Reports - United Nations Development Programme

4. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESULTS AND UNDP’S CONTRIBUTION
within which the data is presented makes the reports
especially useful for policy makers. Also, the media pay
special attention to the ranking of the countries and how
they highlight particular human development problems
faced by Turkey.
The advocacy role of NHDRs is certainly very
valuable and has helped focus the attention of the state
bureaucracy and international organisations, including the
WB, on important human development issues. There is
certainly an important role for the UNDP in conducting
baseline studies, mapping poverty, determining the groups
left out of the social security system as well as socially
excluded vulnerable groups. The stakeholders who were
interviewed by the ADR Evaluation Team agreed that
beyond advocacy, the UNDP could also assist with policy
formulation and provide advice to decision makers in the
specific areas covered by NHDRs.
Besides the NHDRs, the UNDP in recent years has
also been directly involved in specific cases of poverty
reduction analysis and advocacy projects. It has funded
two baseline studies, each discussing two different
regions: (a) Buğra and Keyder 2003 51 discuss the
weakening social protection amongst the urban poor,
where a new poverty is emerging as a function of social
exclusion. They argue that direct (state) intervention is
necessary to overcome this poverty, whether in the form of
direct income benefits or employment or strengthened
social security systems; (b) the other study was conducted
by the Social Science Foundation and is a review of the
Poverty Reduction Programmes in Southeast Anatolia.
Each of the poverty reduction strategies currently applied
in Turkey is analysed with a critical perspective. Although
each programme may have its own shortcomings, the
report agrees that there is need for intervention by state
agencies to address Turkey’s regional poverty problem.
The UNDP also organised a workshop on poverty
policy formulation where experts from universities, the
bureaucracy, international organisations including UN
agencies and the WB, came together. The participants
agreed that this meeting was an important step in both
developing an understanding of different approaches in
poverty studies as well as in establishing a policy dialogue.
The UNDP can use its neutral and legitimate bases for
establishing a network of poverty studies.
FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR POVERTY PROJECTS
As previously mentioned, EU accession is now the most
important development goal for Turkey. Even though
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51. Buğra A and Ç Keyder (2003) "New Poverty and Changing Welfare Regime of
Turkey", report prepared for the UNDP, Ankara.
poverty reduction was emphasised in Turkish
Government documents after the 2000 economic crisis,
this theme is not per se amongst the stated priorities for
EU accession. Therefore, unlike the Regional Disparities
Programmes, it is less likely that the EU will be a
significant future partner in this area. Combating
poverty, however, is at the core of the MDGs that have
also been adopted by Turkey. In line with what is
suggested earlier in this report, there may be a potential
for UNDP in exploring mutual relationships between the
EU and MDG agendas.
Even though the percentage of poor in the
population is lower in the urban and developed western
areas of Turkey than in the less developed sections such as
the Southeast and Eastern Anatolia, the absolute number
of poor people in these more advanced regions is actually
larger than those in the poorer regions. Therefore,
poverty reduction should also become an explicit goal of
development policy for the western metropolitan centres,
including I˚stanbul. This provides the UNDP with the
new challenge of developing urban-based pilot projects.
After the economic crisis, the WB proposed the Social
Risk Mitigation Project/Loan, which is currently being
implemented in Turkey. One option for future UNDP
efforts would be to link up with this project.
A good example for future prospects can be seen in
the “Micro Finance in Turkey” project, which is in the
UNDP pipeline. As a basis for this project, the UNDP
commissioned Kiendel Burritt from UNCDF 52 to prepare
a report entitled “Micro Finance in Turkey”. This report
draws attention to the need for micro finance mechanisms
for income generating activities, and also highlights
deficiencies in the legal system that call for changes in the
legal and regulatory framework. The report and
associated stakeholder conferences and donor meetings
are a good example of a policy advice and advocacy
strategy for the UNDP.
Similarly, the pipeline project, “National Pro-poor
Policy Debate and Poverty Social Policy Forum” is another
example of poverty-reduction oriented programmes.
The limits of UNDP’s core funding resources are well
known, but the need for UNDP intervention in poverty
programmes is also well acknowledged. The most plausible
niche, given the present constraints, is to become a policy
advisor and have a significant impact by mobilising the
existing accumulated knowledge and adding further
investigation and modelling where necessary.
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52. K. Burritt (2003) "Micro Finance in Turkey, A Sector Assessment Report", UNDP
Publications, No. 2, Ankara.
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