531. The National Solidarity Fund (NSF), established since 1993, enabled more than 240,000 families (namely more than 1,200,000 inhabitants) to get out of isolation and poverty, by contributing to the improvement of their living conditions and this by transforming the crude houses of 56,335 families into healthy and decent housing as well as guaranteeing electricity supplies for 71,733 families and clean drinking water supplies to 81,221 families. 532. The NSF inspires numerous African countries. Mali and Senegal have obtained technical assistance from the NSF to create national mechanisms similar to the NSF and the Tunisian Solidarity Bank. Others, like Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso have embarked on studies to take inspiration from Tunisia’s NSF in their human development and poverty eradication strategies. B) The Tunisian Soldarity Bank 533. The political will which promotes the access by the vulnerable populations to loans, which they would never have dreamed of obtaining from the traditional banks due to lack of sufficient resources and guarantees, was significantly manifested through the creation in 1997 of the Tunisian Solidarity Bank (TSB) specialized in the granting of micro-loans at very low interest rates, not exceeding 5%. C) The National Employment Fund 534. In Tunisia’s supportive development strategy, employment occupies a prominent position as a basic human right and as a factor of economic and social integration par excellence. The National Employment Fund was created in December 1999 through the will of the public Authorities to make employment a privileged instrument of individual and social promotion and part of an approach aimed at removing the vulnerable populations from situations of dependence which paralyse all efforts at achievement and underscore social exclusion. 535. All these programmes enabled a large number of destitute Tunisian families and citizens, excluded from social interaction, to regain their dignity and to become subjects of history. It is for this reason that the responsibility of all those men and women who refuse to give up is directly committed by the noble ambition of human development promotion in our society. It is the sole means of preventing all forms of marginalization and all the expressions of extremism. The partnership with civil society, notably the economic and social development NGOs, opens necessarily on a virtuous dynamism of participative development. Agreements had been signed with NGOs like the Tunisian Union of Social Solidarity specialized in the provision of support to vulnerable populations, the National Union of Tunisian Women (UNFT) whose activities are directed towards the provision of professional training for young girls originating from the shadow zones, with the objective of helping them draw up viable projects, the National Family and Population Office (ONFP) which put a family planning and reproductive health pilot programme in place since 1994 in the rural areas. 536. The promotion of human development gives a broad and practical meaning to the integration paradigm: civic integration making possible the participation in the management of one’s life and work, economic integration 112