Kosovo Human Development Report 2010 - UNDP Kosovo - United ...

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able to unemployment than rural areas, relying heavily on business and job markets as primary sources of income, but this fact locks farmers into subsistence living as their only access to factor markets. Voter rates are falling fastest amongst the young – usually the most politically active of all age groups. However, the sheer scale of exclusion across Kosovan society is perhaps the report’s most marked and Important finding. Far from being a minority phenomenon, exclusion is a majority condition, experienced by a wide range of people across many dimensions of life. Exclusion – whether from economic life, social services or civic engagement – is a critical development challenge for Kosovo that considerably erodes the full contribution of its people as economically active, healthy and educated citizens. How could such a state of affairs have arisen, after so much early promise and development investment? Although the root causes of exclusion differ slightly by sector, the report identifies some common drivers that present urgent and immediate challenges. All ultimately lead to a lack of central and high-level leadership on social inclusion, allowing inconsistent and uncoordinated policies, denying central and local implementing authorities the guidance they badly need and offering no point of reference to civic and community organizations wishing to engage with institutional authorities. Other governance causes of exclusion naturally follow from this central point: a lack of accountability to implement the wealth of high-quality social laws already on the books, a weak evidence base for monitoring results, the emergence of regional inequities during the decentralization process and difficulties faced by ministries seeking to work 12 | KOSOVO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2010 together across sectors. Kosovo faces profound social challenges to the realization of social inclusion due to two mutually reinforcing drivers of social exclusion specific to the situation in Kosovo: 1) the legacy of the recent conflict which produced tensions between and within societal groups, and; 2) weak governance capacity that limits the implementation of policies to foster social inclusion. These drivers have created cultural attitudes which foster de facto discrimination against certain groups and reinforce self-exclusion among the most ostracized. Governance and social drivers of exclusion are manifested in a visible disconnect in the normal democratic feedback cycle, where authorities make little effort to seek input from the excluded and the public has retreated from political activism, weary of trying to make their voices heard. The report highlights two particular factors for policy change that also concern Kosovo’s international partners: lack of social cohesion and a failure of self-reliance. Kosovo’s EU aspirations demand a deep social cooperation, in which different ethnic and social identities view each other as allies rather than competitors in the race to achieve long-cherished goals. However, Kosovo’s effort to coalesce as a society has been complicated in part by large international investment affecting its delicate socio-economic balance. This investment, albeit well-intentioned and important for Kosovo’s future, has limited an essential process of “natural selection” that would normally allow the gradual emergence of internallysustained and locally-valued social policies, networks and organizations. As a result, Kosovo has a great number of social policies and development
agents without any true sense of ownership or any consistent means of distinguishing the genuinely useful and relevant from those whose existence relies entirely on external support. The report also identifies social groups feeling the impact of exclusion more deeply than others. These groups risk becoming Kosovo’s invisible population unless they are moved quickly up the policy prioritization ladder and are made the primary focus of Kosovo’s development agenda: 1. The long-term unemployed, accounting for 82 percent of Kosovo’s unemployment, drifting ever further away from contribution to a competitive market economy, face critical challenges meeting the basic costs of healthy living and are more likely to pass challenges in social participation and education on to their children; 2. Disadvantaged children and youth, particularly children of Kosovo’s 18 percent in extreme poverty, rural girls and children of ethnic minorities, who are educationally disadvantaged and are less well-nourished than their peers, are far less likely to have access to school either because of cost, distance or family decisions, unprepared for future participation in the workforce and the future face of Kosovo; 3. Rural women, who carry the greatest burden of Kosovo’s poor record on gender equity, where less than a quarter of women participate in the labour market and account for only six percent of business owners, a fraction are elected to public office compared to men despite a good-quality anti-discrimination law passed by the Assembly, an unacceptably high proportion are functionally illiterate, a quarter (23 percent) are anaemic and many are victims of violence in the home; 4. Kosovo-Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian (RAE) communities, the poorest and most excluded of all European communities, who find ostracization instead of solidarity and support in Kosovo. Whose access to health, education and economic participation are universally lower than any other ethnic group in Kosovo, often by multiple factors, many of whom live in Europe’s most toxic environment being slowly poisoned by lead contamination and who are forced to choose self-exclusion as the route to maintaining their life’s most positive factor – a strong internal ethnic bond; and 5. People with special needs, many of whom cannot physically access the health and education facilities they desperately need (with only 10 percent in mainstream education as a result), are stretched to fund costly medicines, unable to source appropriate treatment to improve their life opportunities and largely shut out of the labour market without any social alliance to improve their wellbeing. Where do the answers lie? Considering Kosovo’s many decades of repression and neglect, its current difficulties are understandable. Its wealth of human capital and strong international support still represent a powerful opportunity for change. As a first step, the report argues for a remodeling of the structure of socio-economic development in Kosovo. Reforms must be more paced to allow a more natural emergence of policy vision and truly valued civil institutions. Macro-economic goals must be tempered by inclusive social policies, with sectors working together to take a more holistic approach to the multi-dimensional challenges faced by beneficiaries. Outreach by authorities and institutions to the communities they serve must become more open, consistent and responsive to rebuild public trust. Extra effort needs to be injected into this process by communities and authorities alike to overcome the phenomenon EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | 13
Page 1: The views expressed in this report
Page 4 and 5: VI specific difficulties that group
Page 7 and 8: Abbreviations ALMP Active Labour Ma
Page 9: The UN’s Human Development Report
Page 13: Contents Foreword .................
Page 16 and 17: to its society. A dramatic effort t
Page 18 and 19: entated basis for examination of so
Page 20 and 21: services. The chapter examines spec
Page 22 and 23: Table 1.1 Low income and the launch
Page 24 and 25: Ineffective institutional support m
Page 26 and 27: 1 2 3 4 “The basic purpose of dev
Page 28 and 29: Table Human Development Index (HDI)
Page 31 and 32: CHAPTER 2 Economic and labour marke
Page 33 and 34: managed to increase its public expe
Page 35 and 36: absence of material well-being and
Page 37 and 38: not protect from exclusion from goo
Page 39 and 40: more than half of its members who a
Page 41 and 42: FIGURe 75 percent of male youth age
Page 43 and 44: Education: the probability of exclu
Page 45 and 46: lower access to services than urban
Page 47 and 48: contract enforcement and privatizat
Page 49 and 50: produce a high risk of social exclu
Page 51 and 52: 3.1 Access to education and exclusi
Page 53 and 54: ns of exclusion as well the composi
Page 55 and 56: sive education depends on deep coop
Page 57 and 58: point these groups more precisely,
Page 59 and 60: FIGURe 3.2 2004/05 2006/07 Grade 1
Page 61 and 62:
Kosova Education Centre (KEC) was i
Page 63 and 64:
learning in its legislative framewo
Page 65 and 66:
4.1 CHAPTER 4 Health care services
Page 67 and 68:
ported deaths. However, Kosovo face
Page 69 and 70:
the same levels of difficulties as
Page 71 and 72:
to healthcare. For many, it is simp
Page 73 and 74:
4.4 Promoting inclusion in healthca
Page 75 and 76:
5.1 Political participation and exc
Page 77 and 78:
for all Kosovans, the level of publ
Page 79 and 80:
the Department for Registration and
Page 81 and 82:
were women. 188 In minority communi
Page 83 and 84:
with the mayor and his job, two thi
Page 85 and 86:
Table 5.6 % of respondents attendin
Page 87:
public meetings are not always the
Page 90 and 91:
• and created Human Development S
Page 92 and 93:
tion against certain ethnic groups
Page 94 and 95:
passes poor health and education va
Page 96 and 97:
and cross-ministerial collaboration
Page 98 and 99:
to the success of this scheme, by,
Page 100 and 101:
The under-five infant mortality rat
Page 103 and 104:
Human Development Index according t
Page 105 and 106:
Introduction 1 Preparing for a futu
Page 107 and 108:
65 USAID and Swiss Cooperation Offi
Page 109:
gagement.pdf. 156 See Civic Capacit
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