UNIDO Vision – Challenges and Opportunities facing the Arab Countries
The great diversity of the Arab countries requires new vision at the regional level as well as specific strategies at the sub-regional level
The members of the Arab Region are defined as follows:
- Arab States of the Gulf Subregion
- Arab States of West Asian Subregion
- African Arab Subregion
Of which comprise the:
- Arab Least Developed countries
The main vision of the Arab Programme is to strengthen and develop partnerships for sustainable industrial development with Arab countries through their national/regional institutions, the private sector/civil societies.
With this vision, in line with the Millennium Development Goals, UNIDO mobilizes and provides the resources, knowledge, skills, information and technology required to promote productive capacity, income opportunities and employment through private sector development, a competitive economy, energy, and a sound environment with special emphasis on least developed countries in the region. In its pursuit to improve the overall relevance and the impact of its services UNIDO has always acknowledged the importance of programmes for LDCs as the priority target of its technical assistance services. In line with the Arab Programme for LDCs, UNIDO has been expanding its cooperation with this group of countries that provides special focus on capacity-building, trade facilitation, international market access and private sector development. With the goal of achieving the Millennium Development Goals, UNIDO’s three priority areas need to be addressed with the utmost precedence, namely: a) Poverty Reduction through productive activities; b) Trade Capacity-Building; and c) Energy and Environment.
Accordingly, UNIDO has launched several integrated programmes and country services frameworks in the Arab region. The focus has been on:
- Sustainable productivity growth, principally in modernizing and improving industries by upgrading the agro-industrial sectors (textiles, food, leather fishery);
- Diffusing technology (production management, new equipment, skills advancement, training, information technology);
- Supporting international market access via trade facilitation – establishing export consortia, quality control, metrology, standards and certification services.
In the context of its activities on strengthening cooperation with Arab countries, the UNIDO Programme for the Arab Region has identified and undertaken numerous Country Needs Assessments and trade capacity-building programmes that have proven successful to the Programme’s efforts in providing the resources, knowledge, skills and technology that are required to promote productive capacity. With the aim of promoting sustainable industrial development inter alia through environmentally sound technologies and clean energy technology, the Programme supplies not only technical assistance, but also fosters a favourable business environment by linking the private sector with donors and business partners, Governments and fellow developmental agencies, regional developmental and financial institutions with the aim of increasing employment, income and value added.
In this context, the UNIDO programmatic approach in the Arab region focuses on the following priorities:
- To undertake programming missions and country needs assessments
- To assist and support the regional institutions by promoting new initiatives and programmes for technical cooperation based on country needs assessments
- To provide the appropriate support and initial screening of stand-alone project concepts
- To provide support to the UNIDO Field Offices and Desks on policy guidance, and make available to them the tools and methodologies needed to formulate technical cooperation activities
