Experts from the United Nations Organization strongly believe that Russian government should develop and introduce special measures for eliminating poverty in order to achieve so-called Millenium Development Goals.

TMillenium Development Goals are eight international development goals that all 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. Among these goals one can find eliminating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics, AIDS for instance, and developing a global partnership for development.

A report of the UN’s Development Programme says that increase of salaries and pensions has resulted in excluding working families of poor people and working retired persons (pension holders) from the group of poor Russians. However, existing system of social assistance lacks mechanisms, which can block recovery of eliminated forms of poverty in case, when economic situation gets worse, like it has happened in 2008, when the economic crisis has struck.

Main aim of the mentioned report, compiled by the United Nations, is monitoring of the process of achieving Millennium Development Goals, adapted specially for our country, as well as analysis of how recent social and economic tendencies affect this process. As for education, according to the report of the UN’s Development Programme, all goals of its development have been successfully achieved in Russia, however, we should keep in mind how strongly Russian system of education affects elimination of social inequality and growth of population prosperity. This point of view shifts main accent from availability parameters of education to parameters of education quality and equal availability of quality education to all citizens of the country.

In regards of gender equality, UN’s Development Programme has following evaluations: male population of European part of Russia faces burning problems of a low lifespan, decline of education level, and high amount of workplaces being in uncomfortable working conditions. At the same time, women often experienced discrimination at their employment positions, and unfortunately Russian Federation hasn’t got any integral mechanism for protecting women from violence.

Experts from the UN’s Development Programme also emphasize that Russian legislation lacks regulations, aimed at health maintenance for Russians of active working age. For example, experts point at the fact that no significant change in fighting HIV was detected in our country – mortality values keep growing. Main epidemiological markers of tuberculosis have become stable, experts say, but in case of either tuberculosis, or HIV (AIDS), the Russian government keeps supporting existing public health infrastructure, which often has nothing to do with current epidemiological situation.

In general, UN experts consider the situation in our country to be ambiguous from the point of view of achieving Millenium Development Goals. One of the main challenges is maintaining positive results and development, which our country has successfully achieved to the moment.

Source: Expert.ru

Anna Kizilova