Kapchagay (Kazakh: Қапшағай, Russian: Капчага́й) is a city in Almaty Province of Kazakhstan. It is located on the Ili River, and has been built along with the construction of Kapchagay Dam on that river in the 1960s. The dam has formed Kapchagay Reservoir (a.k.a...
KAZ Country
Kazakhstan has been a member of the United Nations for more than 22 years, and almost just as long the country has been cooperating with numerous UN agencies. In an interview with The Astana Times, Stephen Tull, UN Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Kazakhstan, spoke about the history of this cooperation and its future, in light of the upcoming creation of a development aid agency in Kazakhstan known as KazAID
From your perspective, what was really successful in the cooperation in recent years between Kazakhstan and the UNDP?
It’s not just UNDP. It’s the whole UN system that are very good friends of Kazakhstan. So, from the very beginning of independence, Kazakhstan has shown great value and respect to the UN system and we immediately in the first year of independence signed a basic agreement between the UN and Kazakhstan to establish the UN office in Kazakhstan. Over these 21 years, momentum has been building up from 19 UN agencies in Kazakhstan, among them is UNDP. As you saw from the UNDP 20-year archive report, there are many areas of cooperation. This reflects partly the rapid change and transformation Kazakhstan has been going through. Not only that change was happening, but the government of Kazakhstan welcomed international support to change policies. It is not every country that is so open to the international community providing expert assistance. Over these 20 years, from project to project and from meeting to meeting, we’ve been building the partnership from success to success and learning lessons from what didn’t work. One of the big secrets of success is the positive approach of the government of Kazakhstan. The leadership of Kazakhstan recognised since the time of independence, and I think over the years how much change was needed to get the country where it wanted to be in the future. Now, I’m almost four years in Kazakhstan and I find the government very progressive and by that I mean really always looking to how to improve government and society for the future. That’s very important. Without the political will of the government, the UN can’t help.
