The United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) regional office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia might be headquartered in Bratislava, according to a recent proposal. The office will be in the Administration of Special-Purpose Facilities (SUZA) building, which falls under the Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry, the TASR newswire wrote.
UN expert Werner Moidl inspected the premises in early July, focusing on security. If the premises meet the basic security criteria, a group of UNFPA experts will visit Bratislava soon to look into the deployment of offices according to the requirements of the fund. Since 2001, Bratislava has been the seat of one of nine regional centres of technical assistance of UN Development Programme (UNDP), which focuses on the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Locating the office of an international organisation here is prestigious, according to a Foreign Affairs Ministry position paper. Turnover of the UNDP regional centre in the form of ordered supplies of goods and services from local companies amounted to around Sk15 million (€497,909) last year, while it employs 56 Slovaks among its 140 employees.
Last year, the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Council adopted a decision to establish five regional offices on a new organisational structure for UNFPA. Four of these have already been established in Bangkok, Cairo, Johannesburg and Panama City. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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