Türkiye does not need to design long-term care without reference to international experience. Countries across Europe and Asia have already confronted many of the questions that become more pressing as populations age: who should pay for continuing care, how eligibility should be assessed, how much responsibility families should carry, how home support can be expanded, how care workers should be developed and how governments can maintain quality without making services impossible to access.
The value of those experiences for the Türkiye Aging, Long-Term Care and Community Support Knowledge Hub lies less in identifying a model to copy than in understanding the design choices behind different systems. Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Nordic countries and other systems operate within different tax structures, labour markets, administrative traditions, family expectations and histories of social protection. Their institutions are not interchangeable with Türkiye’s.
Türkiye is also entering this debate from its own starting point. Family care remains highly significant. Health care and social support have different institutional and financing arrangements. Municipal capacity varies. Home health, social assistance, residential provision, community initiatives and private purchasing already coexist. The Twelfth Development Plan includes an objective to establish elderly care insurance, while national policy discussions in 2026 have examined long-term care assurance, financing, ageing in place and home- and community-based care.
The useful international question is therefore not “Which country should Türkiye imitate?” It is “Which principles have proved important across different systems, and how could Türkiye adapt them to its own demographic, institutional and social conditions?”
International systems show that there is no single long-term care model
Long-term care systems differ substantially even among countries facing similar demographic change. Some rely heavily on social insurance. Others finance support mainly through taxation. Responsibilities may sit primarily with municipalities, regional authorities, insurance funds or combinations of national and local government. Some systems provide services directly, others reimburse approved providers, and many combine public provision with private and voluntary-sector capacity.
Benefits differ too. They may take the form of services, cash allowances or combinations of both. Eligibility can be based on functional dependency, assessed hours of care, income, disability or defined care-need categories. Personal contributions vary widely.
These differences matter because the institutional mechanism shapes incentives. A cash benefit can increase household choice but may also reinforce dependence on unpaid family care if formal services are scarce. A generous service entitlement is meaningful only if enough workers and providers exist to deliver it. Strong municipal responsibility can support locally responsive services but create geographic variation unless national financing and standards protect equity.
International comparison should therefore focus on the relationship between design choices rather than isolated features. Türkiye could introduce an insurance mechanism, for example, but the effect would depend on what it covers, how need is assessed, whether benefits are portable, how providers are paid and whether community capacity expands alongside entitlement.
The broader long-term care system-design lesson is that financing, eligibility, workforce and delivery cannot be designed independently. Each changes the practical meaning of the others.
Germany shows the value and limits of establishing a distinct care entitlement
Germany’s social long-term care insurance offers one of the most frequently discussed international examples because it created a distinct mechanism for addressing long-term care risk rather than leaving care entirely within health insurance, social assistance or family responsibility.
The transferable principle is not that Türkiye should reproduce Germany’s contribution rates, insurance funds or benefit structure. Germany’s model reflects its wider social-insurance system and institutional history.
The more relevant lesson is conceptual: long-term care can be recognised as a social risk requiring an explicit public response.
That recognition forces government to define eligibility, assessment, covered benefits and the relationship between formal and informal care. It also makes long-term care expenditure more visible. Instead of care being distributed invisibly across household labour, health spending, local assistance and private payments, a defined financing mechanism identifies at least part of the cost as a collective responsibility.
For Türkiye, this is particularly relevant to the Twelfth Development Plan objective of establishing elderly care insurance. The important design question is not simply whether an insurance label is adopted. It is whether a future mechanism creates a coherent entitlement and financing architecture.
Türkiye would need to determine whether coverage relates only to older age or more broadly to long-term functional need, how contributions or public revenues interact, what happens to people unable to contribute, and how existing disability and social-assistance arrangements connect with the new system.
There is also a fiscal lesson. A dedicated scheme does not remove demographic pressure. It makes the financing mechanism clearer, but benefit levels, contribution revenues, workforce costs and demand still need to remain sustainable over time.
Japan demonstrates the importance of connecting entitlement with service infrastructure
Japan’s Long-Term Care Insurance system provides a different lesson. Introduced in the context of rapid population ageing and changing family structures, it established formal long-term care arrangements with municipalities playing important administrative roles and services delivered through a developed provider infrastructure.
Again, institutional transplantation would be inappropriate. Türkiye has different local-government responsibilities, demographic timing, labour-market conditions and social-security structures.
What Japan illustrates is that an entitlement needs an operating system around it.
Assessment must lead to an intelligible service response. Providers must exist. Workers must be available. People need mechanisms for understanding and navigating support. Local administrative capacity has to convert national policy into practical access.
This matters for Türkiye because financing reform could otherwise move faster than service development. A new long-term care assurance mechanism could establish demand that existing home, day, community and residential capacity cannot immediately absorb.
That would create a gap between formal eligibility and practical access.
Türkiye’s implementation strategy therefore needs to consider provider and workforce development alongside benefit design. Capacity planning should ask not only how many people may qualify, but what mix of services they are likely to need, where they live and how demand may change over time.
Organizations examining comparable capacity questions can use the Digital Twin Scenario Modeler to test hypothetical relationships between demand, workforce and service capacity. It is not a model of Japan’s or Türkiye’s statutory arrangements, but it reflects a useful reform discipline: policy entitlement should be tested against delivery capacity before assumptions become commitments.
Scenario: an insurance reform creates demand faster than services can respond
Imagine that Türkiye introduces a phased long-term care benefit following national reform. In one province, assessment identifies several thousand older people who qualify for varying levels of home and community support. Previously, many had relied almost entirely on relatives or purchased help privately.
The reform has succeeded in making need visible, but the province does not yet have enough formal home-care capacity to deliver the new benefit at the intended intensity. Residential services cannot absorb the additional demand and would not be appropriate for many people anyway.
A weak response would treat this simply as a waiting-list problem. A stronger implementation model would interpret it as evidence that financing and market development have become misaligned.
Provincial and national leaders would need to understand which needs are most urgent, which services can be expanded safely, where workforce recruitment is feasible and where family caregivers require interim support. Training capacity and provider development would become part of the reform programme rather than secondary operational issues.
Implementation could then be phased according to both entitlement and supply, with transparent monitoring of unmet need. National government would retain responsibility for ensuring that temporary capacity constraints did not become permanent geographic inequalities.
The international lesson is straightforward but important: declaring a benefit does not create a service. Reform becomes real only when the workforce, provider infrastructure and local operating capacity exist to deliver it.
Nordic experience highlights the importance of local delivery within national expectations
Several Nordic long-term care systems demonstrate the potential of strong local-government responsibility supported by broader national welfare structures. Their precise arrangements differ, and they should not be treated as one homogeneous model.
The useful principle for Türkiye concerns subsidiarity: decisions should be made close enough to communities to reflect local circumstances, while national arrangements remain strong enough to protect basic equity.
Municipalities can understand neighbourhood geography, transport, social isolation, housing and local voluntary capacity in ways that central government cannot replicate through a uniform programme. Türkiye already has substantial municipal activity in areas such as home support, social participation and assistance for older residents, although the range and scale of provision differ.
International experience also exposes the other side of decentralisation. If local responsibilities are not accompanied by sufficient resources, workforce and national expectations, geography can determine access.
Türkiye therefore does not need to choose between centralisation and municipalism. A stronger division of functions could establish nationally consistent principles for need, eligibility, quality and accountability while allowing municipalities and provincial structures to adapt delivery.
This becomes especially important where metropolitan and rural conditions differ. Istanbul cannot be the operational template for a sparsely populated district. Equal treatment may require different service models.
The international lesson lies in creating nationally protected outcomes rather than nationally identical operating structures.
The Netherlands illustrates why generous systems still require continuous redesign
The Netherlands is often examined internationally because of its extensive formal long-term care arrangements. Its experience also provides a caution against assuming that creating comprehensive provision ends the reform process.
Long-term care systems evolve as costs, expectations, workforce availability and the balance between institutional and community support change. Responsibilities may be redistributed and eligibility revised. Governments continually face choices about which needs require intensive publicly financed care and which can be addressed through community, health or social-support structures.
For Türkiye, the important lesson is that the first long-term care settlement will not be the last.
A future insurance or assurance system needs mechanisms for reviewing benefit design, funding adequacy and outcomes. Otherwise, rules established for one demographic and workforce environment may become increasingly disconnected from reality.
This creates an important governance principle: reform architecture should include learning architecture.
National policy needs information about expenditure, unmet need, provider capacity, caregiver burden, geographic access and outcomes. Eligibility rules and benefit packages should be capable of evidence-informed revision without making entitlement unpredictable.
Organizations considering similar governance questions can use the Governance Maturity Assessment to structure questions about responsibility, assurance and decision-making. It does not assess Türkiye’s public institutions; its relevance is the broader principle that reform needs explicit ownership of both implementation and subsequent adaptation.
International reform increasingly favours home and community support, but infrastructure matters
Across many countries, long-term care policy has shifted towards supporting people to remain at home and participate in their communities for as long as this remains appropriate and consistent with their preferences.
Türkiye’s policy direction also gives increasing attention to ageing in place, home-based support, day services and community models. The Twelfth Development Plan includes improving home health, expanding telecare and telehealth, increasing the effectiveness of day and long-term care services, supporting accessible housing and encouraging local support for older people living alone.
International experience nevertheless demonstrates that home and community-based support cannot be created merely by reducing reliance on residential care.
People need actual alternatives. These may include personal assistance, home nursing where clinically required, rehabilitation, day services, respite, meals, transport, assistive technology, accessible housing and social participation. Family caregivers need support as well.
Housing is particularly important. A person cannot meaningfully “age in place” if stairs become inaccessible, bathing becomes unsafe or heating and maintenance are unaffordable. Transport determines whether community services are practically reachable. Digital services can extend access but may exclude people who lack devices, connectivity or confidence.
The lesson for Türkiye is therefore to treat community care as infrastructure rather than simply a preferred setting.
A balanced system also retains good residential provision for people who need it. The aim is not to make institutional care disappear. It is to prevent residential care becoming the default because earlier and less intensive alternatives were unavailable.
Scenario: ageing in place depends on more than a home-care visit
An 84-year-old woman in Ankara wants to remain in the apartment where she has lived for three decades. Her daughter lives elsewhere in the city and visits several times each week. The woman has mild cognitive impairment, reduced balance and difficulty using the bath safely, but she does not need continuous residential support.
A narrow home-care response might arrange periodic assistance and regard the policy objective as achieved because she remains at home.
A stronger ageing-in-place pathway examines the whole environment. Falls risk is addressed. The bathroom is considered for adaptation. Medication support is coordinated with health services where necessary. The daughter receives information about changes that should trigger reassessment. Opportunities for day or community activity reduce isolation, while transport is considered if she cannot reach them independently.
If remote support is introduced, it supplements rather than replaces human contact. The woman’s preferences about monitoring and privacy remain central.
The outcome is not measured simply by whether residential admission was avoided. The system asks whether she remained safe, autonomous, socially connected and able to live according to her preferences without creating an unsustainable burden for her daughter.
This illustrates a lesson visible across international reform: ageing in place is an outcome produced by multiple forms of infrastructure. It is not achieved merely by locating care inside a person’s home.
International systems are moving from family assumption towards caregiver policy
Family care remains central to long-term care internationally. OECD evidence continues to show the major contribution of informal caregivers, while demographic change, smaller families, geographic mobility and women’s employment are reducing the extent to which governments can assume that relatives will absorb growing demand indefinitely.
This has particular relevance for Türkiye, where family solidarity remains culturally and operationally significant.
The wrong international lesson would be that formal services should replace families. The stronger lesson is that governments need to distinguish family relationships from unlimited unpaid labour.
Cash allowances can recognise caregiving and help households meet costs, but financial assistance alone does not resolve exhaustion, interrupted employment, lack of respite or complex care responsibilities. Similarly, describing family care as culturally preferred can conceal situations in which no realistic alternative exists.
A mature caregiver-support strategy therefore considers information, training, respite, flexible formal support, psychological wellbeing and navigation alongside financial assistance.
Türkiye can build on its existing family-oriented approach while gradually making caregiver capacity an explicit part of assessment. A daughter living nearby is not automatically available every day. A spouse may be an older person with health problems of their own. A working relative may be willing to provide emotional and practical support without being able to deliver intensive personal care.
The transferable principle is that family involvement should be chosen, supported and sustainable rather than presumed.
Workforce reform is the constraint every financing model eventually encounters
International long-term care systems differ in financing but share one structural reality: care remains labour intensive.
Technology can improve scheduling, documentation, communication and remote specialist access. Equipment can support mobility and reduce physical workload. Digital records can reduce duplication. None of these removes the need for people who can provide personal care, build relationships, notice deterioration and respond sensitively to complex human circumstances.
OECD analysis expects long-term care expenditure pressures to increase substantially as populations age, while changes in family structure reduce the supply of informal care. Workforce availability is therefore not a secondary implementation issue. It is one of the determinants of what future systems can realistically promise.
Countries have responded through different combinations of professionalisation, training, migration, role redesign, wage reform and greater use of technology. Their results depend heavily on wider labour-market conditions.
Türkiye’s advantage is that its long-term care workforce architecture is still developing. It has an opportunity to avoid constructing a system in which direct care is treated as permanently low-skilled work with little progression.
Formal workforce planning should examine:
- the number and geographic distribution of workers required as demand increases;
- the boundary between clinical, social-care and support roles;
- training and competency requirements for different levels of need;
- supervision, career progression and retention;
- how formal workers interact with family caregivers; and
- which administrative tasks technology can reduce without reducing human support.
The Predictive Workforce Risk Module offers organizations examining comparable delivery pressures a way to structure analysis of vacancies, turnover and continuity risk. It is not a Turkish workforce-planning instrument, but the underlying principle is relevant: workforce instability needs to be treated as a service-capacity risk rather than only an employment issue.
Assessment reform may be more transferable than any particular financing system
One of the strongest lessons across established long-term care systems is the importance of assessing functional need consistently.
Funding models vary enormously, but governments still need a credible way to determine who needs assistance, how much support is appropriate and when needs have changed.
WHO guidance on long-term care financing similarly emphasises that benefit packages require clear criteria and thresholds, assessment of individual need, alignment between services and available financing and evidence-based review of policies over time.
For Türkiye, a common functional assessment framework could be particularly valuable because support currently spans health, disability, social assistance, residential and municipal arrangements.
This would not require every programme to use identical eligibility rules. A financial benefit may legitimately include income criteria. A medical service requires clinical judgement. Residential placement involves different considerations from occasional home support.
The opportunity is to establish a shared core understanding of the person before programme-specific rules are applied.
Functional assessment can consider mobility, personal care, cognition, communication, domestic activities, social participation, environmental barriers and caregiver availability. It can then support proportional responses and reassessment as circumstances change.
This approach also produces better population intelligence. If assessment information is sufficiently consistent, Türkiye can understand not only how many people receive particular benefits but the distribution and intensity of need across communities.
That makes population-needs assessment a practical bridge between individual entitlement and national planning.
Quality systems need to measure life, not only compliance
International reform also shows that long-term care quality cannot be understood entirely through inspection of buildings, staffing records and procedures.
Those controls matter. People receiving long-term support may be particularly vulnerable to neglect, poor practice, abuse or loss of autonomy. Governments need enforceable standards, competent workers, safeguarding arrangements and effective complaints mechanisms.
But good long-term care is also relational and outcome based.
A residential service can meet physical standards while residents experience little choice or meaningful activity. A home-care service can complete scheduled visits while repeatedly changing workers and undermining continuity. A system can increase service volume while leaving family caregivers exhausted.
International quality development therefore increasingly connects safety and compliance with person-centred outcomes.
For Türkiye, this suggests that expansion should be accompanied by a quality framework capable of asking whether people experience dignity, continuity, autonomy, participation and appropriate support as well as whether providers meet formal requirements.
Quality also needs to extend across transitions. If a hospital, residential facility and home service each perform their individual functions correctly but the person experiences a dangerous gap between them, the pathway has still produced poor quality.
Organizations translating similar principles into performance structures can use the Quality Dashboard Builder to explore balanced measures across service quality, workforce and outcomes. It does not replace Türkiye’s regulatory requirements; its relevance lies in connecting operational evidence with management visibility.
Scenario: the same national standard produces different local outcomes
A national quality framework establishes expectations for timely assessment, person-centred planning and continuity of support. Two provinces report high compliance with the new requirements.
In the first, assessments are followed quickly by access to home, day or residential support according to need. Families know who to contact, reviews occur when circumstances change and people in rural districts can access adapted outreach arrangements.
In the second, assessment documentation is completed equally well but service capacity is limited. People assessed as needing home support wait significantly longer. Families provide additional unpaid care while waiting, and those in remote districts experience the longest delays.
A compliance-only system could conclude that both provinces are implementing the national standard because both complete the required assessment process.
An outcomes-oriented system sees something different. It connects assessment data with waiting time, service receipt, geography, caregiver pressure and changes in functional need. National oversight can then distinguish a procedural problem from a capacity problem.
The response should also differ. Additional training will not solve insufficient provider capacity. Rewriting the assessment form will not shorten travel distances. Funding, workforce deployment or alternative service models may be required.
The international lesson is that standards become meaningful only when governance can see whether they change people’s actual access and outcomes.
Digital reform should extend reach without becoming a substitute for care
Countries facing ageing populations are increasingly exploring telecare, remote monitoring, electronic records, artificial intelligence and digital coordination. Türkiye already has substantial digital health infrastructure and national policy supports further telehealth and telecare development.
International experience offers both opportunity and caution.
Digital systems can extend specialist expertise into areas where professionals are scarce. Shared information can reduce repetition. Remote contact can support monitoring between face-to-face visits. Technology can help people maintain independence and make geographically dispersed services easier to coordinate.
But digitalisation can also create new forms of exclusion. Older people vary in digital literacy, sensory ability, cognitive function, connectivity and access to devices. Remote monitoring can create privacy and surveillance concerns. Technology may transfer work onto relatives rather than reduce it.
The transferable principle is therefore hybrid design.
Digital support should be matched to the person, the purpose and the local service environment. Remote monitoring is useful only if someone can interpret and respond to the information. A digital referral improves coordination only if responsibility for follow-up is clear. An online service improves access only for people able to use it.
Türkiye can use technology particularly effectively where geography creates access barriers, but digital inclusion needs to remain part of service design rather than an afterthought.
Scenario: adapting an international model instead of importing it
A Turkish policy team examines an international community-care programme that has reduced reliance on institutional services. The programme combines intensive home support, rehabilitation, assistive technology and a local coordination function.
The easiest response would be to reproduce its organisational structure. Instead, the team separates the underlying principles from the foreign institutions through which they are delivered.
The principles are early functional assessment, time-limited restorative input where appropriate, rapid access to equipment, coordination across professional boundaries and reassessment before permanent support levels are determined.
Türkiye already has health, social-service and municipal structures capable of contributing parts of this pathway, but responsibilities and resources differ from the country where the original model operates. A pilot therefore adapts the functions rather than copying job titles or administrative arrangements.
Local teams define who performs assessment, how referrals move between services and which organisation remains responsible when a person crosses organisational boundaries. Outcomes include independence, caregiver experience, subsequent service use and whether people receive appropriate ongoing support.
If the model works in one metropolitan area, it is not automatically rolled out unchanged nationally. Rural feasibility, workforce availability, municipal capacity and cost are examined first.
This is the discipline that international learning requires: understand why a model works, identify which conditions make it possible and then determine whether Türkiye can reproduce the function through its own institutions.
International comparison can help Türkiye ask better financing questions
Perhaps the greatest value of comparison is that it expands the range of questions Türkiye can ask before locking in a financing structure.
WHO’s international work on long-term care financing emphasises that countries face choices about how resources are raised, pooled and used, while trying to protect access, quality and households from excessive financial burden. OECD analysis likewise demonstrates that ageing, reduced informal-care availability and the labour-intensive nature of care will place continuing pressure on expenditure.
No financing mechanism eliminates these trade-offs.
A social-insurance model makes contributions and entitlements visible but still needs decisions about public subsidies and people outside contributory employment. Tax financing can spread risk broadly but competes with other public priorities. Means-tested systems target public resources but can leave middle-income households exposed to substantial costs. Cash benefits increase flexibility but depend on the availability and quality of care that households can obtain.
Türkiye therefore needs to evaluate financing against several objectives simultaneously: adequacy, equity, sustainability, simplicity, service development and financial protection.
It should also make unpaid care visible in economic analysis. A model that appears inexpensive to government because relatives provide extensive care may impose substantial costs through reduced employment, lower household income and caregiver ill health.
The relevant question is not simply what long-term care costs the public budget. It is where the costs sit across government, households, labour markets and the health system.
Reform should build an evidence cycle rather than wait for a perfect model
International systems continue to reform because demographic and social conditions continue to change. Türkiye should therefore avoid assuming that it needs to identify a complete permanent model before making progress.
It can instead establish a clear strategic direction and build evidence through staged implementation.
Pilots can test new assessment processes, community pathways or caregiver-support models. Their value depends on whether they answer defined policy questions rather than simply demonstrating that innovation occurred.
Evidence should examine who was reached, who was not reached, cost, workforce requirements, outcomes, caregiver experience and whether the model can operate outside the original setting.
This is especially important when successful local projects attract national attention. A service developed by a well-resourced metropolitan municipality may depend on infrastructure unavailable elsewhere. Scaling the objective may be appropriate while scaling the exact operating model is not.
The wider pilot evaluation and learning principle is therefore highly relevant: implementation should generate evidence that influences the next policy decision.
Türkiye’s 2026 policy discussions provide an opportunity to make this learning cycle part of reform from the beginning. New financing, service and workforce initiatives can be designed with explicit evaluation questions rather than assessed retrospectively after national expectations have already hardened.
Türkiye’s own institutional strengths should shape the model it develops
International comparison can become counterproductive if it encourages reformers to see domestic institutions only as obstacles.
Türkiye has assets on which a future long-term care system can build. Its national health infrastructure provides extensive population reach. The Ministry of Family and Social Services has national and provincial structures concerned with disability, older people and social support. Municipalities have developed varied community services. Digital health infrastructure can support coordination. Family and community networks remain significant sources of social support.
The task is to connect these strengths while addressing their limitations.
Strong family involvement can support continuity but should not justify inadequate formal alternatives. Central policy capacity can establish national direction but should not suppress useful local adaptation. Municipal innovation can respond to community circumstances but needs safeguards against geographic inequality. Digital infrastructure can improve coordination but cannot compensate for insufficient human services.
This balance is important because successful reform usually evolves from institutions that already possess legitimacy and operational capability.
Türkiye’s future model may therefore look unlike established European or Asian systems while still incorporating internationally validated principles: pooled risk, functional assessment, community alternatives, caregiver support, workforce development, quality assurance and system-wide accountability.
The strongest international lesson is to design the system around changing need
Across different long-term care systems, one principle repeatedly becomes visible: people do not remain at one fixed level of need.
An older person may initially require occasional domestic assistance, later need rehabilitation after a fall, recover some independence, then develop dementia or more complex health needs. Family support can increase or disappear. Housing circumstances change. A caregiver may become ill. Technology may make some activities easier while creating new support requirements elsewhere.
Systems organised around individual programmes can struggle with this movement. Each change creates another threshold, application or transfer.
Systems organised around a continuum have a stronger opportunity to adjust support without repeatedly abandoning the person at organisational boundaries.
This is why WHO’s international framework emphasises an integrated continuum of long-term care, sustainable workforce, support for unpaid caregivers and quality. The precise institutional design can differ substantially between countries while these functions remain necessary.
For Türkiye, the strategic opportunity is to make changing functional need the thread that connects health, social services, municipalities, formal providers and family support. Financing can then determine how the response is paid for, while governance ensures that responsibility remains visible.
That principle is more transferable than any foreign insurance fund, municipal structure or provider model.
Conclusion
International long-term care reform gives Türkiye a substantial evidence base, but it does not provide a ready-made national model. Germany demonstrates the importance of recognising long-term care as a distinct social risk. Japan shows that entitlement must be matched by service and workforce capacity. Nordic experience highlights the potential and risks of strong local delivery. Other mature systems demonstrate that financing, eligibility and responsibilities require continuing adjustment as populations, labour markets and public expectations change.
The strongest lessons sit beneath those institutional differences. Long-term care needs sustainable financing, credible assessment, real home and community infrastructure, supported family caregivers, a capable workforce, meaningful quality assurance and governance that can see whether national policy produces equitable local access.
Türkiye’s current consideration of elderly care insurance and a wider long-term care assurance system creates an opportunity to apply those lessons at a formative stage. The objective should not be to reproduce the architecture of another country. It should be to test each international principle against Türkiye’s existing health system, social-service structures, municipalities, labour market, family relationships and geographic diversity.
The result can therefore be recognisably Turkish while remaining informed by decades of international reform. The most valuable international lesson is ultimately methodological: define the outcomes people need, understand the functions a sustainable system must perform, and then build institutions capable of delivering those functions within the country’s own context.