (who also do
    sometimes meet with the minister).

    But it also included representatives of environmental protection NGOs, Human
    rights protection NGOs and even the Armenian Apostolic Church (Abbot Mushegh
    Babayan as a representative of Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians). All
    these people were there to sign a specific document, the memorandum on
    "performing partnership negotiations on implementation of the Poverty
    Reduction Strategic Program".

    The government has adopted the PRSP as early as in August 2003. This
    document has two important features. First, it is subject to continuing
    changes and improvements. Second, it is to be implemented through
    participation of the whole society (at least, in principle), and in
    particular, as the government declares, the document is open to signals from
    the society aimed at improvement of this program which will be the
    guidelines of the countries economy development for at least a decade. The
    negotiations to be performed under the memorandum signed will pursue these
    two goals.

    The PRSP is funded by the foreign donors (led by IMF) and the participation
    of the civil society in its implementation (and elaboration) was one of
    their preconditions. This is a good thing, of course, and the government
    looks like it is happy to share the burden of the PRSP implementation with
    the NGOs and the Church. However, the formal initiative still needs to be
    made into real deals and there is a real concern that this may not happen.
    Just like in judiciary, where there are a lot of good laws which are not
    implemented in the real life. Hence it remains to see if the participation
    of the civil society in PRSP implementation will go beyond declarations.
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