UNDP works in Myanmar under a mandate from its governing body which focuses UNDP activities at programmes with grassroots level impact in the areas of basic health, training and education, HIV/AIDS, the environment and food security.

The HDI is a set of projects which is currently providing assistance to poor rural communities in 23 townships in 6 different regions of the country in the thematic sectors outlined int the Governing Council/ Executive Board decisions. The HDI focuses on helping poor communities to meet their basic social and food security needs, on promoting participation by all segments of the community in collective decision-making, and on building community capacities to plan and implement their own self-help activities.

Through its activities and processes, HDI activities focus on the following four UNDP Practice Areas (UNDP focuses globally on 6 Practice Areas, the other two being Crisis Prevention and Recovery, and Information and Communications Technology).

• Poverty reduction
•  Governance at the local level
•  The environment
•  HIV/AIDS

In addtion to the HDI's grassroots community-based activities, the UNDP Executive Board also gave its approval, in September 2002, for UNDP to undertake an agricultural sector review and an integrated assessment of household living conditions. Both these new initiatives are based upon a recognition of the need to obtain more comprehensive information on the various factors influencing the livelihoods and well being of people and communities, particularly the rural poor, in order to identify causal factors and options for measures to address them.

HDI Project Activities

The HDI was originally designed as a set of ten projects, each providing assistance to grassroots communities in one of the thematic sectors specified in the UNDP Executive Board decisions, (or related sub-sector, as in the case of water and sanitation, a sub-sector of health, and micro-finance in the area of food security). An exception was the 'community development in remote townships project,' which provided assistance to communities in Northern and Eastern Rakhine, Chin and Kachin States in all the sectors in an integrated manner

Two sectoral projects, the HIV/AIDS and micro-finance projects, continue as separate projects. In addition to their specific focus, they collaborate with the integrated community development projects where there is convergence, in terms of geographical locations or thematic activies.

The HDI-IV projects will thus consist of the following projects:

- Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP)

- Community Development in Remote Townships Project (CDRT)

- HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Project

- Micro-finance for the Poor Project

- Integrated Household Living Conditions Assessment Project

- Agricultural Sector Review