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What's
the situation ?
Armenia's population faces challenges of depopulation
and ageing . Its Government needs support to assess and analyze
these trends and other aspects of its population dynamics in order to
develop the policies which would best address them.
The political and economic upheavals which followed Armenia's
independence caused many people to migrate.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia suffered a deep economic
crisis, which was exacerbated by the 1988 earthquake, armed conflict, the
presence of thousands of refugees and an energy crisis.
About one million left the country since 1990. Most
of those who left were economically active people of reproductive age. The
current rate of new births is not enough to make up for this large wave of
migration.
At the same time, with so many young people
migrating, the proportion of elderly people in Armenia's population has risen
by 150 per cent in the last 20 years. The elderly are greatly affected by poverty and they often lack
of access to basic social services. The consequences of this rapid aging of
the population in Armenia
have not been fully assessed and analyzed. It is clear however that the
Government has little capacity in place to develop the necessary population
policies to address these challenges.
What is UNFPA doing to help ?
Population dynamics
and gender disparities
UNFPA began its
support to Armenia
when in 1995. The fund provided technical support for Armenia's first national census since Independence, which was
carried out in 2001
This
support included:
- On-the-job training of
local staff in several areas including demographic analysis, questionnaire
design, table design, editing and coding of census data, and data
processing software.
- Seminars on the preliminary results of a pilot
census, preparation of the census questionnaires, cartography
- Procurement of essential computer and office supplies
Because of Armenia's problems with
depopulation and ageing, UNFPA plans further support to improve capacity among
institutions and to help develop policies for population and development.
In its current plan for Armenia, UNFPA aims to help
strengthen national capacity to implement poverty reduction policies that take
into consideration population dynamics
and gender disparities .
With this aim in mind, UNPFA plans a wide range of
activities, including:
- Promoting policy dialogue with the Government and civil
society on population dynamics and its consequences
- Supporting studies
and research on the consequences of demographic trends
- Mobilizing
the public to support population and development issues
- Supporting
training on the relationships between population and development
for ministry experts and facilitating their participation in
professional forums
- Providing technical assistance in policy formulation
- Advocating and
supporting data collection and analysis
- Urging decision makers
and opinion leaders to support the implementation of national
population policies
These activities will be coordinated together
with other UN Agencies, particularly UNDP and
the World
Bank
Current UNFPA projects in Armenia:
Helping Young People get Access to Quality
Information and Services on Reproductive Health
Improving
the Use of High Quality Reproductive Health Services in Armenia
Capacity building in HIV/AIDS prevention
Population and development strategies
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