di News - UNESCWA Strengthening DevInfo Implementation in Arab Region

UNESCWA Strengthening DevInfo Implementation in Arab Region

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA), in close collaboration with UNDOCO and UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Regional Office, has been undertaking various activities over the past six months to strengthen DevInfo implementation throughout the Arab region.

In July 2009, UNESCWA, with the support of UNDOCO and UNICEF-MENA, organized the Arab Training of Trainers Workshop (DevInfo 6.0) in Beirut, Lebanon. The objective of the workshop was to establish an Arab DevInfo Training Team (ADITT) with members equipped to undertake national trainings in their own countries.

UNESCWA, with UNDOCO support, remains committed to provide further capacity-building activities for this training team, including conducting national seminars and trainings, producing DevInfo products, and co-facilitating DevInfo inter-regional activities.

In addition, UNESCWA is encouraging ADITT members to become DevInfo Master Trainers by accomplishing various DevInfo-related activities to further enhance their skills. UNESCWA’s Statistics Division has developed a special website - ADITT Net (available at http://www.escwa.un.org/divisions/forums/devinfo/index.asp) - to provide a platform for team members to share plans, resources and discussions on DevInfo-related activities.

In other developments, UNESCWA, in collaboration with UNSD, organized an MDG monitoring workshop in December 2009. Five agencies participated and sat with each country to discuss MDG data discrepancies and data availability, which proved helpful and further boosted the application of DevInfo as a standard monitoring tool in the region. DevInfo activities planned in 2010 for the Arab region include the launch of the Arab GenInfo and Arab 2009 MDGInfo databases.

For more information on DevInfo activities in the Arab region, contact Neda Jafar at jafarn@un.org.