Gyumri, Aparan, Vardenis Become Members of World Alliance of the Cities Against Poverty

National Assembly of RA, Armenia
March 31 2006

On March 29, in the City of Valencia of Spain the Fifth Forum of
World Alliance of the Cities Fighting Against Poverty started its
works. Member cities of the alliance, partner cities and associations
of the alliance, members of parliaments and governments, businessmen,
other officials attended the forum. Vardan Barseghyan, Mayor of
Vardenis and Georgy Yeremyan, Deputy Mayor of Aparan are in the
Armenian delegation.

The goal of the forum is to elaborate a municipal action strategy
directed to fighting poverty, based on the experience of the
municipalities during the 1997-2007 World Decade of Poverty
Eradication.

At the plenary session the guarantees of 2005 World Summit of
Millennium Development Goals and the local investments directed
to its implementation were presented. Then the representatives of
municipalities gave speeches telling about the local results of
international decade of poverty eradication and about their experience.

The forum was announced open with participation of representatives
of Spanish Royal House, Municipality of Valencia and Valencia region,
Spanish Government, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United
Nations Development Program.

At the opening of the forum Artur Baghdasaryan, RA NA President,
delivered a speech:

“We live in an era of intense globalization with different causes
but similar consequences of poverty in different parts of the world.

Globalization is increasingly accompanied by a process of
decentralization and interdependence. It naturally makes us change
our approaches of fighting poverty. In this context local authorities
take on additional importance in combating poverty as the closest
institutions to citizens. At the same time local authorities have
little control over the causes of poverty and I would like to emphasize
the importance of collective action and responsibility in eradicating
poverty.

The Parliaments, national governments, civil society organizations
and international development partners have a clear role to play by
setting adequate legal and policy frameworks, providing guidance,
mobilizing resources, channeling these resources to the targeted
priorities and ensuring broad awareness of this disease. The major
challenge before us is not the lack of understanding of the problems
facing us. It is not definitely the lack of knowledge what needs to
be done in order to get out of poverty. But, rather, it is how to
build a conductive climate, in terms of policy, institutional and
behavioral environment, which will facilitate citizen participation,
investment, growth and development. The rest of the work remains the
domain of, and dependent on, efforts on local level. I am sure this
forum is an exceptional opportunity for the participating cities to
obtain direct information on successful experiments on how to respond
to poverty most efficiently.

This year marks the end of the International Decade of Eradication of
Poverty.Hence, the Valencia forum gives us an opportunity, not only
to remind ourselves of the task before us, but also to keep track of
struggle as we move ahead. This forum provides us with an opportunity
to assess the key outputs of our efforts, reflect on the findings
and exchange ideas and strategies on the way forward. I find it to be
an excellent opportunity for all the participating municipalities to
reflect on the achievements made and the challenges encountered as well
as to deliberate on the best ways of addressing these challenges. It
is an excellent opportunity to build international partnerships and
develop joint programs.

Combating poverty cannot be limited to material and financial
assistance. Human rights violations and bad governance provide
a fertile ground for poverty to grow. Without an avenue of local
participation disadvantaged population cannot affect change and may
find it impossible to improve their living conditions. I believe the
forum is a brilliant opportunity for sharing successful programs and
policies on how to increase citizen participation and transparency
on local level.

As a country in transition Armenia still suffers enormously from
poverty, perhaps, the most formidable enemy to its development.

Already four Armenian cities are members of the World Alliance of
Cities again Poverty. This is the first time Armenian cities are taking
part in such a representative forum of global contacts and it is good
opportunity to exchange information, develop city-to-city cooperation
and broaden their access to the skills, cooperation and support
available to them from different players in the development field.

As President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia,
President of the Parliament of the country having 1700 years of
Christian traditions, I would like to invite all of you to Armenia,
where in October of this year the National Assembly and the European
Union will jointly organize international conference with participation
of European different countries. The conference will be dedicated to
the development of direct cooperation of the cities and will be an
important investment in fighting poverty on local level for finding
solutions.”

Then the works of the forum continued in the working groups.

The most important event of the day for Armenia during the forum
was that among the cities of different countries, Gyumri, Aparan,
Vardenis became members of the World Alliance of Cities Against
Poverty, which will give opportunities for the implementation of
development programmes.