Bélarus

The Smart Sustainable Cities Profile for Grodno Belarus presents the outcomes of the city evaluation against the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) and proposes actions for the city to make progress towards achieving the SDGs. It provides guidance for Grodno city and regional governments for the development review and implementation of urban policies programmes and projects and for building partnerships with a view to reinforcing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG11 at city level.

This publication presents a general review of the Belarusian national legal and institutional framework for innovation. It also highlights the status and progress of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the country including an assessment of national development strategies within the context of ongoing international initiatives and a review of recent eco-innovation projects in such development strategies and government programmes.

The Constitution of the Republic of Belarus and the Education Code establish the right of every citizen to education. By law there is no age restriction to access any level of education. This applies also to qualification upgrade staff training and retraining. At the same time as of today older persons both of pre-retirement and retirement age do not participate actively in the system of formal education.

Key actors in providing care to those who are in need of it are the State family and the community. While the State normally ensures social security health and social services (formal care) the family and community take on themselves the provision of informal care. The importance of informal care is growing with the demographic change. According to estimates in European countries 80 per cent of the long-term care is provided by informal carers and informal caregivers constitute from 10 to 25 per cent of the total population in Europe.

About 71 per cent of the total 15-74 years old population in Belarus are counted as economically active. According to the official statistics based on Household Employment Survey (HES) some 4.8 per cent of them were unemployed in 2018. The employment rate fluctuated between 67.2-67.5 per cent in 2017-2018. About 40 per cent of employed persons were engaged in state-owned sector. Only 4 per cent of population are working on their own account.

At the core of this Road Map report is understanding that population ageing affects virtually all domains of society and brings challenges and opportunities which require evidence-based policy responses. The need for relevant statistics is therefore equally wide-ranging. The UNECE Recommendations on ageing-related statistics point out that such statistics are cross-cutting and concern all areas of social and demographic statistics as well as government finance and public sector statistics. Statistics in various other domains that do not focus on the process of ageing as such do provide information about the situation of people at different ages the timing of important transitions in people’s lives and about services and expenditures that target different age groups. Hence the statistics needed to inform policymaking go far beyond demographic measures in order to fully understand and plan for the consequences of ageing.

The Road Map for Mainstreaming Ageing in Belarus was prepared by the Population Unit of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in partnership with the Government of Belarus represented by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection and with assistance from the UNFPA Country Office. The financial support received from the UNFPA Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia is gratefully acknowledged.

The national strategy on ageing to be developed by the Government of Belarus is expected to be a comprehensive policy framework on ageing that provides the opportunity for mainstreaming ageing.

The main responsibility for ageing-related policies in Belarus lies with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Republic of Belarus. Other Ministries responsible for implementing aspects of state policies on ageing include the Ministries of Health Education Culture Information Economy Finance and their sub-ordinate structures and the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus. In addition there are the National Committee on Population and the National Council on Gender Policy at the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus.

There is currently no integrated comprehensive government policy on ageing in the Republic of Belarus and until recently the wide-ranging socio-economic impact of population ageing does not seem to have been fully addressed in the State programmes and strategic documents. Nevertheless there is a number of key legislative acts in addition to the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus that form the current policy framework regulating social protection and various entitlements and provisions for older persons. These include the Law on Veterans on Public Service on Employment of the Population on Pensions on Social Services on State Benefits Rights and Guarantees for Certain Categories of Citizens on Social Protection of Persons with Disabilities the Presidential Decree on State Targeted Social Assistance and the Labour Family Education Tax and Criminal Codes of the Republic of Belarus. Certain relevant aspects are also outlined in the General agreement between the Government of the Republic of Belarus the republican associations of employers and trade unions (the latest is for 2019 – 2021).