Assalomu alaykum hurmatli janob Khusanov, janob Khakimov va hurmatli tadbir ishtirokchilari!

Bugungi tadbirimizga khush kelibsiz!

(Dear Mr. Khusanov, Khakimov and dear participants! Welcome to today’s event!)

First, let me thank the President’s Administration, the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, the Center for Economic Research and Reforms, other national and development partners for the fruitful collaboration with UNDP.

Let me express my deep gratitude to all the partners who joined us today and also to those who contributed to the UNDP’s ongoing work on formulating its Future of Work portfolio by engaging in bilateral meetings and focus group discussions.

We are glad to see you all at today’s validation workshop event, where we plan to summarize our joint work and, hopefully, pave the ground for our new collaboration, which should be forward-looking, crisis-resistant and in line with regional and global trends.

UNDP in Uzbekistan has initiated review and revising of its employment work, aiming to design portfolio of programmes and projects by applying systems approach.

This is based on the assumption that if we want to tackle today’s development challenges, we need to make sense of the system and provide a deliberate set of connected and coherent interventions.

Employment is a complex agenda because unemployed people make up a diverse population that requires different kinds of support. Rural and urban residents, girls and boys, younger and older, secondary and university graduates have different profiles and face different opportunities and constraints. Single-point solutions cannot tackle the complexity of that kind.

Employment is not a one‐dimensional challenge. Addressing it depends on the quality of general education and vocational training and their ability to improve skills and productivity. Important is to create incentives to participate in the labor market and reduce discouragement. But also, to remove regulatory obstacles to labor market entry (licensing and certification requirements) and business climate obstacles that hinder the development of a competitive private sector, productive agriculture, and entrepreneurship. In sum, there are number of challenges of the labor supply and constraints in the labor demand.

But not only. Relevant are also the questions related to the Social Resilience against shocks and disruptions including but not only limited to social welfare, child and healthcare, infrastructure, supporting mechanisms (care economy). Or how much the labor market and its infrastructure is conducive to effectively utilizing the environmental resources in a sustainable manner, does it create green jobs and enable Green Transition? Or, does it prepare the labor force of Uzbekistan for the trends and jobs of the future?

With this understanding we started this exercise. Our main goal was to develop a forward-looking employment portfolio that triggers the key points that can accelerate change, integrates three dimensions (inclusive, green, fair development) and is well aligned with the Government priorities.

Of course, we don’t start from the scratch, UNDP already has a diversified set of interventions in employment promotion. But we aim to go beyond interventions/projects, look at challenges more strategically, and factor the future trends, with a 5-year horizon.

Through multiple phases, we did thorough analysis of the context, unpack the system structures, vision of the country, and identify the strategic areas if it is to be reached. And on which UNDP can more effectively engage to achieve common goals on enhancing the employment and job creation.

We looked it especially from the perspective of the youth, women, returning migrants, people living with disabilities (PwD) and other vulnerable groups.

A number of discussions and meetings with you, our national and development partners were held to get your perspectives.

Today, we will present the initial vision of UNDP on the new Future of Work portfolio. We hope that we will have active and lively discussion, and honest feedback on UNDP’s current thinking.

Only as such we would be able to design relevant portfolio, partner around it and collectively contribute to the Government’s goal of reaching the upper middle-income level by 2030, reduction of poverty by two times by 2026, and other important development priorities.