DESA News

Volume 18, No.05 - May 2014

Trends and analysis


ICTs – game changer for development beyond 2015

girl_cellHigh-Level Event of the General Assembly “Contributions of North-South, South-South, Triangular Cooperation, and ICTs for Development to the implementation of the Post-2015 Development Agenda” will take place on 21-22 of May

The post-2015 development agenda, unified in focus and universal in form, will require more effective, strengthened and improved modes of development cooperation to support its implementation. Scientific and technological cooperation will be fundamental for increasing innovation, strengthening environmental protection and driving social and economic development worldwide.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have a specific potential to be a game changer for all countries’ efforts to achieve sustainable development. There is increasing evidence that widespread access, transfer of, building capacity to utilize at the national level, and use of ICTs can help eradicate poverty, accelerate the achievement of several of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), such as those aimed towards achieving gender equality, ensuring environmental sustainability and combating diseases.

Development cooperation beyond 2015 will have to increase and continue to support developing countries, with a special emphasis in poor and vulnerable communities facing sustainable development challenges, while mobilizing additional resources to address global challenges.

For such reasons, the Outcome Document of the Special Event to Follow-Up Efforts to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals held on 25 September 2013, underscored the central role of a strengthened global partnership for development and the need to honor previous developmental commitments. This was further reinforced and elaborated in the resolution entitled Follow-up to the International Conference on Financing for Development adopted in December 2013.

South-South Cooperation is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to North-South Cooperation, which will remain the primary form of cooperation between countries of the North and South. The principles of South-South Cooperation have been defined in the Nairobi Outcome document of the UN High-level Conference on South-South Cooperation and further elaborated through relevant General Assembly resolutions. South-South and triangular cooperation vary greatly in approaches and modalities, yet their importance have increased manifold since the year 2000 and are set to be important auxiliary tools for catalyzing implementation efforts among developing countries beyond 2015.

The high-level event will consist of one plenary and two interactive multi-stakeholder panel discussions. It will focus on mobilizing political commitment for the means of implementation and to promote the scaling-up of the impact of all forms of cooperation in the post-2015 development agenda. It also aims to promote the urgent implementation of commitments under the global partnership for development and to identify how lCTs can be best used to bridge technology divides among countries.

For more information:

High-Level Event of the General Assembly “Contributions of North-South, South-South, Triangular Cooperation, and ICTs for Development to the implementation of the Post-2015 Development Agenda”

 

Strengthening collection of international trade data

tradestatisticsRegional Seminar on International Trade Statistics: Implementation of recommendations will take place on 12-16 May at the African Union Commission (AUC) Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The seminar is organized jointly by the AUC and UN DESA’s Statistics Division in collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) with the objective to strengthen the capacity of the national statistical systems of countries throughout the African continent in statistics of international trade in goods and services. This activity forms a significant part of the broader effort to improve integrated economic statistics through the implementation of the 2008 System of National Accounts.

The event will bring together national experts in the compilation of international merchandise trade statistics (IMTS), statistics of international trade in services (SITS), and the goods and services accounts of the balance of payments. The agenda is meant to elicit hands-on discussion and focuses on the status and, especially, the challenges encountered in the implementation of the international recommendations in these fields. A specific item on the agenda is the report of the results of the IMTS quality assessment questionnaire, along with selected issues of concern. Other topics are bridging IMTS and BOP, informal cross border trade, linking trade and the business register, FATS, and data dissemination. The joint activity is an important component in the overall effort to improve evidence-based policy making in Africa.

For more information: Calendar of Events of UN DESA’s Statistics Division