Provincial Strengthening: Building Synergy, Improving the Quality of Good Governance
2 August 2010 - Since decentralization was initiated several years ago, the discourse is heavily focused on the role and functions of district governments. At the same time, no one is taking the role to coordinate, monitor, and evaluate the regional development. As a respond to that challenge, UNDP in collaboration with Bappenas and MoHA and fully supported by Decentralization Support Facility (DSF) designed a program to strengthen the status, roles, authorities, and responsibilities of provincial government. This program, Provincial Governance Strengthening Programme (PGSP) is launched today.
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Government of Indonesia launches strategic projects to complete the post-tsunami reconstruction in Nias
30 July 2010 - The Government of Indonesia launches three strategic projects in Nias Islands as part of its Nias Continuation of Post-tsunami Reconstruction to 2012 Programme today. The three projects worth over USD 24 million, funded by Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) are implemented by UNDP, World Bank and ILO in collaboration with Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Disadvantaged Region.
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Children need to have knowledge and consciousness of disaster risk reduction effort since early age
29 July 2010 - Children have the rights to be save from disasters and play important role in disaster risk reduction. This can be achieved if they are trained with appropriate knowledge and skills to save themselves during disasters. Therefore, the National Education Ministry, supported by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has decided to collaborate to incorporate or integrate disaster risk reduction (DRR) knowledge into school curriculum. This has been stipulated in a national policy through Circular of Minister of National Education No. 70a/SE/MPN/2010 on Mainstreaming of Disaster Risk Reduction at School. The circular is addressed to all Governors, Regents and Mayors throughout Indonesia, calling for the implementation of disaster management at school through 3 aspects, namely: empowerment of institutional role and capacity of school community; 2). DRR integration into formal educational unit curriculum, both intra as well as extra-curricular; 3). Developing Inter-stakeholder partnership and network to support DRR implementation at schools.
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Asia-wide Regional Workshop on Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict Prevention
27 July 2010 - Anyone concerned with promoting development and reducing human suffering must make conflict prevention a priority. Violent conflict in multi-ethnic and multi-religious countries, often fought along ethnic or religious lines, is a major cause of death, destruction, poverty and underdevelopment. The incidence of such conflicts rose steeply immediately following the end of the Cold War and, despite a decline since the mid-1990s, remains a major problem in every region of the world. Violent conflict undermines hard-won gains in human development and poverty reduction. It reduces human capabilities and can prevent the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals for some of the most vulnerable groups in society. Fortunately, conflict within multi-ethnic societies is not inevitable—in fact, most multi-ethnic societies are peaceful, especially those which promote political and socio-economic development policies that fully encompass different groups, taking their needs into account.
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Socio-economic impact of HIV on households calls for urgent impact mitigation steps and HIV-sensitive social protection
20 July 2010 - Impact mitigation steps targeted at households of people living with HIV should be integrated into national and provincial AIDS strategies and social protection schemes should be responsive to the needs of AIDS-affected families, said two large-scale studies from Asia presented at the XVIII International AIDS Conference (IAC) currently underway here. In Indonesia, the study that covered seven provinces and 2038 sample households (1019 PLHIV-households and an equal number of non-PLHIV households as the control group), found that unemployment is higher among PLHIV households and they also lost about 55 per cent of their income in caring for the sick compared to non-PLHIV households. The quality and tenure of employment also is substantially compromised. Similarly, the health expenses of PLHIV households were five times higher than that of the non-PLHIV households, which severely constrained other expenses such as on education. PLHIV households spent 36 % less on education. Dropout of children in the PLHIV households was higher, particularly among higher classes.
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