UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS (RBEC) has prepared the Regional Human Development Report for Central Asia titled "Regional Cooperation for Human Development and Security in Central Asia.”

The principal purpose of the proposed report is to promote a dialogue in Central Asia and among Central Asians to convince policy makers and other stakeholders that regional cooperation and integration are essential for long-term economic growth, poverty reduction and social stability, and thus for human development and security.

The report is also intended to provide a common platform for the international community, including and especially the UNDP and other UN Agencies, to advocate and support regional cooperation and integration in Central Asia. Ultimately, the hope is that the report will result in increased cooperation across borders in Central Asia so as to assure increased integration within the region and with the rest of the world, to enhance economic growth and social welfare, and to reduce the risks of political and social instability.

The report focuses principally on economic cooperation and integration among the five Central Asian countries of the CIS – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The report also considers access to and integration of Central Asia with its immediate neighbors – Afghanistan, China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia – as well as with the rest of the world.

Human development and security are defined in terms of broad measures of human welfare, including economic and social progress, as well as political freedoms and the development of civil society, with special attention paid to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The approach aims to measure and quantify as many as possible of the economic and social benefits from cooperation and integration and of the costs of lack thereof. It also considers explicitly any possible costs, obstacles and constraints to cooperation and integration.

The Report brings together many disparate strands of analysis, policy advice and technical support which has so far been provided in many different and separate areas (water, energy, environment, trade, transport, health, etc.), at many different levels (regional, national, sub-national, community) and by many different entities (multilateral institutions; bilateral official donors and partners; regional, national and local authorities; and by international and local Civil Society Organizations – CSOs).

The report is “synthetic” in its approach, i.e., it draws wherever possible on existing data and analysis, and invests in the collection of new data only where there are early opportunities to do so quickly in connection with other ongoing data collection efforts.