The Situation of Children and Young People at the Regional Level in the Republic of Belarus Prepared by Belarus Country Statistical team Co-ordinator: Galyna Gasyuk Ministry of Statistics and Analysis, Minsk MONEE Country Analytical Report November 2004 The project to monitor the impact of economic and social change on children in Eastern and Central Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (MONEE) was initiated at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in 1992. The project seeks to monitor, analyse and disseminate information on economic and social trends affecting children’s rights and wellbeing in countries in the region. A key feature of the Project is a network of correspondents in the 27 National Statistical Offices (NSOs). On an annual basis these correspondents complete an extensive data template which in turn is used for calculating indicators, supporting research of the project and, in due course, being made publicly available as the TransMonee database and in tables and graphs of the Innocenti Social Monitor. For a number of years, each participating NSO prepared a Country Analytical Report based on extensive outline from UNICEF IRC on a different theme on the situation of children every year. These analytical reports have provided valuable input into the research at UNICEF IRC and, as significantly, have also served as important national documents on monitoring aspects of child wellbeing in the countries. Some of these Country Analytical Reports have been issued by the NSOs (in the national language) as part of their publication programme. UNICEF IRC attaches great value to these national assessments of the situation of children and is committed to promote the efforts, including through translating the reports into English (where the submitted report has been in Russian) and offering its website to make them accessible to a wider research audience. The Country Analytical Reports are owned and authored by the National Statistical Offices and are not the intellectual property of UNICEF (see below). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or view of UNICEF. The text has not been edited for official publication standards and UNICEF accepts no responsibility for errors. The designations in this publication do not imply an opinion on legal status of any country or territory, or of its authorities, or the delimitation of frontiers. Status of children in the Republic of Belarus at the regional level 1. Administrative and territorial division The current administrative and territorial system in the Republic of Belarus is determined by the Law on Administrative and Territorial Division and the Procedure for Deciding Administrative and Territorial Issues in the Republic of Belarus, passed in 1998. One of the principles of the administrative and territorial structure in the Republic is that of approximate equality of the territorial size and population of administrative and territorial units of a single type. The territory of the Republic of Belarus is divided into the territory of the capital of the Re- public of Belarus and the territories of regions as administrative and territorial units. The territory of a region is divided into the territories of districts and towns of regional sub- ordination as administrative and territorial units. The territory of a district is, in turn, divided into the territories of rural councils, as well as urban type settlements and towns of district subordination, constituting the territorial units. A population centre is a compactly populated part of the territory of the Republic of Belarus, a place of permanent residence, provided with all the facilities required for people’s everyday life, residential and other buildings, its own name, and territorial boundaries established in the corre- sponding manner. Population centres include towns, urban type settlements and rural population centres. In the Republic of Belarus, as of 1 January 2004, there were 6 regions on the first level of division: specifically, the Brest, Vitebsk, Gomel, Grodno, Minsk, and Mogilev Regions. A seventh region is the city of Minsk, the capital of the Republic of Belarus, which also enjoys the status of an independent administrative and territorial unit of the first level. At the second level of division , in the regions there were 118 districts, in the city of Minsk – 9 districts, plus 5 regional centres and 1 town of regional subordination, all constituting separate administrative and territorial units of the second level. At the third level , in the districts there were 96 towns, 22 urban settlements, which are dis- trict centres, and 1439 Rural Councils, constituting administrative and territorial units of the third level. The administrative and territorial division of the Republic is presented in Table 1. Table 1 Administrative and territorial division of the Republic of Belarus as of 1January 2004 Districts Towns – Districts Towns, Urban Rural Rural adminis- in towns popula- settle- Coun- population trative tion cen- ments cils centres centres tres of a terri- tory Republic of Belarus 118 20 24 89 101 1439 24022 Regions: Brest 16 3 2 17 9 226 2178 Vitebsk 21 5 3 14 28 247 6517 Gomel 21 2 4 15 18 275 2607 Grodno 17 2 2 12 18 189 4380 City of Minsk - - 9 - - - - Minsk 22 6 - 18 19 308 5229 Mogilev 21 2 4 13 9 194 3111 3 1 2 5 6 4 7 Since 1979, there has been no change of the outer boundaries of regions in the Republic. The boundary of the city of Minsk changes owing to the population growth, resulting in a reduction in the area of the Minsk Region and the Minsk District. The area of the Republic of Belarus is 207.6 thousand square km. The Republic of Belarus has frontiers with 5 states: Poland (length of border – 400 km), Lithuania (504 km), Latvia (101 km), Russia (990 km), and Ukraine (975 km). A substantial part of the Republic of Belarus suffered from the Chernobyl Power Station disaster and about 21 per cent of its territory is polluted with radiation. It was the Gomel, Mogilev and Brest Regions that suffered most. About 70 per cent of the territory of the Gomel Region is polluted, about 34 per cent of the Mogilev and about 13 per cent of the Brest Regions. The Cherno- byl environmental disaster exerted and continues to exert a negative impact on the rational and competitive use of the territory and development of the population distribution system in the pol- luted areas. The average population density in the Republic is 47 people per square kilometre, which is substantially lower than the average population density in the European Union (115 people per square kilometre). In the Republic of Belarus, a relatively developed network of urban and rural settlements has taken shape historically, including 211 urban and over 24 thousand rural settlements. The density of the network of population centres is over 120 settlements per one thousand square kilometres. The level of urbanisation in the Republic (share of the urban population in the total popula- tion of the country) is 71.5 per cent, with 65 per cent of the urban population living in major and big cities. At the same time, their share in the total number of urban population centres is no more than 7 per cent. The classification of urban settlements is presented in Appendix 1. The Republic’s existing network of rural population centres remains, for historical and natu- ral reasons, small in population terms: two thirds of the villages have less than 100 inhabitants and their share is constantly rising. The biggest number of small villages (with a population of up to 100) is found in the north, in the Vitebsk Region, where they account for 83 per cent of the total number of population centres in the region. The biggest rural population centres are in the Brest and Gomel Regions. The share of population centres numbering 200 to 1,000 inhabitants is 36 per cent in the Brest Region and 31 per cent in the Gomel Region. 2. Main demographic trends in the Republic of Belarus and its regions from 1990 to 2004 At the beginning of 2004, 9849.1 thousand people lived in the Republic of Belarus, approxi- mately the same as twenty years ago, in 1984. Moreover, at the beginning of 1994, the population figures were at their highest ever for the country, peaking at 10243.5 thousand people. Over the last 10 years, the population has fallen by 344.9 thousand, or 3.4 per cent. As of 1 January 2004, the urban population numbered 7045.5 thousand, or 71.5 per cent of the total, and the rural population – 2803.6 thousand (28.5 per cent). Over the period from 1990 to 2004 inclusively, or the 14 years of the transition period, the numbers of the urban population rose by 313.6 thousand, or 4.7 per cent, while the rural population fell by 653.4 thousand, or 18.9 per cent. At the same time, over the last 10 years, in comparison with 1994, the urban population has increased by only 118.4 thousand, or 1.7 per cent, while the rural population has fallen by 512.9 thousand, or 15.5 per cent. Table 1 Belarus population dynamics Beginning of the year, 2004 as a % of Average annual increase (+) or fall (-), % thousand people 1960- 1970- 1980- 1990- 2000- 1990 1994 2004 1990 1994 1969 1979 1989 1999 2002 Total popu- lation 10189 10244 9849 96.7 96.1 1.0 0.65 0.6 -0.15 -0.4 includ- ing: urban 6732 6927 7045 104.7 101.7 4.1 3.25 2.3 0.35 0.25 rural 3457 3317 2804 81.1 84.5 -0.8 -1.85 -2.0 -1.3 -1.95 In comparison with 1990, the population has fallen most in the Gomel and Mogilev Regions (by 9.5 and 8.3 per cent, respectively).