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The French man was looking for a quality food product with a good story behind it… The Turkish villagers were looking for a good buyer who would pay a fair price for their product, and they had lots of stories… This combination started a ‘fair trade' between Paris and Suvarlý, a small town of about 5,000 inhabitants in Southeastern Turkey .

Nicholas Mounard is the representative of a French company called "Alter-Eco", which is a prominent actor in the ‘fair trade' system. Nicolas hiked in the mountainous countryside between Adýyaman and Gaziantep in the beginning of June to see whether they could take small Turkish producers on board as well. And indeed intensive negotiations and a bit of convincing power led to a three-year agreement between the small farmers of Suvarlý and Alter-Eco Commerce Equitable . More >>

Representative of the ‘fair trade company’ visited the villagers’ lands in Suvarli
Following UNDP's recent survey, which revealed Turkish commercial banks' interest in microfinance, another research, again commissioned by the UNDP indicated that there are more than 2 million potential customers, who can benefit from bank Microfinance means building financial systems that serve the poor. In most developing countries, poor people are the majority of the population, yet they are the least likely to be served by banks.
saving products, and at least 1.5 million households are interested in microcredit from commercial banks under suitable conditions in Turkey. More >>

UNDP's gender project ‘Women in Politics' was launched on May 30th, 2006 at the policy advisory workshop ‘Local Policies on the Way to Gender Equality'. The workshop aimed to build on policy recommendations prepared by civil society partners of the UNDP to further the participation of women in politics in Turkey.  More >>

In Southeast Anatolia, many people were internally displaced because of terrorism and conflict. First of the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) training workshops on Internally Displaced Persons' (IDP) Protection was held in Ankara on 8-9 June 2006 with 35 participants from 25 NGOs. The participating NGOs are working in the field of human rights, legal issues and service-delivery for the IDPs. UNHCR also participated in the workshop as observer. More >>

UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS and Coca-Cola announced a $6 million partnership agreement to cooperate on improving access to safe drinking water and other water projects in the region. The joint project was announced in Vienna at a conference on responsible investing in Eastern Europe and the CIS organized by UNDP, Austrian Development Cooperation and UNIDO. More >>


While the number of the companies, which has joined the UN Global Compact (GC) started to increase recently, a Global Compact Steering Committee was created in June in order to establish the governance mechanism of the national GC network in Turkey.  More >>

On the occasion of World Environment Day (WED), internationally celebrated every year on 5 June, United Nations called for worldwide awareness of the vital necessity of environmental protection and enhances public and political actions on this issue. This year, the theme of WED was "Deserts and Desertification" and UN's slogan was "Don't Desert Drylands!", which occupy more than 40% of Earth's land area and are home to more than 2 billion people.  More>>

 
Primary school children contributed their part to the World Environment Day celebrations in Turkey. World Environment Day (WED) is a people's event celebrated with colourful activities, including street rallies, bicycle parades, green concerts, essays and poster competitions in schools, tree planting, recycling and clean-up campaigns. WED was also celebrated in Turkey
on 5 June. Part of the Day's activities took place at “Sincan Wonderland” in the town of Sincan, near Ankara.  More>>

On the eve of the Environment Day, a new fund to prevent biodiversity decline in Turkey was launched by Dođa Derneđi (Nature Society), which is BirdLife International's affiliate in Turkey, UNDP Turkey and the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Forestry. “Turkey's Nature On the first day of the ‘Zero Extinction' Campaign, which has been jointly launched by the Nature Society, UNDP Turkey and the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Forestry, more than 50,000 YTL was raised, which seems sufficient to save the last 80 members of Urfa's Gazelle species.
Fund” aims at initiating the most urgent conservation actions in 305 Key Biodiversity Areas identified by Dođa Derneđi.  More >>

World Environment Day (WED) was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference

on the Human Environment. Another resolution, adopted by the General Assembly the same day, led to the creation of UNEP: United Nations Environment Programme.  More >>