In recent days, Ive been in Belarus to chair the UNs Inter-Agency Task Force on Chernobyl, and to see the scope of UNDPs work there. One day, I travelled out to the town of Vietka in the Chernobyl-affected Homiel region of the country. Belarus suffered the most extensive fallout from the 1986 nuclear accident, with 23 per cent of its territory affected. In 2004, UNDP was designated as the lead agency on the UN response to Chernobyl, with the task of bringing a development focus to the recovery. In these photos: (1) women are welcoming our group to the Vietka Folk Museum, where we met (2) women and men who had led the recovery in their community to generate new livelihoods and improve services. Their stories were inspirational - truly a tribute to the resilience of people. Photo (3) shows the forest landscape, which, interspersed with flat fields, was uniform across the 335 kilometres we drove from Minsk to Vietka. As well, I had many meetings in Minsk, with civil society organisations, government, and UNDP and UN counterparts, and a visit to a methadone treatment centre for addicts, which is an important initiative in combating the spread of HIV.
Posted on: Sat, 31 May 2014 18:34:06 +0000
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