Overview

Azerbaijan today

Azerbaijan has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Fuelled by rising oil and gas revenues, GDP growth has averaged more than 10 per cent a year since the turn of the century and has been running quite high especially recently, more than 30 per cent in 2006 and about 25 percent in 2007.[1] This economic performance outstrips even the so-called tiger economies of the East and has resulted in improved living conditions for many children and their families.

Levels of poverty have fallen sharply. Just in 2001 about half of Azerbaijan's population lived below the poverty line, but now that figure is down to about 16 per cent..[2] And as poverty has fallen, educational and health indicators have improved. Fewer children die before they have a chance to grow up, for example; and more of them are in school.

But this rosy economic picture doesn't tell the whole tale. Although money is flowing into the country, it isn't necessarily flowing into healthcare, education and other services essential for children's survival and development. The result is that although the situation for children has indeed improved, massive economic gains have not yet resulted in commensurate gains for children.

Child mortality figures have fallen, but they are still too high. Hospitals and other medical services remain poorly funded and managed, and children die needlessly as a result. Nutritional levels are also concerning, with very low rates of exclusive breastfeeding and widespread maternal and child anaemia. For older children, the possibility of an increase in HIV rates threatens their lives.

More children are going to primary school than ever before, but the quality of their education is doubtful. Teachers do not always have the skills they need to prepare children for a changing world and schools are often ill-equipped and run down. Before primary school, the situation is worse, with almost no pre-school services available and less than one in ten children enrolled. As children rise to the secondary level, drop out rates rise with them, particularly among girls.

There is a significant problem of ongoing institutionalisation of children due to the lack of an adequate child protection mechanism. As a result, as many as 17,000 children are living their lives cut off from the rest of the world in state-run care institutions. At the same time, the justice system does not yet have provisions for minors.

Other vulnerable groups include children living with disabilities, for whom services are wholly inadequate, and the children of refugees and those internally displaced from their homes by the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, for which no political solution has yet been found. For children in border areas, there is also the threat of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO).

Faced with these challenges, UNICEF is focussing its efforts on influencing government policy to see that today's oil riches also result in a wealth of opportunities for children. To do this, we work in two ways.

On the one hand, we engage in high-level advocacy with the government, from key officials right up to the President. In these meetings, we make the case for children's needs and we help officials to design the kind of national policies and laws they need to make high-quality health, education and protection services available to all children. We always try to mainstream child rights into state policies, and attempt to ensure child participation in the process. We also work with key government and other staff to ensure that the human capital is there to make use of the financial capital.

For example, together with the Economic Policy Commission of the National Parliament and an NGO, the Azerbaijan Economists' Union, UNICEF has conducted the first-ever analysis of budgetary allocations for children. The idea is to show a direct quantifiable link between money invested in services and benefits for children, and then to help the government produce "child-friendly budgets" that maximise the use of resources. We are also investing in research to show what the cost would be to Azerbaijan of not investing in basic health, education and other social services – such as the long-term cost to the economy if schools do not improve enough to produce a competitive workforce.

At present, there is serious under-investment in social services, which is in stark contrast to the country's soaring GDP. Although the total government budget has increased by 600 per cent since 2001, public expenditures on health are just 1 per cent of GDP – six times lower than the global average[3] – while education and social protection services also remain underfunded. The result is poor quality services that threaten children's survival and development. In the current economic climate, this is inexcusable.

As is to be expected, lower-income families are more affected by this lack of funding than richer households. For example, 96 per cent of the richest mothers give birth in public health facilities compared to just 40 per cent of the poorest.[4] Similarly, the richest children are six times more likely to attend preschool than the poorest.[5] This presents the very real danger that as one part of society rides the oil boom to health, wealth and success, another part, representing hundreds of thousands of children, will be left further and further behind, unhealthy, uneducated and uncared for.

The human cost of this underfunding is inestimable. What price a child's life? How do you quantify in dollar terms the tragedy of wasted talent among children who don't go to school or the worth of childhoods lost in institutions because alternative services are not available? But there are consequences you can add up and evidence to suggest that investments in children are the best economic use Azerbaijan could make with its windfall from the oil industry. Based on surveys from across the world, UNICEF estimates that for every dollar invested in the physical and cognitive development of children, societies eventually recoup seven dollars they do not have to spend on emergency health care, social services and prisons.[6] Conversely, failure to invest in children today will leave the country without the human resources it will need to maintain economic growth once the oil begins to run out and the economy needs to diversify. The imperative for improving health, education and other social services is as much economic and is it moral.

At the same time as influencing policy and increasing capacity at the national level, UNICEF is planting the seeds of change at the local level by setting up small-scale projects. These range from high-quality schools and hospitals to social services for vulnerable children and their families to prevent children being institutionalised or coming into conflict with the law. Although these projects may affect only a few thousand children at a time, their example can then be replicated by the government at a national level to ensure benefits for all children in Azerbaijan . Details of all these approaches are given in the sections below.