Currently reading...

As sad as this sounds, I have to admit that given the nature of my country of origin (i.e. darn underdeveloped) and my current field of interest (i.e. sustainable development), I never did, until recently, look into Armenia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). For clarification, PRSP is a document prepared by governments of developing countries that outline macroeconomic and social policies and programs aimed at reducing poverty. After realizing the importance of government ownership for the development process, donor organizations (IMF and the World Bank) started requiring such documents as a condition for countries to be considered for financial assistance. They are, in a way, mega-proposals, although instead of grants countries receive loans. Follow the link to read more on these documents, as well as skim through the documents and respective country reports on your developing country of choice – they’re available to public both on the World Bank and IMF websites.

I won't get into the whole issue of whether or not PRSPs are a good idea and aren't merely a means of promoting certain controversial neoliberal policies (which I might write about next time I can't go to sleep at night) that the mentioned organizations seem to favor. Not to deviate from the subject of this particular post and getting back to PRSP of Armenia –reading this particular document drove me to the brink of tears, so beautiful and clear it was despite its technical nature, care and compassion dripping from each page. For a moment I thought that I had mistakenly clicked on the wrong thing and am reading a proposal to build some wonder land... There is a lot of things that I don't know about the government of my own country, but I can't believe that I missed the fact that it actually started caring about the poor and is concerned with human development, corruption or environment. From what I keep hearing, the poor are still poor, the rich are getting richer and unless I am missing something, the only strategy that is being pursued is that of fattening wallets on every possible level of bureaucracy. The fact that there's a document out there stating the contrary makes things kind of embarrassing. But then, there are quite a few things about the Armenian government that are embarrassing, so what's one more?