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National Publications
Latest Publications:
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The UNV Syria Newsletter March 2009
WELCOME to the 2007/2008 edition of the UNV Syria Newsletter. Although considerable time has past since the first UNV newsletter was published in 2005, we hope to make it up to you by giving you an update of UNV activities during the past two years. This issue also marks the beginning of a biannual newsletter that will keep you informed of our pursuits on a more regular basis.
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The Economic Status of Syria: A focus on Women’s Economic Participation
This report aims to assess women’s economic contribution in Syria with the broader conomic status of the country. In particular the report will examine the extent of women’s participation in economic activities, the main factors affecting their contribution and the effects that international organisations and agreements have had on their contribution. Primarily, the report employs and compares data for the years 1994 and 2006. However, in some cases, data for different years is used.
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First National Report on the Competitiveness of the Syrian Economy 2007
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Introducing Gender Mainstreaming in Trade and Economy
The UNDP experience in Syria: Toolkit and Resource Guide
Mainstreaming gender in trade and economy aims at achieving equality between men
and women in opportunities and obligations, and thus is related to planning, progress monitoring, and evaluation of policies and programmes. As such, gender mainstreaming
tools need to be integrated in all development policies and strategies. The United Nations
Development Programme has been supporting the efforts of the Government of Syria in addressing sustainable human development for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, in harmony with the Tenth 5-year Development Plan that advocates issues of women empowerment through improving their status within the public and private spheres, and developing their economic capacities through access to technical ualifications, enhanced job opportunities, and finding appropriate opportunities to promote formal and non-formal education.
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Information Map on Ministries and Machineries related to Women’s Economic Activities in Syria
Involving women in the development process and measuring the value of their activities, not only in the market but also outside it, has become both an economic and human need. In order to involve women in this process, several international conferences and events were
held. The most important was the Beijing “Fourth World Conference on Women”, 4-15 September 1995, attended by over 200 states and representatives from around sixty international organizations, agencies and committees. The conference was a chance where different states declared commitment towards a platform for action to empower all women and ensure their basic rights and freedoms.
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Gender: Mainstreaming in Trade and the Economy
In a middle-income country such as Syria, both men and women face a number of challenges in increasing their participation and access to the economy. However, women are particularly disadvantaged due to a number of factors, including high illiteracy and fertility rates, cultural attitudes, scarcity of jobs and a large proportion of labour sourced from the informal economy. speed.
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The Importance of Gender Mainstreaming in Syria
The new UNDP toolkit, a concise set of four booklets entitled “The Importance of Gender in Syria,” provides exactly the resources needed to make development plans gender sensitive. Its detailed statistics, qualitative and quantitative situation analyses and overview of Syrian institutions specializing in women’s development are a quick, comprehensive reference for anyone who cares about Syrian communities. Its more technical checklists give UN planners a straightforward way to make sure they are bringing their programmes up to speed.
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National ICT Strategy for Socio-Economic Development in Syria
Although the penetration rate of ICT and internet use is still limited in Syria, the government has committed itself to expanding the outreach and access to the largest portion of society. In this regard, UNDP is committed to provide quality assistance to the Government of Syria in the use of ICT to advance the development process.
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Second National Report on the Millennium Development Goals
The Second Nation Report on the Millennium Development Goals, which the Syrian Government wrote in cooperation with the United Nations, details the country’s progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The report is also known as “MDG+5” because it comes five years after the declaration of the MDGs.
The MDG+5 Report is not the first paper that Syria has issued on its progress in obtaining the MDGs, but it comes at a crucial time. When world leaders distilled development objectives into the quantifiable indicators of the MDGs in the year 2000, they designated 2015 as the year for obtaining them. Now, a third of the allotted time for obtaining the goals has passed, and the MDG+5 Report looks back on the achievements and challenges of the last five years. It also offers a realistic assessment of progress and outlines the critical steps that must be taken to reach the goals by 2015.
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National Human Development Report 2005
Enrolment in Syrian public universities is dropping every year. More years of education make no difference in terms of salary differentiation. The number of post-graduate degree holders is continuously in decline. Only 20 percent of Syrian PhDs who study abroad return to enrich their national economy. Each of these facts point to serious structural impediments in the development of the Syrian educational sector.
This year’s NHDR, entitled “Education and Human Development: Towards Better Efficiency,” focuses on the role of learning in the preparation of young Syrians for impending challenges. Reform of the educational system has been acknowledged as a key strategic initiative for equipping Syrian society with the skills needed to prosper within the framework of a knowledge-based society, characterized by a market economy, good governance, gender equality, human rights and the rule of law.
While highlighting a number of successes, the report does not hesitate to criticize current educational policies, which continue to produce institutional inefficiencies which create unnecessary and avoidable setbacks to development. These obstacles include wide discrepancies between educational priorities and the needs of the labour market, unconvincing incentives for scientific and academic research, weak investment in information technology networks, outdated university admission policies, gender and urban/rural divergences, authoritarian teaching methods, evaluations based on memorization, and limited government spending on education.
The result has been a deterioration of general education in Syria, with grave consequences for the country’s level of development.
The report calls upon stakeholders of educational policies, decision makers in the public and private sectors and civil society to develop an alternative, comprehensive strategy that moves from piecemeal micro-level educational reform policies towards comprehensive, structural adjustments.
The posed alternatives are based on contemporary pedagogical theories, such as life-long self-learning concepts and the democratization of education. This shift from traditional, spoon-fed and authoritarian education, which presupposes the scarcity of information, to the concept of participatory and active education based on the abundance, access to, and ownership of information, aims to expand the national knowledge base and boost incentives for innovation by fostering critical and free minds. The report also provides suggestions on how to match up educational outputs with the needs of the labor market, and presents an analysis of the potential effect of education in empowering women through active involvement of the educational system within the framework for change.
Insisting that education is the best preparation for active involvement ins society in allowing people a larger margin of choice in their lives, the report maintains, "human development, it would seem, is nothing if not the freedom of opportunity."
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Macroeconomic Policies for Poverty Reduction in Syria
Almost 2 million individuals in Syria could not meet their basic needs during the last two years. Overall poverty in the country hovers around 30 percent, and is highly concentrated in the rural Northeastern regions of the country.
These were a few of the startling findings of a new Poverty Reduction Study launched Thursday July 7, 2005. This initiative, spearheaded by UNDP Syria and the government of Syria, is the first of its kind, investigating the phenomenon of poverty in Syria through quantitative and qualitative analyses, with an eye towards planning for the future. Utilizing the expertise of 11 international experts and scores of national ones, the comprehensive analysis of the breadth, depth and causes of poverty in Syria spanned the period 1996 to 2004. It falls under the UNDP Practice Area of “Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and Reducing Human Poverty.”
The case study examines two related issues: how to make macroeconomic policies more pro-poor and how to ensure these policies help the poor gain access to greater economic opportunities.
Questioning the power of growth alone to reduce poverty, the study insists that “inequality is harmful for growth”. In Syria today, the bottom 20 per cent of the population consumed only 7 per cent of all expenditure, while the richest 20 per cent consumed almost half. The objective should be, the report maintains, to not see growth and equality as trade-offs, but instead as mutually supportive vectors of the economy. The aim thus should be to integrate the poor into the growth process. Such “equity-based growth” can maximize gains for the poor while striving to benefit all.
The study attempts to go beyond traditional poverty analyses, which focus solely on spending for basic social services, by identifying appropriate allocation of resources for economic services. In this vein, the study recommended three key sectors of expansion—agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism—aiming to diversify the economy and foster the needed equity-based growth.
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Arab Human Development Report 2005: Towards the rise of Women in the Arab World
The report calls for the adoption of time-bound affirmative action, tailored to the specificities of each Arab society, in order to expand the participation of women in all fields of human activity. This is considered imperative to dismantle the structures of centuries of discrimination.
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Report on International Volunteers Day 2004 celebrations in the Syrian Arab Republic
This report summarizes outputs and recommendations of the International Volunteers Day (IVD) 2004 workshop on "The Importance of Volunteerism in Achieving Millennium Development Goals", and reflects views and opinions expressed by participants.
Many people and organizations helped to make IVD celebrations possible in Syria. First among these, H.E. Dr. Bashar Al-Shaar, Minister of State for the Red Crescent, launched IVD celebrations under his auspices. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the Syrian Environmental Association (SEA), partnered to promote the impact of Volunteerism and to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through Volunteering. Assia Men's fashion and Min Agile Syria (MAS) sponsored generously IVD Mini-Marathon. UNV Headquarter supported this process through technical expertise and largely sponsored celebrations.
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Strategy & National Environmental Action Plan For The Syrian Arab Republic
The Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs, in coordination with the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank, embarked on a consultative process whereby the main stakeholders from ministries, governorates, institutions, public organizations gathered to identify environmental priorities, which evolved into a national strategy and an environmental action plan.
This plan includes a number of projects and programs intended to confront current environmental problems and provide the means for achieving sustainable development. The national environmental action plan envisages a participatory approach for the stakeholders, each in his domain, for developing a detailed program and action plan that contribute to achieving the specified environmental objectives.
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First National Millenium Development Goals Report for Syria 2003
The eight main goals stressed by the Millennium Summit Declaration have been major priorities in economic and social development in Syria. These are clearly seen in the revision of achievements in the period of 1990-2000, as detailed in the Millennium Development Goals Report.
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National Human Development Report for Syria 2000
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Publications 
