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Allow Migrants to Work, UN Says
Russia and its Central Asian neighbors could benefit equally
from legalizing migrant labor flows into Russia and removing other
barriers to economic cooperation, the United Nations Development
Program said in its first comprehensive study on the five Central
Asian countries.
The UNDP report, to be published Wednesday, also calls on Russia
to use its political influence next year as chair of the Group
of Eight to put the global spotlight on Central Asia, where 44
percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Setting legal quotas for migrant workers would help
Russia to combat its demographic crisis while regulating a notoriously
nontransparent migrant labor market, Jacek Cukrowski, a co-author
of the 300-page report, said Tuesday. Central Asia has great economic
potential despite its current poverty and has gained in geopolitical
importance since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States,
Cukrowski said.
The report, compiled over the course of 18 months
from interviews, surveys and contributions by 70 economists and
academics, says Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan could double their gross domestic product by 2015
-- but only if they work together to establish effective cross-border
cooperation. Russia's role as an economic pacesetter for Central
Asia will be vital to the future prosperity of the five countries,
although the report slams Russia's apparent lack of concern about
encouraging democratic progress there.
"Russia has a very particular relationship with Central
Asian countries in almost all respects," Martha Ruedas, deputy director
of the UNDP regional office for Eastern Europe and the CIS, said
Tuesday. Russia could use its influence as head of the G8 next year
to put the world's focus on Central Asia in much the same way that
Britain has this year to secure a debt reduction deal for Africa,
Ruedas said.
Russia's most recent interventions in Central Asia,
however, have focused on gaining political leverage with authoritarian
leaders there by discouraging Ukrainian-style revolutions, and on
increasing its military presence at the expense of the U.S. military,
which last month pulled out of its base in Uzbekistan over a dispute
about human rights in the country. Ruedas said the report's main
conclusions and recommendations were presented at a meeting in Bishkek
last month of UNDP's Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation
program, which includes four of the five countries but not Turkmenistan.
One major issue Russia has yet to address sufficiently
is how to regulate labor migration from Central Asia, Cukrowski
said. Since Russia signed an agreement with Tajikistan in October
2005 to allow several thousand Tajiks legal employment, there has
been little further progress, he said.
Source:
The Moscow Times
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