Review of the technical cooperation activities of UNCTAD

1107

20 Sep 2013

 

Takes note of the technical cooperation activities carried out by the UNCTAD secretariat in cooperation with the beneficiaries, development partners and other international organizations and further notes that expenditures for UNCTAD technical cooperation remained stable in 2012 as compared to 2011;

Expresses concern about the decrease in contributions as reflected in chapter I of document TD/B/WP/253 taking into consideration the constraints caused by the global financial and economic crisis;

Encourages development partners in a position to do so to make multi-year contributions to UNCTAD technical cooperation in order to increase transparency and predictability in the planning and sustainability in the implementation of the relevant technical assistance programmes, and underlines the relevance of non-earmarked trust funds;

Appreciates that expenditures in support of the least developed countries continued to grow and urges the secretariat to continue to ensure that priority is assigned to the least developed countries;

 

Takes note of the increased involvement of UNCTAD in activities linked to the implementation of the Enhanced Integrated Framework and calls on the secretariat to continue to strengthen its contribution to the Enhanced Integrated Framework;

Takes note of the secretariat’s efforts to consolidate UNCTAD technical cooperation activities into multi-donor, multi-year thematic trust funds, with a view to promoting greater coherence in the planning and implementation of those activities while ensuring country ownership, and requests the secretariat to ensure effective monitoring and accountability mechanisms for these funds as well as to continue to guarantee effective synergies among the three pillars of UNCTAD work;

Also takes notes of the secretariat’s continued efforts to ensure and expand results-based management approaches, emphasizes the importance of this process in the delivery of technical assistance, including the utilization of standard United Nations performance indicators that measure impact, during planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and carrying out technical assistance in an effective and transparent manner, contributing to the efficiency and effectiveness of UNCTAD’s work and requests the secretariat to further pursue these efforts;

Encourages all donors to use the compilation of requests prepared by the secretariat as a relevant tool to allocate their contributions according to the needs and priorities of beneficiary countries with a view to ensuring transparency and ownership in UNCTAD technical cooperation;

Notes with appreciation the lead role of UNCTAD in the United Nations Inter-Agency Cluster on Trade and Productive Capacity;

Takes note of the draft UNCTAD fundraising strategy for technical cooperation, recognizes its importance and looks forward to its further consideration and improvement in a formal setting to ensure that fundraising efforts lead to the necessary levels of resources to meet the increasing demand for technical cooperation.