UN PRIORITIES IN UZBEKISTAN IN 2013. UN WOMEN
Ms. Damira Sartbaeva, Regional Director of UN Women Sub Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, talks about the agency priorities for Uzbekistan in 2013.
“The sub regional office of UN
Women office in Eastern Europe and Central Asia works in three main
directions. First one- aimed at economic empowerment of women. Main
focus here is given to vulnerable women in rural areas in order to
improve their access to economic resources, such as financial
credits, business opportunities and business development. In this
direction UN Women works closely with Women’s Committee of
Uzbekistan who supports our plans for community mobilization. Big
support is coming also from the National Bank* of Uzbekistan, which
provides microcredit to women with 3% interest rate.
Another direction of our work is to support CEDAW convention
implementation. We support civil society groups, Women’s Committee
of Uzbekistan as well as some state organizations to implement
CEDAW in Uzbekistan. We are very glad that Uzbekistan has national
plan to implement CEDAW in Uzbekistan. We are providing technical
advice to support this implementation.
Another one very interesting initiative we are working on is
implementation of women economic empowerment principles into
private business. Very interesting and innovative initiative in
Uzbekistan which increases social responsibility of private sector
to promote gender equality. I believe that this initiative will
bear good results in the future. “
*JSCB ‘Microcreditbank’ providing access to microcredits for the
most vulnerable rural women with a special annual interest rate of
3% compared to the normal rate of 14%.
The entire interview can be viewed on the UN Information Office’s YouTube channel
