United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) North of Macedonia

As  the country looks towards the European Union, UNDP supports the government to build an inclusive society—where everyone has access to services and can participate in making decisions that affect their lives. Their support involves developing human and institutional capacities, providing knowledge, demonstrating solutions, building partnerships, and raising funds for development. In recent years, for example, UNDP has provided substantial assistance to municipalities throughout the country to help them meet the challenges of decentralization, achieving significant results through increased cooperation amongst municipalities. As part of its commitment to good democratic governance, UNDP has also provided significant support for officials from central and local government to improve aid effectiveness, to combat corruption and increase inter-ethnic dialogue and cooperation. UNDP has concentrated its greatest efforts in recent years on supporting the Government’s commitment to reducing unemployment as an essential step in increasing social inclusion. Much of UNDP’s support for social inclusion has been focused on developing measures to promote self-employment, helping train the long-term unemployed and other vulnerable groups—such as members of the Roma community, women living in rural areas, and victims of domestic violence—to start up their own sustainable businesses. In the area of energy and environment, UNDP is providing expert assistance to policy-makers in transposing UN conventions on environmental issues and EU environmental directives into the national legal framework. Specifically, this has involved helping the government to implement the three major UN conventions on Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Desertification adopted at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, together with the provisions of the EU Water Framework and the EU Energy Efficiency Directive.