The Human Rights Based Approach to Poverty Reduction Tool 1: Identification of the Poor and Vulnerable: Poverty in Macedonian Municipalities

Transcription

1 The Human Rights Based Approach to Poverty Reduction Tool 1: Identification of the Poor and Vulnerable: Poverty in Macedonian Municipalities Analysis of Data from Strumica, Negotino and Gostivar Basic Elements for a Baseline Ernst Halbmayer, Barbara Kühhas

2 Content: 1. Executive Summary Introduction Sample selection, household and individual data Features of sample selection: socio-demographic, ethnic and gender variables 8 3. The MDGs and Human Rights in Poverty Reduction Definition of poverty MDG 1: Reduction of poverty and social exclusion The Macedonian National MDG 1 Indicators MDG 1 related field data for Gostivar, Negotino and Strumica Self reported household income and subsistence: Cross-tabulation with ethnicity, religion and size of settlement Data analysis and correlations Percentage of household income spent on food Hunger and nutritional status Data analysis and correlations Quality of the food available 1 and self-evaluation of the nutritional status of the household Self-evaluation of the nutritional status of the household Basic household costs (rent, electricity, running water and heating) Data analysis and correlations Sources of household income Additional subsistence activities Working situation and unemployment Unemployment and ethnicity, educational status, household income, housing conditions. Working conditions Housing infrastructure and housing security Social security payments and support received Social security payments and cross-cutting issues Other forms of aid received The right to appear in public without shame Do you feel that you can participate freely and without experiencing shame in community activities? Participation in community activities and self evaluation Draft Guidelines, Target 4: all people to have access to food of adequate nutritional value 2

3 MDG 2 Attaining universal primary education for all The national Macedonian targets School attendance, illiteracy, provision of educational services and their accessibility School attendance of children School drop-out and education Illiteracy and cross-cutting issues Do you have problems to provide children with necessary items they need for school? Self-evaluation of the own educational status MDG 3 - Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women The Macedonian national MDG 3 targets Field data MDG 4 - Child Mortality Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women Field data: child mortality under five, postnatal medical consultation, vaccinations MDG 5 Improving maternal health care The Macedonian national target Maternal mortality, prenatal medical care, availability of skilled health personnel, abortions MDG 6: HIV Aids and Tuberculosis (TBC) Macedonian National MDG targets Field data MDG 7: Environmental sustainability Macedonian Targets Field data Bibliography Tables Annex of Tables

4 1. Executive Summary The study presented here is part of the project Human Rights and Poverty Reduction in Macedonia, which aims at piloting the Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) to Poverty Reduction on local, regional and national level. Throughout 2006, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM) has started to cooperate with UNDP Macedonia, in order to integrate the HRBA into the Localizing the MDG s projects. A Toolkit 2 for implementing the HRBA was developed. The ultimate aim is to support Good (Local) Governance in development planning, to include the specific needs of the disadvantaged and poor, based on the human rights based approach. The first step is to identify these poor and vulnerable, or disadvantaged groups within the local communities. Based on a combination of the suggested indicators of the recently adopted Principles and Guidelines on a Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategies 3, the National Millennium Development Goals (MDG s) of Macedonia and the field experience of UNDP Macedonia, a household survey was developed. The design of the tool has also been informed by the R-Map checklists developed by a UNDP project 4 in the Bosnian context. This survey tool is tailor made to identify the potentially vulnerable and disadvantaged groups of the population in a local context in the context of the MDG s. Gender and ethnicity have been treated as cross-cutting issues. The tool has been used for household surveys in three Macedonian municipalities: Gostivar, Negotino and Strumica. Due to UNDPs sample selection and budgetary restraints, the study did not allow for a statistically representative analysis, but reveals nevertheless important data. General results include: Result 1: Poverty is significantly higher in rural areas and smaller settlements 5 in terms of housing infrastructure; in terms of self-reported financial capabilities in terms of nutrition and hunger Result 2: Poverty of ethnic groups varies significantly All the data do show significant differences when cross-checked with ethnicity: income, employment, security of tenure and housing, hunger and nutritional status, feeling fear to appear in public without shame, education, etc. The interviewed Roma and Turkish households are the most disadvantaged Result 3: Gender and Poverty Under the circumstances of extreme poverty, gender makes a significant difference In Negotino women are suffering from hunger significantly more than men Employment rates for women are fare behind men s Women do receive less social security benefits Result 4: Income poverty and unemployment is extremely high The Incidence of income poverty is extremely high and severe. Out of the surveyed a range from 71.2% in Strumica up to 85.8% are living under the officially defined income poverty line. In Negotino, only 6.9% of the population have an official open-ended employment; 10.6% in Gostivar and 17.5% in Strumica. Only in Strumica women have the same share of official open-ended employment as men. A lot of detailed data are displayed within the report, which is providing baseline data for the above mentioned project. The tool used for the study is a Living tool and open for comments, adoption and improvements. These are the results of the first field-test. In order to give your comments, please contact barbara.kuehhas@univie.ac.at. Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, Freyung 6, a-1010 Vienna.; or liljana.alceva@undp.org and filippo.unterhofer@univie.ac.at. 2 The Toolkit consist in 4 Tools, which will be displayed on the website as from January You can find them on: accessed on the 21 December UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina, RMAP - Rights-Based Municipal Assessment and Planning Project. Consolidated Report of the Municipality Assessments in Bosnia and Herzegovina, WEblink: 5 As in Strumica the sample only includes households in settlements between and inhabitants it is impossible to confirm these correlations at the municipal level of Strumica. The correlation is especially obvious in Negotino, but only partially in Gostivar. In Gostivar for many indicators there no significant correlation between settlement size and poverty. This is for example the case At municipal level there is no significant correlation between in door toilets, sewage system and settlement size in Gostivar but between Bath rooms and settlement size. On the other hand Different distribution of poverty according to settlement size is less obvious in Gostivar than in Negotino. 4

5 2. Introduction 2.1. Sample selection, household and individual data This study s aim is the identification of the poor and vulnerable population in the Macedonian municipalities of Gostivar, Negotino and Strumica and of the most severe forms of poverty these parts of the population have to face. While there are several representative studies and statistical data on the poverty situation in Macedonia 6, detailed information for the different local situations in selected Macedonian Municipalities are largely missing. Within this project a decision had to be taken how and in which form this study could fill that gap. Central targets of this study were to provide data that may orient future local human rights based development planning in these municipalities. What was needed? Either a representative picture of the poverty situation in these municipalities or a more participatory strategy, involving local staff working on poverty reduction and enabling them to integrate the potentially poor and vulnerable parts of the population into their development programming? In accordance with UNDP Macedonia and their local development planning projects, priority was given to the involvement of local staff working on poverty reduction and this study s aim was specified to provide detailed information on the potentially poor and vulnerable parts of the population and their lacking capabilities. These data have the potential to support the planning and implementation process of human rights based local development programmes in the municipalities of Gostivar, Negotino and Strumica. Consequently, the study was not designed and does not intend to provide representative evidence on the overall poverty situation in these three municipalities, but for a pre-identified group of potentially poor and vulnerable households 7. The identification of these households was based on the practical knowledge acquired by the UNDP staff about the local poverty situation in their ongoing work with these communities. The lists of the families who were interviewed were prepared by the local coordinators in the municipalities after the consultation with the local institution for social protection. The coordinators also consulted the civil society organizations dealing with vulnerable and marginalized groups, especially those who participate in the Local Leadership Groups (LLG s) of the Localizing the MDG s projects of UNDP Macedonia 8. In the lists of 150 families per municipality, around 70% were regarded as poor and vulnerable families by the local institutions for social protection. As accompanying measure of the pilot study, a qualitative pre-study on the structural and infrastructural situation in these municipalities was conducted among local authorities and key stakeholders in public administration, local politics, and the health and educational system 9. The aim of the first screening was, to find out to which extent the basic infrastructure is provided and who the players within the municipalities are. Therefore, opinion-leaders from politics, non-governmental bodies, the health system and also religious groups were interviewed by means of a half-open interview guide 10. The households finally selected were part of a larger group identified as potential targets for future local development programs aiming on poverty reduction. Therefore, these data have to be read and understood as information on the poverty situation within these selected groups of households and as 6 Government of the Republic of Macedonia: Report on the Republic of Macedonia on Millennium Development Goals, June 2005.; UNDP: National Human Development Report 2004 Macedonia, Decentralization for Human Development, Skopje 2005; UNDP: Mapping of socio-economic disparities between Macedonian municipalities, study conducted in the framework of the UNDP supported project; UNDP: Early Warning Report, Macedonia June This is also due to the fact, that the development of this tool is part of a pilot project which started up with a small budget; and UNDP opted for a small sample of surveys rather than for a huger number and statistical representativity. 8 The information on the applied sampling strategy was provided by Liljana Alceva, program officer of UNDP Macedonia. 9 Janev, Goran: UNDP - Supporting the elaboration of an MDG-based National Development Programme for Macedonia. Base line study on human rights and poverty (Report by the local consultant for human rights assessment and analysis in three pilot municipalities: Negotino, Gostivar, and Strumica); Skopje The interview guide is attached in the Annex. 5

6 potentially poor households have been selected it may be expected that incidence and prevalence of different forms of poverty will be relatively high compared to the overall population. This study provides information about which aspects of poverty are especially severe within this group of households and according to which criteria these households are differently affected by poverty. It is a numeric impression of life circumstances of poor households in these municipalities. The collected data are located at two levels: household data and individual data for each household member. The following section provides a brief overview on the number and structure of households selected. The uneven selection process of households in relation to the overall population in our understanding does not only reflect the poverty structure in these municipalities, but obviously also where and in which way UNDP activities are grounded within the local population. Table 1. Number of interviewed households and number of individual data Number of households interviewed Number of individual data collected in these households Gostivar Negotino Strumica Total The following tables provide information on the selected interview partners. In each household a single person was interviewed. In Strumica female interview partners are overrepresented, whereas in the other municipalities this gender relation is balanced. In regard to age, there is a comparatively high number of older persons (over 65) among the interview partners in Negotino, whereas the amount of younger persons (between 20 and 30) interviewed is especially high in Strumica. Table 2 Sex and Age of Interview Partners 6

7 2.2. Features of sample selection: socio-demographic, ethnic and gender variables With regard to the households selected and interviewed, central discrepancies between the municipalities may be identified as the tables below indicate: The distribution of the selected households with regard to settlement size is quite uneven All households selected in Strumica are from urban settings between 20 and 50 thousand inhabitants In Negotino 62,7% of the households are from settlements with to persons In Gostivar a comparatively high amount of households has been selected from small villages but the most households were selected in urban settings with more than persons. Table 3: Size of Settlement of interview partners Table 4: Ethnic Affiliation of interview partners In terms of ethnicity, the interviewed households in the sample are distributed as follows: 7

8 3. The MDG s and Human Rights in Poverty Reduction 3.1. Definition of poverty Income poverty Within the MDG Framework, goal 1 is to achieve the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. Two targets have been established: Target one is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day 11 ; and target two 12 is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. This assumption partly starts from a relatively conservative one dollar a day income poverty definition. In Macedonia, the poverty line was officially set at 70% of average annual household income, with Denars, or around 243 Euro a month 13 (UNDP 2004:14). Definition of poverty a human rights point of view The Draft Guidelines of the Human Rights Based Approach to Poverty Reduction are using Amartya Sen s capability approach to define poverty 14. The capability defines poverty as the absence or inadequate realization of certain basic freedoms, such as freedoms to avoid hunger, disease, illiteracy, and so on. Freedom here is conceived in a broad sense, to encompass both positive and negative freedoms. 15 Poverty therefore is understood as the deprivation of basic capabilities and not as low income only. The Draft Guidelines enrich the capability approach to a Human Rights Based Approach, which means to embed it in the normative framework of human rights. Therefore, poverty is understood as the nonfulfilment of human rights when it meets the following two conditions: - The human rights involved must be those that correspond to the capabilities that are considered basic by a given society; - Inadequate command over economic resources must play a role in the causal chain leading to the non-fulfilment of human rights. 16 This means that poverty is not only connected with low income, but also with discrimination on various grounds (ethnicity, gender, religion, social origin, disabilities, etc), the sense of exclusion, powerlessness, low self-esteem and the feeling to be ashamed when appearing in public; which in sum leads to a perpetuation of poverty within the socially marginalized and disadvantaged groups of a society. Detecting the vulnerable and poor: poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon These diverging definitions of poverty are very obviously posing a challenge to the development and use of indicators and instruments for the realization of surveys in the field. This tool has been developed in order to gather data about the poor and vulnerable people in Macedonia (in UNDP pilot municipalities); and on the other hand also to be able to bring the poor and vulnerable on board, in order to make their voices heard and their needs visible for sustainable local development planning. Therefore, the authors of this report tried to combine the target-oriented indicators from the Draft Guidelines on a Human Rights Based Approach to Poverty Reduction ( ), with the Macedonian 11 The official indicators are 1. Proportion of population below $1 (PPP) per day ; 2. Poverty gap ratio [incidence x depth of poverty]; 3. Share of poorest quintile in national consumption 12 Indicators for target two are: 4 Prevalence of underweight children under-five years of age 5. Proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption 13 UNDP: National Human Development Report 2004 Macedonia, Decentralization for Human Development, Skopje Barbara Kühhas/Karin Lukas/Manfred Nowak/Helmut Sax: A Human Rights Based Approach to MDG 1 Selected Experiences from the Balkans (Exploratory Guidance note for the DAC-OECD Govent, prepared for the Austrian Development Agency), Vienna May Hunt, Nowak and Osmani Human Rights and Poverty Reduction. A Conceptual Framework. (published by OHCHR), New York Geneva 2004.Cit.op, p.9 16 OCHCHR, supra (note 13), p.10. 8

9 set of MDG indicators, as the relevant poverty reduction framework. Furthermore, synergies can be found with the International and National Human Rights Legal Framework for Macedonia 18,which was published as a substantial part of the pilot Tool-Kit for the implementation of the HRBA in development planning MDG 1: Reduction of Poverty and Social Exclusion From the human rights point of view, in order to reach MDG1, especially the fulfilment of the right to adequate food (guideline 6); the right to adequate housing (guideline 10); the right to appear in public without shame (guideline 12) and the right to decent work (guideline 9); are of primordial importance The Macedonian National MDG 1 Indicators The Macedonian national target is to reduce the proportion of the population living below the poverty line to 9.5 percent by 2015: National Indicators are: - Poverty incidence - Poverty depth - Regional disparities - Gini coefficient/index (EU) National Indicators + are: - Profiles of poverty. Rates of poverty levels for poor households facing highest risks - People living in jobless households (EU) - Rates of poverty depth - Long-term unemployment rate, more than 12 months as % of the active population (EU) - Long-term unemployment share, more than 12 months as % of unemployed (EU) - Very long-term unemployment, over 24 months (EU) - Social assistance beneficiaries - Life expectancy at birth (EU) MDG 1 related field data for Gostivar, Negotino and Strumica The authors of this report included the following field data as especially relevant for MDG 1: Self-reported household income and subsistence Hunger and nutritional status (Right to adequate food) Housing infrastructure and housing security (Right to adequate housing) Working situation and unemployment (Right to decent work) Social security payments and aid received Participation in community activities (Right to appear in public without shame) The following indicators have been used for this analysis: Average amount of money available for the household per month (self-reported) Basic household costs Percentage of household income spent on food Self-evaluation of the households financial capabilities Sources of household income Subsistence activities Participation in community activities without experiencing shame 17 In the Draft Guidelines of a human rights based approach to poverty reduction, there is a set of targets and indicators presented. As also presented in Tool 2 of the BIM (The International and National Human Rights Legal Framework for Macedonia), within MDG 1 also the Right to adequate Food, the Right to adequate Housing, the Right to appear in public without Shame, the Right to Decent Work need to be included. 18 Ananiev, Jovan and Helmut Sax: The International and National Human Rights Legal Framework for Macedonia. A Human Rights Based Approach to MDG-based Development Planning and Poverty Reduction, Vienna-Skopje April

10 Self-reported household income and subsistence In Gostivar 85.8% of the households surveyed have a monthly income less than 200 ; in Negotino it is 85.7% and in Strumica 71.2%, which means that they are living under the officially defined poverty line. Out of the interviewed persons in Negotino, 17.7% of the households have a monthly income less than 25 - and 44.2% have less than 50 a month, which indicates that the incidence of income poverty is extremely high and severe. Table 5 Average amount of money available for the household per month (self-reported) 10

11 Cross-tabulation with ethnicity, religion and size of settlement Table 6 : Average household income per month/municipality and ethnic affiliation Table 7: Household income and religious affiliation Table 8: Household income and size of settlement 11

12 Data analysis and correlations The more money available per capita in a household, the better The people themselves evaluate and perceive their infrastructural circumstances As well as their financial situation The more often they can afford to have at least two meals per day The more food is available and less hunger persistent The smaller is the percentage of the household income that they have to spend on nutrition The better is their infrastructural situation with regard to bathrooms, indoor-toilettes, sewage and electricity The better they evaluate the official health system provided And logically, the longer a person is unemployed; the smaller is the household income per capita Percentage of household income spent on food In general, it is a fact that poorer households have to spend a bigger amount of their income on food. One of the suggested indicators of the Draft Guidelines (target 3: all people to be free from food insecurity), is the proportion of household expenditure on food. Table 9 Percent of household income spent on food How many percent of your household income do you spend on food? Gostivar (n=107) Negotino (n=138) Strumica (n=149) Total (n=394) Up to 20% 0 5,1 1,3 2, % 16,8 10,9 8,1 11, % 31,8 21,0 31,5 27, % 26,2 25,2 39,5 30, % 25,3 37,6 19,4 27,4 The table above clearly shows that poverty in Macedonian municipalities is severe: In Strumica 19.4% of the households have to spend from % of their income on food, in Gostivar it is 25.3% and in Negotino it is as much as 37.6% of the surveyed households. In consequence, this means that there is no income left for other essential needs like health, education etc.; and for adequate housing and infrastructure in their homes Hunger and nutritional status To suffer hunger is one of the clearest indicators for being poor. In this survey the authors have taken into account several indicators suggested in the Draft Guidelines under guideline 6: The right to adequate food. It must be stated that a high number of the surveyed population is starving sometimes, this means that people are not free from food insecurity. Extremely high rates could be found in Negotino, where 42.3% of the sample starves sometimes; and 20% does not have at least two regular meals per day; as well as 65.3% of the households cannot provide enough food for their family. Indicators used in this analysis 19 : Able to provide enough food for the family Two regular meals a day Do father or mother have to skip a meal to be able to feed the children? Starving sometimes How often do you eat meat/fish? How often vegetables or fruit? Nutritional status of the households Use of popular kitchens 19 Indicators are derived partly from the Guideline 6 Right to adequate food (targets 1-5) 12

13 Table 10: Hunger and nutritional status Overview: Hunger and nutritional status Gostivar (n=113) Negotino (n=150) Strumica (n=150) Total (n=413) Not able to provide enough 46,9% 65,3% 41,3% 51,5% food for the family Does not have at least two 7,1% 20,0% 3,3% 10,4% regular meals per day Starves sometimes 32,4% 42,3% 28,7% 34,6% Has been forced to eat damaged/spoiled or expired food to prevent hunger 4,4% 28,2% 1,3% 11,9% Data analysis and correlations Several significant correlations could be found between: Availability of food and the size of a settlement: The bigger a settlement is, the better is the possibility to have at least two regular meals a day. A weak correlation could be found between the size of the settlement and hunger: in bigger settlements between 2,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, people have to suffer from hunger less often compared to settlements between 500 to 2,000 inhabitants. Especially bad is the situation in the smaller hamlets from 500 to 2,000 inhabitants, where 89,5% of the interviewed households are starving sometimes. Accessibility of nutrition and ethnicity: Roma are the group who do most seldom have two regular meals per day (only 67,3%): Every third Romani household cannot provide two regular meals per day Not able to provide enough food for the families: 92.5% of the Roma and 88% of the Turks interviewed say that they are not able to provide enough food for their families. On the contrary, 29.6% of the Albanian and 38.9% of the ethnic Macedonians say the same. Roma and Turks have to suffer from hunger more often, and are also spending most of their available household income on food (61.8%). There is also a relatively high number of cases where father or mother 20 do have to skip a meal to feed their children (categories sometimes and often): the number ranges from 48.7% in Gostivar to 50% in Negotino and 36.6% in Strumica. Table 11 Parents skip meals to feed children 20 The authors are not sure, if the interviewed answered the question right: it was planned to ask if the parents have to give their food to their children in order to feed them; but it could have been misunderstood; the question will be updated for the next survey. 13

14 Quality of the food available 21 and self-evaluation of the nutritional status of the household These questions aimed at finding out if the nutrition of the interviewed persons contains enough proteins and vitamins. Numbers show that poor people cannot afford quality food: As many as 54.9% in Gostivar; 61% in Negotino and 34.6% in Strumica eat fresh vegetable or fruit at most twice a week; and meat or fish is consumed by 11.8% in Gostivar; 39.3% in Negotino and 20.4% in Strumica at most once a month. Table 12 Availability of quality food Self-evaluation of the nutritional status of the household The comparison in the table above shows that the self-evaluation of the nutritional status of the households coincides with the access to quality food and nutrition: Negotino: 51% insufficient or poor Strumica: 33,4% insufficient or poor Gostivar: 18,9% insufficient or poor Table 13 Self-evaluation of nutritional status 21 Draft Guidelines, Target 4: all people to have access to food of adequate nutritional value 14

15 Table 14 Use of popular kitchens Basic household costs (rent, electricity, running water and heating) The detailed amounts and average costs of each municipality for rent, electricity, running water and heating can be found in the Annexes Table 15: Which services do the households have to pay for? For which services do you have to pay? Yes Gostivar (n=108) Negotino (n=149) Strumica (n=150) Total (n=407) Rent for your home 25,9 16,8 4,0 14,5 Electricity 99,1 91,9 98,7 96,4 Running water 98,2 89,9 78,0 87,9 Heating 92,7 92,6 92,6 92,6 It is interesting to note that a huge percentage of the surveyed persons do either hardly or never pay their bills for the basic household maintenance (Gostivar: 67.8%; Negotino: 40.3 %; Strumica: 46.4%). It might be important to follow-up on the consequences of not paying the bills, and if they differ from municipality to municipality. In November 2006, experiences show for example that the recent privatisation of the electricity distribution company (ECM) to an Austrian Corporation, radically changed the situation regarding the non-payment of bills to the company itself: ECM decided to cut-off the electricity to the debtors regardless of their socio-economic condition. In consequence, this has led to the fact that entire villages and public administration buildings (above all schools and above all the rural areas) are suffering this deprivation and there are rumours that the same approach will be applied by the company in charge of the heating supply system 22. Table 16: Are the households really paying for these services? 22 The liberalistic approach of the current Government and the process of privatization that will most probably be strengthened during the next years, together with the non-existent clear regulations on who is entitled to receive social help, is going to put a large portion of the population in danger to be deprived of the basic services in a short and medium term. (Field data from BIM Skopje office, November 2006) 15

16 Data analysis and correlations Due to the self-evaluation of the interviewed, the financial capabilities are evaluated as insufficient or poor among 63.8% of the households in Gostivar; 83.2% in Negotino and 63.8% in Strumica. Only 8.1% in Gostivar; 4.7% in Negotino and 8.1% in Strumica do perceive their financial situation as good or very good. It could be observed that there is a coincidence between the size of the settlement and the evaluation of the financial capabilities. The bigger the settlement is, the better are the selfevaluations of the financial possibilities. The Turks, Roma and ethnically mixed households are evaluating their financial capabilities significantly worse than the Albanian and Macedonian households. Generally, the Albanians have the best self-evaluations. A huge number of households as well as public buildings is in danger to be deprived of the basic services like electricity, water, heating, etc. due to the non-payment of bills and the ongoing privatisation. Table 17 Self-evaluations of financial capabilities of the households Sources of household income The legal employment rate in Strumica is with 47% the highest among the surveyed municipalities; and the lowest with 19.3% in Negotino; where on the other hand the grey and unsteady income market figures are the highest with 39.3%. The support from relatives in Gostivar figures very important with 22.1% and is almost as high as the income from legal employment with 23.9%. The rate of unemployment pay in Gostivar is very high with 62.8% Generally, it can be said that savings to live from are extremely low with 1.3% in Strumica; 0% in Negotino and 0.9% in Gostivar Table 18: What kind of income does the household live from? From what kind of income does the household live? (multiple answers possible) Gostivar (n=113) Negotino (n=150) Strumica (n=149) Total (n=412) Legal employment 23,9 19,3 47,0 30,6 Own business 2,7 0 4,7 2,4 Savings 0,9 0 1,3 0,7 Support from 22,1 0,7 2,0 7,0 relatives/friends living outside Unemployment payment 62,8 31,3 16,1 34,5 16

17 Pension 17,7 33,3 29,5 27,7 Other ways of steady 2,7 4,7 5,4 4,4 income Other ways of unsteady income 22,1 39,3 26,8 30, Additional subsistence activities Approximately one third of the interviewed do have a garden and ¼ of those with garden use it for subsistence activities. In the city subsistence activities are lower (Strumica). Between 10% and 17% of the households raise animals for subsistence. Also in the cities animals are raised. Table 19 Additional subsistence activities Working situation and unemployment The data presented here are partly taking into account the Draft Guidelines on a Human Rights Based Approach to Poverty Reduction, which are suggesting a set of indicators regarding the Right to decent work. The indicators include the rate of unemployment and underemployment; proportion of working poor, of labour force covered by minimum wage legislation, proportion of labour force covered by adequate social security provisions, male and female employment data, average wages of men and women, etc. The survey produced gender and ethnic disaggregated employment and unemployment data and shows the impact of unemployment on housing conditions and household income, as well as the self-evaluation of the working conditions of the interviewed persons. In Negotino, only 6.9% of the population have an official open-ended employment; 10.6% in Gostivar and 17.5% in Strumica. Only in Strumica women have the same share of official open-ended employment as men. 17

18 Rates of persons stating that they have no employment are very high: 80% in Gostivar, 86% in Negotino and 69% in Strumica. In all municipalities women are more often without employment than men. In Gostivar, most people without work are officially unemployed (94.4%), whereas in the other Municipalities only half of the population without work is officially unemployed (50.8% in Negotino and Strumica). That leads to a dramatic rise of 85.6% of long-term-unemployment over 24 months in Gostivar, whereas this rate is 38.5% in Negotino and 36.1% in Strumica. Table 20: Gender disaggregated employment data Unemployment and ethnicity, educational status, household income, housing conditions General data show that unemployment is an extremely severe problem in the pilot municipalities: the average data show that in 56.9% of the sample up to 50% of the adult persons are unemployed and in as many as 30% of the households everybody in working age has no regular work. Table 21 Share of unemployed persons over 15 per household The ethnic Albanians are most seldom not officially unemployed and do have the highest long-term unemployment rate, followed by the Roma. Albanians and Roma are mainly long-term unemployed, but the Albanians are significantly more often officially unemployed and thus receive more benefits than all other ethnic groups. 18

19 Table 22 Unemployment and ethnic affiliation The lower the education is, the longer the person is unemployed and/or the less often officially unemployed (see Table 84 in the Annex). There could not be found a direct relation to gender. Correlation between duration of unemployment and income of the household (HHE): The less people are unemployed in a household, the more money is available. The longer a person is unemployed, the less household income is available e.g. if a person is unemployed longer than 24 months, 56.3% of the interviewed stated that they have less than 25 per month per person. The shorter a person is unemployed, the more household income is available (see table below for the data). Table 23 Duration of unemployment and average household income per person 19

20 Number of unemployed persons and household conditions: Table 24: Share of unemployed persons over 15 in a household The following correlations could be found in the data cross-check: the more unemployed persons are in a household: The more likely there is no bath-room or indoor toilet available The more seldom people are participating in community activities And the less people are participating in community activities freely and without shame Unemployment: The ethnic Albanians are most seldom not officially unemployed and do have the highest long term unemployment rate, followed by the Roma. Albanians get the highest rate of social benefits Turks get the worst rate. The bigger the settlement is, the higher is the number of officially unemployed persons. Table 25: Long-term unemployment 20

21 Working conditions The surveyed persons were asked to evaluate their working conditions with regard to safety, payment and general situation. Tables Self evaluation of the working conditions (exposure to noise, toxic pollution, fair payment) 21

22 Housing infrastructure and housing security The questionnaire was informed by the Right to adequate housing, as presented in the Draft Guidelines. They include seven targets with their respective indicators. The targets include all people to have a home, to enjoy security of tenure, to enjoy habitable housing, housing in a safe and healthy location, being able to afford adequate housing, having physical accessibility and to enjoy housing with access to essential services, materials, facilities and infrastructure. As far as possible, these targets have been taken into account. All people to enjoy security of tenure The question Do you own, rent or live informally in your home? was answered significantly different depending on the ethnicity of the interviewed persons. It can be stated that Roma, Turks and ethnically mixed households are most often living in informal occupations, followed by rented homes. Albanians and Macedonians do most often own their homes. Table 31 Housing security 22

23 Correlations can be found between: ethnicity: Roma, mixed households and Turks are more often afraid to be evicted from their homes; Albanians the least The fear to be evicted is the biggest under those who are renting their home with 83.3%, followed by those who are informally occupying their home (58.3%) and only 6.3% of the persons who own their home are feeling this fear. All people to enjoy housing with access to essential services, materials, facilities and infrastructure 23 Table 32 Overview of housing conditions Does your Household have the following facilities? No Gostivar (n=113) Negotino (n=150) Strumica (n=150) Total (n=413) Indoor toilets 1,8 50,3 36,2 31,9 Bathroom 1,8 45,6 34,2 29,4 Sewage system 1,8 31,1 23,5 20,2 Electricity 0 2,7 0 1,0 Safe drinking 3,5 4,7 11,3 6,8 water reachable by all weather, roads throughout the year 2,7 25,5 6,0 12,2 Correlations could be found in the fields of: Size of settlements: Households in larger settlements are more likely to have indoor toilets, bathrooms, a sewage system and electricity and the bigger the settlement, the better the people self-evaluate their infrastructural housing conditions Ethnicity: Turks, Roma and ethnically mixed households are more seldom equipped with indoor toilets and bathrooms. The houses of Serbs, Turks and Roma are more seldom equipped with a sewage system. All cases of households without electricity are Roma Table 33 Self-evaluation of housing conditions 23 (Draft Guidelines, Target 7) 23

24 Infrastructural housing conditions are: extremely bad in Negotino the bigger the settlement, the better people self-evaluate their infrastructural conditions Turks, Roma and ethnically mixed households do self-evaluate their infrastructural conditions significantly worse than the Macedonian and Albanian population Table 34 Living space per household Correlations could be found: Ethnicity: Albanians have the biggest living space per household Turks, Roma and mixed households have the smallest living spaces per household The bigger the family, the bigger the living space Social security payments and support received A high number of people in Macedonia rely on social security payments, because the high unemployment rates do not permit them to maintain their households and to earn their living. In the three pilot municipalities 30% of the households do not even have one regularly employed member. As far as the field data suggest, there is no common policy on how to distribute social security benefits, and no clear provision on who is entitled to receive social security payments. In its mission report , the BIM has cited the Advisory Committee of the Council of Europe on the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities 25 notes allegations of discrimination against Roma in terms of access to social assistance and health care. The law on social assistance of 2003, as interpreted in practice by the social service authorities, demands from persons applying for social assistance to, e.g., present evidence of an electricity supply contract, which is also questionable. Because of the housing situation, many Roma are unable to present an electricity bill in order to receive social assistance. Likewise, the conditions imposed in practice in order to qualify for medical insurance produce great obstacles for the Roma population. (Hurist 2004:41) In the following section, it is tried to correlate the data with other cross-cutting issues like ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender, age and size of settlement. The rational behind these data cross-checking is, to find out if there exists a pattern of discrimination and urban-rural discrepancies. One question also was if forms of aid other than official state benefits have been received. 24 Barbara Kühhas and Karin Lukas: Applying the Human Rights Based Approach to Poverty Reduction by supporting the elaboration of an MDG-based National Development Programme for Macedonia, Wien September cited from: Draft Report of Hurist Mission Team Report to UNDP Macedonia:

25 Social security payments and cross-cutting issues: gender, age, ethnicity, duration of unemployment, size of settlement Social Security payments and gender: Table 35 Social security payments and gender Men get social security payments more often than women: 63.9% of the women do not get any social benefits, in contrast to 46.6% of the men. In Gostivar this relation is most striking with 75.4% of women versus 36.8% of men not receiving social benefits; whereas in Strumica the male-female data are rather gender-balanced with 66.9% of women versus 64.4% of men not receiving social benefits. Social security payments and Age: Table 36 Social security payments and Age The older a person is, the more often social security payments are received Social Security Payments and Ethnicity: It is interesting to observe that in Gostivar (with an Albanian majority), the Macedonians represent the highest number of persons not receiving social security payments with 67.7% in combination with 25

26 79.9% of unemployment. They are followed by Roma with 64.4% (96.1% unemployed) and Turks with 50% (50% unemployed) not receiving social security payments. In Negotino, Turks (57.7%) and Albanians (50%) represent the highest number of persons not receiving social security payments; Turks with 97.3% unemployment, which leads to the assumption that they are severely vulnerable. Unfortunately, there is no comparable dataset from Strumica, as no Roma have been surveyed. Macedonians receive pension payments more often than the others but rarely unemployment pay. Table 37 Social Security payments and ethnicity Table 38 Social security payment and size of settlement 26

27 Social Security Payment and duration of unemployment: The longer a person is unemployed, the more likely s/he is to get unemployment payments or social benefits. Table 39 Social security payment and unemployment Other forms of aid received As not all poor people are covered by state welfare schemes, it was also asked if the vulnerable people received some other form of aid from NGOs or organisations working in the region. The results show that other forms of aid or are not very common. Only 2.8% of the households in Gostivar, 4.1% in Negotino and 6% in Strumica received some other form of aid. The percentage of interview partner that are aware of any activity to help and protect the poor within the municipality varies between 16,9% in Gostivar, 11,5% in Strumica and is with 6% lowest in Negotino. The knowledge of NGO s working to protect the poor is with 5,9% in Gostivar lower than the knowledge of activities, whereas it is with 20% higher than the knowledge of activities in Strumica. Generally the percentage of people that received help or know someone who received help is low. In Negotino only 2% of the interview partners say they received help whereas in the other municipalities this percentage slightly higher (8,2% Gostivar, 8% Strumica). Only a very small amount of the population has been engaged in formal activities to protect the poor (7,3% Strumica, 2 % Negotino, 1,8% Gostivar). Table 40 Aid received beside social security payments The kind of aid received was mainly food and in Strumica also clothing. 27

28 Table 41 Absolute number of households within the sample that received aid within the last three years Gostivar Negotino Strumica Total Food Fuel Clothing Basic medicine other Interviewed Households The right to appear in public without shame 26 The Draft Guidelines establish the ability of poor people to appear in public without shame as a central target under the right to appear in public without shame. As possible indicators it is suggested to measure the proportion of people who lack adequate clothing, the proportion of people who are socially excluded and the proportion of poor people who fear to be discriminated against or dishonoured when taking part in cultural life. The further consequence of not being able to appear in public without being ashamed means of course that participation in public life as well as in decisionmaking processes is not possible. Therefore, it can be deducted that in order to be able to actively participate in local development planning activities, this right needs to be taken into account under MDG 1 as a precondition for overcoming poverty, as well as the principles of non-discrimination and participation. Therefore, the authors of this report have tried to adapt these suggestions to the Macedonian reality and to gather data by mainly asking for the self-evaluation of the interviewed persons: Do you feel that you can participate freely and without experiencing shame in community activities? Table 42: Do you feel that you can participate freely and without experiencing shame in community activities? A relatively high number of the interviewed stated, that they are not feeling themselves capable to participate freely and without shame in community activities: it is 4.7% in Strumica; 17% in Gostivar and 30.6% in Negotino. No significant correlations could be found with regard to gender or religious affiliation, which suggests that the main reasons for feeling ashamed in public are not due to discrimination on these grounds. Age: older persons stated significantly more often, that they do not feel free to participate without shame 26 Draft Guidelines, guideline 12 28

29 Ethnicity: 50% of the interviewed Serbs; 42.3% of the Roma; 14.7% of the Macedonians, 11.1% of the Albanians and 8.2% of the Turkish persons interviewed do not feel that they can participate in community activities without feeling ashamed. Household income: there is a strong correlation between the money available and the free participation; households under 25 per months state with 20.4% that they do not participate without shame; whereas only 2.4% of the households with more than 100 per month state to feel ashamed when participating Participation in community activities and self-evaluation of integration in the community Generally, the surveyed persons do not participate very actively in community activities and in Gostivar the rate of non-participation is the highest with 93.3%. No significant correlations between size of settlement, age or gender could be found with regard to participation or non-participation. Table 43: Do you regularly participate in community activities? Ethnicity: it can be stated that Macedonians, ethnically mixed households and Serbs are the most active groups of the population; participation of Roma and Turks is the lowest. 33.3% of the Serbs; 16.1% of the Macedonians; 8% of the Albanians and 4.3% of the Roma participate regularly in community activities. Unemployment: the more unemployed persons are living in a household, the smaller is the participation in community activities. 18.4% of the households without unemployed members participate regularly; 13.3% of the households with one up to 50% unemployed persons; 4.4% of households with more than 50% unemployed members are engaged in regular communal activities. Household income: The more money per capita is available in a household, the more regularly people do participate in communal activities; the less money available the less participation is reported. Size of the settlement: the bigger the community is, the easier it is to participate. This might be due to the more anonymous setting, or simply because of better transport facilities. 61.1% of settlements in the range from persons do not feel able to participate freely and without shame, in comparison to 41.2% of the persons living in hamlets from to persons; 6.7% of the persons living in settlements from to are not participating and 11.1% from settlements of to

30 Table 44 Self-evaluation of the integration in the community No direct correlations with age or gender could be found. Size of settlement: the bigger the settlement is, the better integrated the persons feel. This is astonishing, but maybe poor persons are being more actively excluded in small settlements than in the cities.(see cross-tabulating in the annex) Ethnicity: With regard to ethnicity, 92% of the Roma consider their integration between poor and insufficient - only 8% feel integrated in their municipalities. They are followed by the Turkish minority, where 73.4% feel that they are only poorly or insufficiently integrated 26.7% state that they feel averagely integrated. Table 45: Ethnic affiliation and integration in the communities Household income: The bigger a household income is, the more the people feel integrated. The smaller the income is, the more people feel poorly or insufficiently integrated (see crosstabulation in Annex 86) 48.7% of the people with a household income up to 25 per month feel insufficiently integrated in their communities, versus only 2.4% of the persons with more than 100 per month per person state the same. Unemployment: A significant correlation between a low number of unemployed persons over 15 years in a household and the feeling of integration into the community was found: the fewer people over 15 are unemployed, the less the people feel integrated into the community. This contrasts the correlation stating: the more money being available per person, the more integrated they feel. One assumption is, that unemployed have more time to integrate themselves; or it is more necessary for them to integrate and to support each other. Maybe having a job raises suspicions of those who don t work. 30

31 Table 46 Unemployment and integration 31

32 3.3. MDG 2. Attaining universal primary education for all Again, as above, the survey 27 tries to combine to a certain extent the national Macedonian MDG indicators with the ones derived from the suggestions presented in the Draft Guidelines, which are very similar, e.g.: to make free primary education available for all children, to ensure equal access for all to secondary education, to make free secondary education available for all children and to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, as well as to improve the quality of primary and secondary education (Guideline 8). Further, valuable data with regard to Macedonia can be found in the International and National Human Rights Framework The National Macedonian targets are: a) To ensure that, by 2015, all children will be able to complete a full course of primary and secondary schooling National indicators are: - Inclusion in primary education - Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5 - Literacy rate of 15+ year-olds - Inclusion in secondary education - Persons with low educational attainment (EU) National indicators+ are: - Primary education completion rate - Enrolment ratio in primary education - Secondary education completion rate - Proportion of ethnic groups in the completion of primary and secondary education - Portion of the budget allocated to education, as a share of the GPD b) To eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education, if possible by 2005, and in all levels of education by 2015 National indicators are: - Proportion of boys and girls in primary, secondary and higher education - Ratio between literate women and men at the age of 15+ by ethnicity National indicators + are: - Proportion of girls and boys completing primary/secondary/higher education/ by ethnic background School attendance, illiteracy, provision of educational services and their accessibility In this survey the school attendance rates were asked, with gender and ethnic disaggregated data. Then, these data were also related to household income and especially related to the problems that the poorer parents might face in order to provide their children with the necessary school items. Here, the questions are rather aimed at revealing the face of poverty School attendance of children Table 47 School attendance rate Does the child go to school? Gostivar Negotino Strumica No 13,3% 5,3% 27,7% Valid Cases In the questionnaire relevant questions are: 7, 8 (ethnic affiliation implications for non-discrimination), 15 (physical access), Ananiev, Jovan and Helmut Sax: The International and National Human Rights Legal Framework for Macedonia. A Human Rights Based Approach to MDG based Development Planning and Poverty Reduction. (Institute for Sociological, Political and juridical Research- Skopje and Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights-Vienna), Vienna-Skopje April 2006, p. 78 ff. 32

33 This means that in the surveyed households a relatively high number of children do not attend school. The numbers seem to be much higher than the ones reported for Macedonia on national level. In 2005, the Government of Macedonia reported that at national level 3.85% of the population older than 15 years do not have any education, 10.77% did not finish primary education and 34.77% did only finish primary education (GOM 2005:35) 29. According to the Human Development Report 2004, there are significant differences regarding the education index between urban municipalities (0.890) and rural municipalities (0.810).(UNDP 2004:13) Generally, the data of the survey show that there is a significant correlation between the average household income and the school attendance rate. All children who do not attend school are coming from households with an income lower than 50 Euro per month. Children who do not attend school also correlate significantly with the ethnic composition of Macedonia: in all three regions there was no Albanian child reported of not attending school. Also very few Macedonian children do not attend school, they figure with 1%. But it is 18.8% of the Roma children and 58.3% of the Turkish children in the survey, who do not attend school. It is especially interesting, that: In Gostivar all kids who do not attend school are girls. None of them is Albanian, it is mostly Roma and Turkish children who are not attending school. Kids from Muslim families are more likely not attending school (15.8%), compared to children from Christian families (9.1%). In Negotino there is no gender difference regarding non-attendance of primary school. With regard to ethnic criteria it affects Roma and Turkish children and all of them are Muslims. In Strumica as much as 33.3% of the boys and 21.7% of the girls do not attend school. All of these children are from Turkish-Muslim families School drop-out and education Table 48 School drop-out and educational level Highest educational level Gostivar Negotino Strumica Did not complete primary school 12,5 33,5 17,7 Complete primary school only 42,6 36,8 21,8 Complete primary & secondary 14,9 13,8 6,6 school Secondary school and vocational 25,3 9,5 40,6 occupation Higher education 4,7 4,1 13,2 Special school 2,2 Valid cases The surveyed persons in Negotino show the lowest educational level, the people in Strumica the highest (this might be due to the fact that in Strumica only persons from the urban centre have been surveyed). A significant correlation with regard to the ethnic origin can be stated: Table 49 Educational level and ethnic origin Highest educational level Macedonian Albanian Turk Roma Total Did not complete primary 10,6 7,8 69,0 46,5 20,2 education Did complete primary education 27,1 63,3 25,9 45,1 32,3 29 Government of the Republic of Macedonia: Report on the Republic of Macedonia on Millennium Development Goals, June

34 only Complete primary & secondary 11,8 20,0 3,4 2,1 10,4 school Secondary school and 39,5 3,3 1,7 2,8 28,9 vocational occupation Higher education 9,8 5,6 7,4 Special school 1,2 0.8 Ethnic Macedonians have the highest educational level, followed by Albanians. The situation is alarming with regard to the interviewed Turkish and Roma people: As much as 69% of the Turkish and 46.1% of the Roma did not even finish primary school; an additional 25.9% of the Turks and 45.1% of the Roma did only complete primary education. Clear educational differences taking into account the religious affiliation can be seen, too: Table 50 Religious affiliation and educational level Gostivar Negotino Strumica Highest Christian Muslim Christian Muslim Christian Muslim educational level Did not complete 3,2 18,6 19,9 60,6 8,6 85,1 primary education Did complete 16,8 60,7 39,4 35,5 22,9 14,9 primary education only Complete primary 12,4 12,4 18,1 3,9 7,4 --- & secondary school Secondary school 62,2 5,6 13, ,4 --- and vocational occupation Higher education 5,4 2,8 5, ,5 --- Special school , It is rather astonishing that the analysis of all available data did not show a significant difference regarding gender in the school attendance rate, also on the level of single municipalities a correlation cannot be stated. Nevertheless, there is a tendency that women do have a lower educational status than men. A correlation could be found between educational level and size of settlement: In Negotino, the smaller the hamlet is, the lower the educational status of the people is; and in Gostivar the persons with the lowest educational level live in settlements from to residents. A significant correlation is given between the educational level and unemployment: the higher the educational level, the lesser is the level of unemployment Illiteracy and cross-cutting issues Table 51 Illiteracy Is there someone Gostivar Negotino Strumica Total in the family who can not read or write? Yes 18,7 24,8 25,9 23,3 A significant correlation exists between the age of the person and the ability to read or write: the older a person is, the more probable the person cannot read or write. 34

35 Table 52: Illiteracy and age This correlation does not exist in Strumica, which might be due to the fact that only persons in the city have been surveyed. Table 53: Illiteracy and Gender Women are generally more often illiterate than men Table 54: Illiteracy and ethnicity The illiteracy rate among Albanians is relatively high (especially in Negotino with 14.3%, which is worse than in Gostivar) and also the Roma in Negotino (17.3%) and the Turks in Strumica (27.2%) show high levels of illiteracy. Illiteracy is especially high in the rural regions of the municipalities Do you have problems to provide children with necessary items they need for school? As showed in the table below, a relatively high number of households do have problems to provide their children with the necessary school items. This varies from 17.3% in Gostivar to 43.5% in Negotino, who feel that they always struggle with this issue. Those who never have problems are only 13.7% in Gostivar and 38.2% of the interviewed in Strumica. 35

36 Table 55 Problems to provide kids with schooling items Do you have problems to provide children with the necessary items they need for school? Name of Municipality Gostivar Negotino Strumica Total never 13,7% 16,1% 38,2% 23,8% sometimes 43,1% 24,2% 25,0% 29,8% often 25,5% 16,1% 2,9% 13,8% always 17,6% 43,5% 33,8% 32,6% Total 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% Ethnicity: Significant correlations can be found: The cross-calculation of the data show that 71.4% of the Roma; 35.9% of the Turks 30 ; 27.2% of the Macedonians and 9.5% of the Albanians have problems to provide their children with the necessary school items. Table 56 Schooling items and ethnicity Another significant correlation exists obviously between the household income and problems to provide school items. The higher the income is, the fewer problems are reported. Table 57 Schooling items and household income 30 It is also interesting that 48.7% of the Turkish interviewed state that they never have problems in this regard, which might hint at the fact that they are not sending their children to school anyway. 36

37 Self-evaluation of the own educational status Table 58 Self-evaluation of the educational status Generally, no significant difference with regard to gender can be deducted from the survey; only in Gostivar women do self-evaluate their education significantly worse than men. There are no significant differences regarding age (although, in reality old people are more often illiterate) Ethnicity: Albanians do have the best auto-image with regard to education (in contrast to the actually finished educational level, where the Macedonians do better); The Turkish and Roma population shows the lowest self-evaluation. 37

38 3.4. MDG 3 Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women In the questionnaire, gender questions have been mainstreamed throughout the tool. This means that gender disaggregated data are available for almost the whole set of questions. Nevertheless, some data - like the number of women in local government - have already been gathered by the first municipal screening. Furthermore, some sensitive data like on violence against women have not been gathered, as data gathering was done by a simple household survey, which does not provide the conditions for such intimate questions. Under MDG 3 the following rights with targets are suggested by the Draft Guidelines as relevant 31 : the Right to adequate food in order to eliminate gender inequality in access to food; the Right to health thus eliminating gender inequality in access to health care; the Right to education in order to ensure universal primary education for girls and boys; equal access for all to secondary education; and the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education; the Right to decent work to eliminate gender inequality in access to work, and to ensure equal remuneration for work; the Right to eliminate violence against the poor by state and non-state actors; and the Right to equal access to civil justice for all The Macedonian national MDG 3 targets are: Halving, by 2015, the proportion of women as unpaid family workers and reducing their inactivity rate by one third Indicators: Disparity in income Increased rate of inactivity Activity rate Unemployment rate Employment rate Comparison of non-commercial activities sectors employing women and men Doubling the proportion of women in Governance: Indicators: Proportion of women in Parliament Proportion of women in Government Proportion of women in Government at local level Field data: women in local government, employment, security payment and gender, primary education and availability of health services for women Gender questions have been mainstreamed throughout the questionnaire for the collection of field data. When considering the draft Guidelines, especially the following human rights concerns have to be taken into account: to eliminate gender inequality in access to food, to health care, to ensure gender equality in primary and secondary education; in access to work, gender inequality in remuneration for work; as well as the elimination of violence against the poor by State and non-state actors and equal access to justice for poor victims. With regard to women s participation in local government, data were collected in the first round of semi-structured interviews. In Negotino, out of 15 Municipal Council members, 13 are male and 2 are female. Ethnically, there are 13 Macedonians and 2 Serbs. In Gostivar, the Municipal Council is composed of 31 members with 24 male and 7 female 6 of them Albanian and 1 Macedonian. In Strumica, 23 Municipal Council members are working, with 16 being male and 7 female. Ethnically, there are 22 Macedonians and 1 Turk. 31 see also: Ananiev and Sax 2006: 96 ff 38

39 Access to decent work: Women are more often without employment and more seldom in official open-ended employment than men Only 6.5% of women in Gostivar are in official open-ended jobs versus 85.5% of women are without employment; 3.4% of employed women in Negotino are contrasting 91.8% of women without employment; and 17.5% of women in Strumica have an official open-ended employment versus 72.5% who do not. An especially difficult situation can be expected for those women who are without employment but not officially unemployed: 8.3% in Gostivar (and 80.7% of them longer than 24 months); in Negotino 52.3% of the women are not officially unemployed and in Strumica it is 43.2%. Table 59 Employment rate of household members Social security payment and gender: Men do receive social security payments more likely than women: A high correlation between social security payment and gender can be observed in Gostivar: 36.8% of the men versus 75.4% of the women do not receive any social security payments. In Negotino, gender makes a difference of 9% (41.6% of the men versus 50% of the women do not receive social security payments); and in Strumica gender data seem rather balanced with 64.4% of men versus 66.9% of women). Table 60 Who receives social security payments? 39

40 Table 61 Access to health services for women In Gostivar all kids who do not attend school are girls, most often it is the Roma and Turkish children who are not attending. In Negotino there is no gender difference regarding non-attendance of primary school. In Strumica as much as 33.3% of the boys and 21.7% of the girls do not go to school. All of these children are from Turkish-Muslim families. Gender and health: Evaluation of the accessibility of health services for women: many interviewed persons answer that they are not aware of possibilities especially in Strumica and Negotino Table 62 Availability of the health service for women in the region The persons who gave a self- evaluation have classified the availability of health services for women mostly as insufficient. Gostivar Negotino Strumica Very good 0,9 1,5 3,4 good 34,9 23,1 14,7 average 34,9 37,7 45,7 poor 25,5 21,5 29,3 insufficient 3,8 16,2 6, The bigger the settlement is, the better is also the classification of the availability of health services for women: settlements up to 500 persons do evaluate it up to 67.6% as poor or insufficient; whereas in settlements with more than persons it is 33.6% giving the same evaluation (see table in Annex 91) Turks and Roma do evaluate the availability of health services for women significantly worse than the Macedonians and Albanians, who do evaluate them best. 40

41 Household income: The assessment of the availability of health services for women is the better, the more money available the household has. Table 63: Perception of availability of Health services for women correlated with household income Households with a household income up to 25 per person per month do evaluate the health services to a great extend (21.7%) as insufficient or with (22.5%) as poor. If there are more than 100 per person per household available, this data change significantly: only 2.6% do see the health services for women as insufficient tan 13.2% evaluate them as poor. This shows that poor households do have problems in the access to quality women s health facilities. 41

42 3.5 MDG 4 - Child Mortality Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women a) Reduce further the infant and under age five mortality rate Indicators: - Under-five mortality rate - Infant mortality rate b) Eradicate measles by the year Proportion of one-year-old children immunized against measles - Reported cases with measles The questionnaire 32 has taken into account the Guideline 7 (Right to Health), indicators target 1 (all people to have access to adequate and primary health care: proportion of poor population not covered by any kind of prepayment mechanisms in relation to health user fees) and target 2: eliminate avoidable child mortality; target 6 (eliminate incidence of other communicable diseases) Field data: child mortality under five, postnatal medical consultation, vaccinations: Child mortality In Macedonia, the infant mortality rates (IMR) and the under five mortality rate (U5MR) have dropped from 31.6 in 1990 to 12.6 in 2003 and from 33.3 to 11.3 per 1,000 life births (the EU average was 4.66 per 1,000 life births in 2001). Infant mortality among Roma was higher than the national average with 16.8 in 2000 and 13.9 in It is worth to note that in 50% the cause of infant death is related to complications in the peri-natal period, and that 50% of mothers whose children die before the age of one year have only primary or less than primary education. In Strumica 33 in 6.2% of the surveyed households at least one child has died upon birth, whereas in Gostivar and Negotino this was the case only in 2 to 2.2%. The U5MR in Strumica is in 4.6% for the interviewed households, in Gostivar in 4% of the households a child died before the age of 4 and no case was reported from Negotino. Table 64 Births occurred during the last 10 years Gostivar Negotino Strumica Total births occurred in your household during the last 10 years dead upon birth Child mortality rate 0,08 0,08 0,07 0,08 in % 7,8 8,3 7,4 7,9 Postnatal medical consultations As the sample being relatively small, data only give a general picture. Seen in total, in Negotino and Strumica there are more children who did not go to the doctor, than in Gostivar. 32 Relevant questions in the questionnaire are: 2,3,5,6 (household composition) 23,45-46, 50, 55 (vaccinations), (availability of drugs), 65 (health status), generally (cross-check, drug availability) 33 42

43 The answers vary strongly with regard to gender: when men were the interview partners, they state significantly less medical consultations than women. Most probably this is true due to the fact that they are not that well informed about health issues in general and particularly about women s health. Table 65 How many post-natal medical consultations did the child have during their first year of life? With regard to ethnicity, the data samples are too small to receive reliable data. There were no data at all available e.g. from the Albanian families in Gostivar. Table 66 What is the ethnic affiliation of the household surveyed? Table 67 Religious affiliation of the household 43

44 Vaccinations As the sample is small, only tendencies can be showed: it seems that children in Negotino and Strumica received much less vaccines than the children in Gostivar. No vaccinations campaigns in schools have been reported. People in Gostivar are definitely better informed than in Negotino and Strumica, where sensitisation campaigns might help to inform the public. Table 68 Vaccinations received by children Name of Municipality Total What kind of vaccinations did the children receive? - Yes Gostivar Negotino Strumica Polio Number % of Name of Municipality 80,0% 48,8% 31,7% 49,5% Hepatitis B Haemophilus measles-mumps-rubella TBC do not know vaccinations provided in school Number % of Name of Municipality 28,0% 31,7% 26,8% 29,0% Number % of Name of Municipality 24,0% 19,5% 22,0% 21,5% Number % of Name of Municipality 72,0% 43,9% 39,0% 48,6% Number % of Name of Municipality 84,0% 48,8% 34,1% 51,4% Number % of Name of Municipality 16,0% 48,8% 53,7% 43,0% Number % of Name of Municipality 8,0% 2,4% 2,4% 3,7% Total Number % of Name of Municipality 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% In Gostivar the Muslim Roma received less vaccinations than the Macedonian. In Gostivar and Negotino women do report higher vaccination rates than men, as they are much closer to the real data in Strumica it is the other way round MDG 5 - Improving maternal health care 34 The survey has also taken into account the Guideline 7 (Right to health), target 3 (eliminate avoidable maternal mortality). General Data for Macedonia suggest that in 2002, the maternal mortality ratio was 11 per 100,000 live births (UNDP 2004:145), a number which has constantly improved throughout the last years. BIM in its MDG assessment report of September 2005 stated, that eventually data inaccuracies might occur due to underreporting, especially as there are women: - without health insurance who cannot use health facilities for delivery - who do not use them - and possible underreporting of deaths occurring 7-42 days after delivery 34 Relevant questions in the questionnaire are:1,2,6, (household), 8 (ethnic), (reproductive health), in combination with 15 (accessibility of the home during the year), and also (household income), combination with generally (cross-check, drug availability) 44

45 According to the information gathered during interviews in September 2005, the following risk groups might exist in the countryside: - Women living in isolated villages might have no access, especially during wintertime (local level programming needed). - Roma women who often do not have health insurance and cannot afford costs for antenatal visits, delivery and postnatal care. - Traditional Muslim women: difficult access to reproductive health services due to religious believes and ethical codes - Victims of domestic violence The Macedonian national target is: Reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015 Indicators: Maternal mortality ratio Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel (doctors, nurses or midwives) Maternal mortality, prenatal medical care, availability of skilled health personnel, abortions Table 69 Did any mother die upon birth? In the whole sample, only one maternal exodus was reported. On ground of this data no further conclusions can be made. Prenatal consultations Many of the interviewed persons state that they did regular medical checks during pregnancy which shows the existence of a primary health care system, which is used for regular visits. In Negotino the number of persons who had none or only 1-2 pre-natal medical checks is highest, versus Gostivar, where the number of women with many medical checks is highest (risk-pregnancies) 35 According to Nedget Dinka (League of Albanian Women in Struga), there are data published by ESE (Equality, Solidarity and Emancipation of Women) that two out of four women are victims of domestic violence in Macedonia 45

46 Table 70 How many pre natal medical consultations did the woman have? The number of pre-natal medical visits is higher, the bigger the settlement is. This means that accessibility and availability of medical health services for women is better in bigger settlements. Ethnicity: there is no direct correlation between ethnicity and prenatal care, which would allow to state discriminatorily practices Delivery with skilled health personnel: In Negotino there is the highest percentage of deliveries without skilled health personnel (5.4%), whereas in Strumica (city) it is the lowest with 0.8%. These data do not coincide with the report provided by Goran Janev, stating that in Negotino 100% of the births are attended by medical personnel (Janev: 9; cit.op SED 2, 2004:149). There is also a significant correlation regarding the size of the settlement the smaller the settlement is, the more often birth is given without skilled health staff. Table 71 Was delivery attended by a skilled health personnel? Macedonians, Roma, Serbs and ethnically mixed households do more often have delivery without skilled health personnel than the Albanian or Turkish population (see Annex 94) Abortions In the household survey, no data were gathered regarding abortion, as being a very sensitive topic. But in the first report, Janev gathered data which show numbers for the municipalities: In Strumica no contraceptives have been administered, and 848 abortions were registered (SED 2, 2004:157; Janev 2006:21); 46

47 In Gostivar it is 415 abortions (SED 2, 2004:157; Janev 2006:14) and no administered contraceptives In Negotino 101 abortions were reported (SED 2, 2004: 157; and Janev 2006:9) with 30 professionally administered contraceptives. 47

48 3.7. MDG 6: HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (TBC) Generally, the HIV rates reported in Macedonia are very low and with 0.2 reported cases per persons, below EU rates 36 (average 4.31 per in 2001), but there is no surveillance system for high-risk groups. There are indicators of high-risk behaviour, mainly among young people (drug users, commercial sex-workers, etc.), but also among prisoners, victims of trafficking, refugees and displaced people. Regarding HIV/AIDS, Macedonia has developed a National AIDS Strategy , which works in 6 priority areas. Further work in this field will have to be done. Tuberculosis rates 37 are lower than in other countries in that region, higher than in the EU, but the prevalence patterns show regional, gender and age differences. In the western part (Gostivar, Tetovo, Ohrid and Skopje) prevalence is higher. The survey 38 has also taken into account the guideline 7 (right to health), target 5 an Macedonian National MDG targets: a) Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS Indicators: HIV/AIDS incidence rate Number of voluntary tests and consulting for HIV/AIDS b) Have halved by 2015, and begun reverse the incidence of tuberculosis and other major diseases National indicators: Prevalence and death rates associated with tuberculosis Proportion of TBC cases detected and cured under DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short Course) Number of cases with multi-resistant forms of TBC Field data: This pilot tool did not take into account HIV/AIDS very detailed, as it is difficult to ask people regarding their sexual behaviour in a household survey. Therefore, no regarding field data has been gathered. This challenge will be discussed with the pilot project team and redirected within the next surveys, if possible. Regarding Tuberculosis, in the first report, Janev assessed the following data 39 : In Negotino the incidence of TBC has reduced from 11 sick persons in 1998 to 6 in 2002; in Gostivar there were 176 sick persons in 1998 and 118 in 2002, which puts it on third place behind Tetovo and Skopje. The incidence of TBC is stagnant in Strumica in the period from 1998 to 2002 with 32 to 29 cases, respectively. The data of this survey show, that there are some cases reported. The authors tried to focus on the pro-active side by asking for information on these issues which are publicly available and accessible. 36 0,2 reported cases per 100,000 compared with 4,31 EU average in 2001 (GOM:61) per Relevant questions in the questionnaire are: 3 (older persons more often TBC), 6, 54-58, as well as the general health related issues (accessibility of drugs,,) 39 Janev

49 Table 72 Have you ever been informed about TBC and TBC prevention? Comparing these data with the ones regarding the TBC vaccinations, it can be showed that much more children in Gostivar are immunized against TBC, than in Negotino or in Strumica. This might be due to the fact that people are more sensitised, as the prevalence of TBC is relatively high in Gostivar MDG 7 Environmental sustainability Key human rights in this field are the Right to a healthy environment; child rights protection as a primary consideration and the non-discrimination of women and minorities and respective affirmative action 40. With regard to the Macedonian MDG targets, the data regarding a) could not be gathered by a simple household survey. Nevertheless, questions regarding water supply, sewage and the safety of dwellings have been taken into account. They are again related to the Right to health and to adequate housing Macedonian national targets are: a) To integrate the principles of sustainable development into national policies and programmes and reverse the losses of environmental resources Macedonian indicators are: Percentage of territory covered by forests Percentage of protected territory to maintaining biodiversity Energy consumption (expressed in kg of oil equ.) per US1GDP Percentage of population using solid fuels b) Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation Macedonian Indicator: Percentage of population (urban and rural) with sustainable access to (sanitary) improved water sources 40 See: Ananiev and Sax, 2006:160 f 49

50 c) Have achieved by 2020 significant improvements in the lives of people in terms of safety of their dwellings Macedonian Indicator Percentage of population with access to secure tenure The survey questions have also taken into account Field data The survey tool focused on indicators for b 41 ) access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, as well as the security of tenure thus taking into account Guideline 7 (health, target 6 access to clean drinking water, adequate sanitation; Guideline 10 (rights to adequate housing)-target 2 from the Draft Guidelines. In the first report based on semi-structured interviews, Janev gathered the following data: In Negotino, in 2002, 99% of the population had access to clean drinking water (Janev, 2006:9). Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to renew the water supply system 96.9% of the households have access to water supply 80.2% is connected to the sewage system and 71.7% have indoor toilet facilities (Janev:10). For Gostivar he had reported a rise in access to clean drinking water from 83% in 1998 to 85% in 2002, which is behind the national average of 93%. In Strumica it was only 73% in 2002, which has risen from 70% in (Janev, 2006:21) Table 73: Where does the household receive its water from? Table 74: Environmental hazards: As displayed in the tables below, no relevant environmental hazards were reported or detected with the survey the only problem which was reported, was exposure to noise with a range form 6.8 % to 16.1% in Negotino. 41 Relevant questions are: household composition and income; versus 14-17, (related with water) 50

51 51

52 Bibliography: Barbara Kühhas and Karin Lukas: Applying the Human Rights Based Approach to Poverty Reduction by supporting the elaboration of an MDG-based National Development Programme for Macedonia, Vienna September HURIST: Draft Report of Hurist Mission Team Report to UNDP Macedonia:, Geneva RMAP - Rights-Based Municipal Assessment and Planning Project. Consolidated Report of the Municipality Assessments in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajewo 2005 Janev, Goran: UNDP - Supporting the elaboration of an MDG-based National Development Programme for Macedonia. Base line study on human rights and poverty (Report by the local consultant for human rights assessment and analysis in three pilot municipalities Negotino, Gostivar, and Strumica; Skopje Kostadinova-Daskalovska, K. (Ed): Socioekonomski Dispariteti megu opstinite vo Makedonija (SED 1), UNDP and Ministry for Local Self-Government, Skopje Kostadinova-Daskalovska, K. (Ed): Podatoci I indikatori za opstinite vo Makedonija (SED 2), UNDP and Ministry for Local Self-Government, Skopje Law on Local Self-Government of the Republic of Macedonia (Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia no.52/95) Sax, Helmut/Ananiev, Jovan, Human Rights Based Approach to MDG Development Planning: The International and National Legal Framework for Macedonia, Skopje/Vienna, April 2006 UNDP: National Human Development Report 2004 Macedonia, Decentralization for Human Development, Skopje UNDP: Mapping of socio-economic disparities between Macedonian municipalities, study conducted in the framework of the UNDP supported project. UNDP: A Comprehensive Outline and Scheme of the Optimal Model of Organization, functioning and Management for the 6 Pilot Municipalities, Skopje April UNDP: Training Needs Assessment Capacity Building of Local Governments, Development of Model Macedonian Municipality, UNDP, 2005, Gender Mainstreaming in Practice: A Handbook. Bratislava: UNDP Regional Center for Europe and the CIS. United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Indicators for Human Rights Based Approaches to Development in UNDP Programming, March

53 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6 Table 7 Table 8 Table 9 Table 10 Table 11 Table 12 Table 13 Table 14 Table 15 Table 16 Table 17 Table 18 Table 19 Table 20 Table 21 Table 22 Table 23 Table 24 Tables 25 Tables Table 31 Table 32 Table 33 Table 34 Table 35 Table 36 Table 37 Table38 Table 39 Table 40 Table 41 Table 42 Table 43 Table 44 Table 45 Table 46 Table 47 Table 48 Table 49 Table 50 Table 51 Table 52 Table 53 Table 54 Table 55 Table 56 Table 57 Table 58 Table 59 Table 60 Table 61 Table 62 :Number of interviewed households and number of individual data Sex and Age of interview partners Size of Settlement of interview partners Ethnic Affiliation of interview partners Average amount of money available for the household per month (self reported) Average household income per month/municipality and ethnic affiliation Household income and religious affiliation Household income and size of settlement Percent of household income spent on food Hunger and nutritional status Parents skip meals to feed children Availability of quality food Self-evaluation of nutritional status Use of popular kitchens Which services the households have to pay for? Are the households really paying for these services? Self-evaluations of financial capabilities of the households What kind of income does the household live from? Additional subsistence activities Gender disaggregated employment data Share of unemployed persons over 15 per household Unemployment and ethnic affiliation Duration of unemployment and average household income per person Share of unemployed persons over 15 in a household Long-term unemployment Self evaluation of the working conditions (exposure to noise, toxic pollution, fair pay) Housing security Overview of housing conditions Auto-evaluation of housing conditions Living space per household Social security payments and gender Social security payments and Age Social Security payments and ethnicity Social security payment and size of settlement Social security payment and unemployment Aid received beside social security payments Absolute number of households within the sample that received within the last three years Do you feel that you can participate freely and without experiencing shame in community activities? Do you regularly participate in community activities? Self-evaluation of the integration into the community Ethnic affiliation and integration into the communities Unemployment and integration School attendance rate School drop-out rate and educational level Educational level and ethnic origin Religious affiliation and educational level Illiteracy Illiteracy and age Illiteracy and Gender Illiteracy and ethnicity Problems to provide children with schooling items Schooling items and ethnicity Schooling items and household income Educational status self-evaluation Employment rate of household members Who does receive the social security payments? Access to health services for women Availability of the health service for women in the region 53

54 Table 63 Table 64 Table 65 Table 66 Table 67 Table 68 Table 69 Table 70 Table 71 Table 72 Table 73 Table 74 Table 75 Table 76 Table 77 Table 78 Table 79 Table 80 Table 81 Table 82 Table 83 Table: 84 Table 85 Table 86 Table 87 Table 88 Table 89 Table 90 Table 91 Table 92 Table 93 Table 94 Table 95 Births occurred during the last 10 years How many post-natal medical consultations did the child have during their first year of life? What is the ethnic affiliation of the household surveyed? Religious affiliation of the household Vaccinations children received Did any mother die upon birth? How many pre natal medical consultations did the woman have? Was delivery attended by a skilled health personnel? Have you ever been informed about TBC and TBC prevention? From where does the household receive its water? Environmental hazards Average household income per person Hunger and nutritional status How many percent of your household income do you spend on food? Hunger and size of Settlement Participation without shame in community activities Unemployment and community participation: How much rent do you have to pay? Electricity Running water Heating Correlation educational status and unemployment Integration in the community cross check Household income Do you have problems to provide the children with all the items necessary for school? Medical consultations Vaccinations for Children Women s health facilities Medical Care for women Pre-Natal Medical Care Ethnic affiliation of the household Size of Settlement 54

55 Annex of Tables Table 75: Average household income per person Table 76: Hunger and nutritional status How many percent of your household income do you spend on food? 55

56 Table 77: Hunger and size of Settlement Table 78: Participation without shame in community activities 56

57 Table 79: Unemployment and community participation: Household costs Table 80 How much rent do you have to pay? 57

58 Table 81 Electricity Table 82 Running water 58

59 Table 83 Heating Table: 84 Correlation educational status and unemployment 59

60 Table 85 Integration in the community cross check Table 86 Household income 60

61 Individual poverty data MDG 2 Table 87 Do you have problems to provide the children with all the items necessary for school? 61

62 Table 88 Medical consultations Table 89 Vaccinations for Children 62

63 Table 89: Vaccinations for Children 63

64 Table 90 Women s health facilities 64

65 Table 90 ff Women s health facilities 65