The 2009 annual programme review meeting

18-12-2009, 11:02

On 15 December 2009, the UNFPA Country Office in Ukraine, jointly with its national implementing partners, held the 2009 annual programme review meeting at Hotel Salute in Kyiv. The UN Resident Coordinator, representatives of UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF and WHO, the donor community and beneficiaries of the UNFPA country programme from the different regions took part in the event.

The objective of the meeting was to review the progress of UNFPA programme delivery in 2009, discuss the achievements, facilitating factors and constraints, and discuss priorities for the programme implementation in 2010.

Dr. Borys Vornyk, UNFPA Assistant Representative in Ukraine, opened the meeting with welcome and thanks to all participants for consistently demonstrating commitment to the agenda of the International Conference on Population and Development and UNFPA mandate, and for the hard work during the year. Dr. Vornyk outlined the objectives of the meeting and requested openness and interactivity from the audience.

In the welcome note, Mr. Olivier Adam, UN Resident Coordinator, UNDP Resident Representative and UNFPA Representative in Ukraine, explained the importance of the UNFPA mandate for the global and national development and highlighted the links between the population processes and socioeconomic development, as well as with the rights, health and wellbeing of people.

The UNFPA’s mission, overview of the country programme for Ukraine and UNFPA’s vision of the 2009 work and its results was presented by Dr. Oleg Voronenko, Programme Officer. In turn, the national implementing partners reported on their activities within the UNFPA programme, and on their experiences of collaboration with UNFPA. Overall, the programme implementation in 2009 was acknowledged by UNFPA as successful: all objectives set for the year were achieved and there were no notable implementation constraints.

Dr. Raisa Moiseyenko, Head of the Maternity, Childhood and Resorts Directorate of the Ministry of Health highly appreciated the UNFPA’s assistance to the Ministry of Health over the years, and outlined the great importance of the 2009 UNFPA’s HIV/AIDS prevention and care activities for the national response to HIV/AIDS, and suggested to put more attention in the future to working on reproductive health services for people living with HIV, their families and especially adolescents, as well as to improving health of men. This suggestion was supported by Dr. Prof. Natalia Nizova, Director of the National AIDS Centre, who also asked UNFPA to focus its technical assistance on the rural and district levels, and requested assistance in monitoring and evaluation of HIV/AIDS programmes.

Mr. Bogdan Pidverbetskiy, Head of Division for Prevention of Negative Phenomena among Youth of the Ministry of Ukraine for Family, Youth and Sports, stressed on the necessity to continue successful programmes on behaviour change communication supported by UNFPA, as they appeared to be one of the most effective means to help young people avoid health hazards, such as HIV infection, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and substance abuse.

Dr. Acad. Ella Libanova, Director of the Institute of Demography and Social Studies, distinguished UNFPA for its systematic approach to programming in population and development, for sustainability and reliability in assistance delivery, for its broad and unbiased vision of the population challenges of Ukraine. She underlined that the data and recommendations resulting from the research supported by UNFPA in Ukraine have critical importance for the national policy making. Dr. Libanova very much welcomed UNFPA’s reliance on the national expertise and available resources rather than using the international capacities without proper justification.

Dr. Prof. Vira Chaykovska, Chief Geriatrician of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, presented the Gerontological Information and Counselling Centre established and equipped with support from UNFPA in accordance with the provision of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing. She said that the establishment of the centre was very much appraised by the older persons and public, and inspired many promising ideas on how to improve the quality of life of older people. Dr. Chaykovska requested UNFPA to continue supporting the centre, and appealed to the representatives of the Government and third sector to foster the development of a national network of such facilities.

Ms. Natalia Vlasenko, Deputy Chair of the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine and main governmental liaison for UNFPA, commended UNFPA for its efforts put to coordination of all activities on population and development in the country. Ms. Vlasenko appreciated much the outputs where UNFPA contributed, such as national population census, comprehensive demographic research, population projections, population processes assessment methodologies for inter-census periods. She thanked UNFPA for its thorough attention to the national development priorities in population and development, and outlined the priority areas for future assistance: migration processes and developing population-related MIS/databases for small administrative territories, to be used for programming, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation etc.

Ms. Olena Suslova, Head of NGO Women’s Information and Consultative Centre, reported that very valuable results were achieved in 2009 in the gender domain with support from UNFPA: presentation of status of men in the Parliament, training of policy and decision makers on CEDAW and its optional protocol, development of national mechanism to monitor and reduce gender-based discrimination and violence, training on gender-based discrimination and violence prevention for the staff of penitentiary establishments for women. Ms. Suslova requested UNFPA to continue supporting its male involvement initiatives, and tackle the sexual harassment issue that unfortunately became more and more widespread in Ukraine.

Mr. Sergey Poliuk, Social Projects Manager of the Delegation of the European Commission to Ukraine, expressed the European Commission’s satisfaction with the outputs produced by UNFPA using the Commission’s funds, namely the national capacity to develop and implement programmes of STI/HIV prevention and care in the uniformed services, and operationalization of the national service for injecting drug users that is able to provide a variety of prevention, counselling and care services to injecting drug users and young people in general.

Representatives of the beneficiaries of the UNFPA country programme (regional AIDS centre, regional centres of social services for family, children and youth, local NGOs) also made brief presentations on how the UNFPA’s assistance strengthened their capacities in advancing the ICPD agenda at the regional and district levels. They asked to continue collaboration at the grassroots level that makes direct changes in people’s lives.

In closing, Mr. Olivier Adam thanked all UNFPA’s national counterparts for the very productive work during the year, gave credits to the UNFPA country staff for their efforts and dedication to advancing the UNFPA mandate. For the 2010 programming, Mr. Adam asked the national stakeholders and UNFPA staff to prioritize the areas of technical support, in order to ensure the most effective use of the programme funds.

Dr. Borys Vornyk presented the outcome documents and call for actions of the regional high-level meetings held in Istanbul in November 2009 that will guide the UNFPA regional programming processes, and informed that these documents will be circulated and discussed among all stakeholders.

Dr. Vornyk closed the meeting with appreciation of the national partner’s inputs to the successful completion of the 2009 work plans, thanked the participants for being frank, active and positive during the meeting, and promised to keep up the pace next year on UNFPA’s part. Dr. Vornyk assured the national partners that the development of the 2010 work plans would be done in full collaboration with them based on their priorities and requests, as usual.

The annual programme review meeting concluded with the appreciation of the successful implementation of the UNFPA country programme in 2009. Recommendations and requests for UNFPA’s technical assistance in the next year and, more strategically, in the next programme cycle, were presented and discussed, both formally and informally.