UNDP’s Bratislava Regional Centre is organizing a Regional Workshop on Programming in Support of Anti-corruption Agencies. The event will take place in Bratislava, Slovakia from 30 June to 2 July 2009. The event will bring together UNDP Country Office staff with partners, experts and practitioners from anti-corruption agencies and international organizations. Participants will discuss the role and features of anti-corruption institutions, with a focus on corruption prevention agencies, as called for in Article 6 of the UN Convention Against Corruption. Lessons learned from programmatic interventions in support of anti-corruption agencies will be discussed with the aid of case studies. The UNDP Bratislava Regional Centre will introduce a toolkit designed to provide practical guidance for country offices on developing programming. For more information, please contact Francesco Checchi at Francesco.checchi@undp.org.

The fourth annual summer course, ‘Sustainable Human Development: From International Frameworks to Regional Policies’ will be conducted at Central European University (CEU) on 6-17 July 2009. CEU and UNDP will conduct the course jointly in cooperation with the Regional Environmental Centre (REC). The course will have a policy focus, bringing together practitioners, mid- and high-level policy makers, members of academia, and civil society activists from Europe and the CIS, as well as experts on human development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The aim of the summer course is to address knowledge deficits and apply the concept of sustainable human development to regional challenges. For more information please visit http://www.sun.ceu.hu/02-courses/course-sites/ sustainable/index-sustain.php. Or contact Mihail Peleah, Human Development Programme and Research Officer, at mihail.peleah@undp.org.

UNDP will hold a Case Study Work Stream Workshop on 13-14 July 2009 at the Bratislava Regional Centre. This event is part of the Growing Inclusive Markets (GIM) Initiative, which seeks to create understanding and awareness about how doing business with the poor can be good not only for the poor but also for private sector enterprises. The workshop is a joint event of the Global, East European and CIS regional GIM initiatives. The initiative has studied some 50 business solutions that create value both for business and the poor. For more information, please, contact Brigitte Duerr at brigitte.duerr@undp.org.

The ‘Understanding Children’s Work’ project and the University of Galatasaray (Istanbul, Turkey) are organizing a two-day seminar on child labour, education and youth employment to present recent research on child labour and its linkages with education and employment outcomes. The seminar will be held on 15 – 16 October 2009 at University of Galatasaray, and will aim to identify the key information gaps, thereby helping to guide future research efforts.  For more information please visit http://www.ucw-project.org/.

The III Eastern Europe and Central Asia AIDS Conference will be held on 28 – 30 October 2009 at the World Trade Centre, Moscow. The purpose of the conference is to strengthen regional cooperation, bolster efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, and achieve the goal of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, and care. The conference recognizes that the concept of universal access includes not only essential medical care, but also social justice and human rights considerations that are necessary for overcoming stigma and discrimination and reach most-at-risk target groups, including young people and drug users. For more information, please, visit http://www.eecaac.org/en/index.phtml?PHPSESSID =7dff5e17e2caaff703da802ced18a4d7.

Note to our readers
In the previous issue of Development and Transition, the article entitled ‘Attracting and retaining civil servants in the Western Balkans’ should have stated that Professor Ivan Koprić (University of Zagreb) was in charge of all aspects of the research project upon which the article was based. The editors apologize for the omission.