DIALOGUE
In this section:
First Person: Kire Sosev
Mission of the Month: Mongolia
Notes from Natsios
FIRST PERSON
Kire Sosev
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Kire Sosev,
Manager of Dushan Ciric, a company that
participated in a modernization program for fruit and
vegetable producers in Macedonia.
Kristina Stefanova/USAID |
“I have gained a lot through this program. We have higher
productivity and higher sales.”
Dushan Ciric is one of 40 companies in a Land O’Lakes
program backed by USAID to modernize the operating techniques
and equipment of fruit and vegetable producers in Macedonia.
The four-year program helps the industry comply with European
export standards and establish Hazard Analysis and Critical
Control Point food security measures. More than a dozen Macedonian
producers attended a food show in Moscow, where Sosev has
been selling peaches and apricots through a Greek exporter.
He has also sold to Latvia through a contract in Ukraine.
Since he joined the program, Sosev’s peach orchards increased
from 100 to 150 hectares, and he has begun growing grapes.
USAID/Macedonia invested $1.1 million in the program, which
aims to increase income and employment in the fruit and vegetable
sectors by its end in October 2005.
MISSION OF THE MONTH
Mongolia
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An announcer at Gobi Wave radio in Umnogovi aimag (province) broadcasts
programming for RBN radio.
L. Bayar, RBN |
The Challenge
Mongolia is a country of 2.7 million people spread out over an area
the size of Alaska. Over half of that population is concentrated in
three cities. Population density is exceptionally low in the rest of
the country, and distances between even small population centers are
immense.
Mongolia is one of the coldest countries in the world and lacks transportation
and communications infrastructure, presenting great obstacles to developing
its economy and society.
Innovative USAID Response
USAID/Mongolia has been finding ways to overcome these hurdles of
distance through new communication strategies such as court automation,
web access to government legislative processes, and establishment of
written, radio, television, and cell phone linkages to current business
and market information.
Results
USAID/Mongolia has been able to help establish
online services, mobile phone services, radio and TV shows,
and a print publication to work with Mongolia’s courts,
rural entrepreneurs, and the public.
On the economic front, the mission worked
with the prime minister’s office to promote sound economic
policy reforms and was able to upgrade and expand the government’s
website to list information on pending legislation, the legal
process, and legal and parliamentary decisions.
Access to information is particularly difficult
for isolated regions such as the Gobi. So the mission’s
Gobi Regional Economic Growth Initiative, carried out by MercyCorps
and Pact International, started the Rural Business News (RBN),
a publication that prints articles such as Herder Tips, Farmer
Tips, Policy Watch, Market Research, expert opinions, and
local “real-life” examples.
The project also developed an RBN radio program
containing commodities price information and weekly episodes
of the series “Herder from the Future.” The show
profiles a herder named Terbish, who comes back from the future
to the year 2004 to teach herders how to run a modern herding
business.
One of the most innovative Gobi communications
strategies is the production and dissemination of daily commodity
price information via mobile phone messages. Market information
is also distributed by radio, where it focuses on raw material
prices for cashmere, meat, and hides.
Before 2001, the public’s access to information
about the judicial system was also restricted by socialist-era
rules. Court cases were handwritten, and often only one copy
of a document existed. To get information, people had to track
down the judge responsible for the case and ask him to look
through his files.
USAID/Mongolia’s Judicial Reform Program (JRP),
implemented by the National Center for State Courts, changed this. The
program provided hard copies of the basic laws to every judge. And by
the summer of 2004, JRP had also installed 780 computers and 160 printers
nationwide. Each of Mongolia’s 61 courts is now automated and backed
up by support equipment such as reporting software and copier
machines.
Each court now also has a terminal where the public can access information
about pending cases.
Another communications tool is the local award-winning television
show called “Legal Hour.” The USAID-funded series uses dramatizations
to educate the public on their rights under the Mongolian Criminal Procedures
Code.
Public opinion surveys indicate that Mongolians now regard their courts
as significantly more open, and Mongolian President Bagabandi—on
an official visit to the United States in 2004—described JRP as
one of the most successful initiatives USAID has ever undertaken in
Mongolia “because of the contributions it makes
to human rights and freedom.”
NOTES FROM NATSIOS
The world focused on one of the great defining issues of our era—the
global HIV/AIDS pandemic—at World AIDS Day December 1. The observance
focused on women and girls, given that women now make up more than half
of some 38 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
As the $15 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
continues to build momentum, the American people can be proud that the
United States is an innovative leader in the fight against global AIDS.
The U.S. government has made the fight against HIV/AIDS a top priority,
not only for humanitarian reasons, but because the HIV/AIDS crisis threatens
the prosperity, stability, and development of nations around the world.
In particular, women and girls bear the brunt of the impact of the
epidemic. Women are especially likely to lose jobs, income, and schooling
in order to fulfill family and community obligations. When a woman’s
health deteriorates or when she’s burdened by having to care for
other family and community members, basic community needs such as food
security come under threat.
At USAID, we understand that a woman’s ability to care for herself
and her loved ones can be strengthened through access to economic opportunity.
More than 800 million women are economically active worldwide—in
agriculture, small business and microenterprise, and, increasingly,
in the export processing industries that drive globalization. Yet women
constitute some 60 percent of the world’s rural poor. USAID is
taking steps to give women the tools they need to open the door to more
opportunity.
Specifically, a woman’s inability to own property is a key factor
in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In some places in Africa, for example, widows
are often denied the right to inherit and access family property. Being
dispossessed at the time of a husband’s death is life-threatening,
particularly when widows are HIV-positive too. Losing their property
exacerbates the situation, as they may become homeless and face greater
levels of poverty.
USAID funds a project of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights
where advocacy efforts are under way to promote Kenyan womens’
rights to inheritance and family property. This past August, a diverse
set of stakeholders met to develop a shared analysis of the situation.
In the next few months, a second planning meeting will be held to translate
strategy into action.
Americans can be proud that protecting women and girls is a priority
of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. America is helping
women and girls build lives free from the shadow of HIV/AIDS.
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