Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Assistant Administrator of UNDP, and Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS, paid a three-day visit to Armenia. In an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am Mirjana Spoljaric Egger spoke about UN reforms, women's rights and prospects of cooperation with the new Armenian government.
The United Nations is going through a reform process, which also affects the UN development system. According to the UN Secretary General, the UN will focus more on people and less on process, more on delivery and less on bureaucracy. Please elaborate on the UN reforms agenda and explain what implications it will have for UNDP.
In 2015, UN member states adopted a very comprehensive development plan, commonly known as the 2030 Agenda, divided into 17 development goals covering all sectors of human development. This 2030 Agenda requires the UN system to rethink the wayit provides support to countries. We effectively need to do two things: improve coordination among all UN agencies, funds and programs on the ground, and empower UNDP to focus entirely on development-related issues. Until now,UNDP was mandated to coordinate the rest of the UN’s development work. Now we can focus our energy on the substance of development. This means guiding partners on how to work across sectors together, from developing institutions to creating jobs, from reducing carbon emissionsto promoting human rights. Development is complex. We are very well placed to understand and tackle that complexity!
Your visit to Armenia includes meetings with the Chairman of the National Assembly, as well as senior government officials. What are your impressions from these meetings? Do you see new cooperation prospects with the new government?
Definitely, I am very proud to say that UNDP supported elections in Armenia over the past years, including the most recent ones. Together with the support and cooperation of the EU, UK, Sweden and Germany and the government of Armenia, we helped to ensure maximum transparency and credibility of the recent elections. It was a pleasure and an honor to meet with the speaker of the parliament to discuss how UNDP can continue to support parliamentary institutionsin practical ways. We will of course do it in close coordination with our partners and donors, but we want to look at how the parliament can engage with its citizens and national constituencieseven more effectivelyin the future. As for the government, my aim is to discuss how we can support the government in its reform agenda to ensure sustainable and inclusive economic growth over the next years.
Armenia is celebrating the so called “women’s month” starting from March 8 to April 7 and this is the most appropriate time to speak about women’s rights. What can you tell us about women’s rights in Armenia?
Let me speak about women in general, not women's rights. If you look at the statistics, 56 percent of population with higher education in Armenia are women. Supporting women is not just the right thing to do, it is the smartestand the best thing to do to ensure economic growth. Women are still underrepresented in politics and in the labor market, in Armenia and beyond. If you look at the global gender gap, we needa 32 percent increase of women representation globally to ensure gender parity. Armenia is in the lower half of gender representation; of 150 countries that we measured, Armenia ranks 98, which means we have some way to go to reach gender parity. Over the last years we have worked closely with the government and at also at the local levels and we have promoted over 3,000 women in local politics, so this is a good basis to start with.
What criteria do you think are most important in deciding the status of women’s rights in a country? How have the gender equality criteria changed in the world during the past decades and what are the new challenges women face in the modern world?
We measure genderequality globally and nationally according to four main criteria: inclusion of women in politics, labor, health and survival, and educational attainment. Women are less represented in politics and the labor market in Armenia, even though they are highly educated. Yesterday I met with a group of young women who are tech experts. They are very energetic, self-confident women who want to participate in designing the future of this country. Given their high human capital levels and willingness to participate in development, the country has a lot to win by promoting these women to go into the labor market. And here I am referring tohigh value sectors and not areas where they make less money than men. That is, sectors where they can have high value jobs and get promoted to eventually become leaders and decision-makers.
The share of women in politics is very small in Armenia. There is only one woman minister in the government. In your opinion what and who are the main drivers for success in reaching gender balance? What would be your advice to Armenian women?
I would advise Armenian women and men to demand from the government and parliament to implement national laws and the recent action plan adopted by the new government to promote gender equality. It is all there, you have the laws and the policies in place, but you have to make the government accountable to implement those laws proactively, but also to reflect the promotion of women in the national budget.
The Government of Armenia has declared innovation as a priority direction. How can UNDP help the government to mainstream innovation in different sectors of the economy, particularly, in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals?
Armenia, I am very happy to say,is very innovative in its approach to development. In 2017 we launched together with government of Armenia the very first sustainable innovation lab, and this means two things. We are bringing together all sectors that are relevant to developing new solutions, people from tech, science, private sector and government, but also investors and financial institutions that would allow for swift implementation of the identified solutions. What we also do is that we increase use of behavioral insights, big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve analytics and strategies to accelerate sustainable development in the country. Yesterday I had the pleasure to participate in the 2019 Hackathonin Yerevan that brought together roughly 20 teams who are looking for smart solutions to reduce pollution, improve waste management, andincrease green spaces in the cities. I am curious to see what theycome up with and to hear from our institutional partners to what degree they are prepared to help them and implement thesesolutions. There are good experiences from the past and I am sure we can do more. UNDP itselfis undergoing a digital transformation. Armenia is not only the first country that helped us launch this type of development cooperation, but Armenia is also leading as an example for over 60 countries where we established such labs.We hope to scale these accomplishments to achieve global coverage.
