In mid-1997, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbeyev addressed the UN General Assembly on Environmental questions, requesting the international community to examine more in depth the nuclear legacy of Semipalatinsk in northeast Kazakhstan. The region was the main Soviet testing site, undergoing 470 atmospheric, surface and underground tests over a 40-year period. The testing site was closed shortly after Kazakhstani independence.

Since President Nazarbeyev’s request, the international community has responded well. The United Nations Development Program provided financial assistance to a Government mission in June 1998 to the area that included twenty international experts and nearly 50 national experts. Their task was to adopt a programmatic approach to the region based on the available data. The program, taking into account health, humanitarian aid, ecology, economy and information dissemination needs, consists of 38 projects with a value of approximately US $43 million. Over half of the program is based in the health sector where the region has seen alarming rates of cancers and other diseases related to the testing.

At an international conference last September in Tokyo, Japan, the international community pledged over US $20 million for the region. Donors included the World Bank, the General Board of Global Ministries (United Methodist Church), United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Counterpart International and the Internationaler Hilfsfunds.

Aid coordination remains a large priority for the donors, who stress that too often aid is squandered because it is not coordinated properly among the donors. For this reason, the Kazakhstan government has established a Program Coordination Unit, with branches in Almaty and Semipalatinsk to avoid duplication of donor efforts, enabling the affected populations to become the beneficiaries of the aid.

Richard Dion is a program officer with UNDP, www.semipalatinsk.org