Central Asian Republics Regional
The Development Challenge
It is in the U.S. national interest to promote stability and development in Central Asia. The countries of Central Asia are critical allies in the war on terrorism and potential sources of world energy supplies. At the same time, the countries face pervasive poverty, authoritarian rule, political repression, significant health issues, and the potential for extremism.
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The regional nature of Central Asia's development challenges requires coordinated and integrated assistance from USAID. Several regional issues pose particular challenges. All countries in the region have a vital stake in improving regional management of shared water resources, which are absolutely essential to the agricultural sector and energy supply sector. The ecological problems posed by the disappearing Aral Sea also have regional consequences. Health issues are rapidly becoming regional in nature. The incidence of tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and drug use has increased dramatically in all countries of Central Asia. A failure to prevent the spread of malaria from Afghanistan to Tajikistan has now resulted in a malaria problem that has already grown into a regional threat. Although regional trade is essential to Central Asia's overall economic development, many barriers to cross-border trade continue to exist and are particularly difficult to overcome. Risk of regional conflict also poses serious challenges due to stresses on individual communities produced by shared scarce resources, unemployment, and artificial national borders. Lastly, while there is variation across the countries of Central Asia, democracy, human rights, and independent media benefit from a regionally-coordinated approach since authoritarian governance is pervasive in all countries.
The USAID Program: To meet these challenges, the goals of USAID in Central Asia are to promote economic growth, democratic development, health care reform, improved natural resource management, expanded access to basic education, and conflict mitigation.
The Program Data Sheets provided below cover six strategic objectives for which USAID is requesting regional funds. These six objectives promote reforms and training that foster the growth of small and medium enterprises, promote civil society and expand access to information, improve primary health care and prevent infectious disease, encourage better use of the region's water and energy resources, prevent conflict, and address other cross-cutting issues within the region. Regional resources will complement country resources to allow for multi-country expansion of activities supporting regional objectives.
FY 2004 funds will be used to implement the program as currently planned and previously described in the FY 2004 Congressional Budget Justification. Specific activities to be funded by FY 2004 and FY 2005 appropriations are described in the Program Data Sheets that follow.
Other Program Elements: Other USAID funding sources, which complement and reinforce the inputs of regional funding, are directed at country specific programs. These activities are addressed in individual country reports.
Other Donors: Donor relations are detailed in individual country summaries. USAID works closely with bilateral and multilateral organizations to address country-specific and regional issues. The World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Asian Development Bank are important regional partners. The European Union also has a substantial program throughout Central Asia.
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