11-14 January 2021, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – A group of 97 senior officials and ambassadors from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change engaged in a four-day UNITAR High-Level e-Workshop to improve their skills and knowledge in environmental diplomacy, in the lead-up to this year’s Conference of Parties (COP26). The activity was made possible with the financial support of SIDA, Sweden’s government agency for development cooperation.

26 January 2021, Geneva, Switzerland - On 18 March, UNITAR and the Geneva-Tsinghua Initiative, host the third Geneva Trialogue edition, under the theme of ”Scaling Open Innovation for the SDGs“.

UNITAR and UN CC:Learn joined forces to deliver the Online Training Programme on Climate Change Diplomacy, at which 35 Kenyan diplomats, government officials, and civil society representatives were trained on climate diplomacy. The training took place between 13 November and 8 December 2020 and provided participants with knowledge on climate change and climate diplomacy, building their capacity for the upcoming climate negotiations at COP 26.

5 October 2020, Geneva, Switzerland – UNITAR, in partnership with the Geneva-Tsinghua Initiative, the University of Geneva and the Tsinghua University, launch the SDG Innovation Bootcamps, a series of short programmes (online or hybrid) aimed at a new generation of impact entrepreneurs, willing to collectively act in order to identify, delineate and address outstanding challenges for the SDGs, through open innovation.

24 September 2020, Geneva, Switzerland - On 24 September 2020, 50 participants took part in a four-hour webinar on the topic “Sustainable Development Goals in the Private Sector”, organized and implemented by UNITAR and the Global Institute of Excellence in Hong Kong.  In a short introduction, UNITAR’s executive director Nikil Seth explained how the Sustainable Development Goals and the private sector are ultimately connected and how the business sector has an immense influence on the impact of climate change and the ecological footprint. Especially now, in the midst of a global pandemic, Mr. Seth highlighted the urgent need to take action against the climate crisis and focus on water and energy efficiency, the protection of biodiversity, gender equality, sustainable infrastructures and much more.

18 September 2020, Geneva, Switzerland - On 21 September 2020, the University Global Coalition, in partnership with the United Nations, through UNITAR’s support and guidance, will host its first virtual gathering, after its successful launch in 2019. In light of the challenges brought by the recent crisis to implement and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this year’s gathering will focus on the following topic: The Role of Universities in Achieving the SDGs in the New Context: Building Back; Building Bridges.

On 14 July 2020, UNICEF, UNECA and UNITAR organized an online side event “Strengthening National Capacities for the World We Want – Embedding Evaluation in Voluntary National Reviews” during the virtual 2020 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The event aimed to explore and promote the use of evaluative thinking and evidence within Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs). Representatives from UNICEF, UNECA and UNITAR were joined by panelists from several African countries to share their experiences and the challenges and opportunities they have faced in their VNR and evaluation processes.

Launched on 20 May 2020, a new consortium project Crowd4SDG will aim to examine opportunities for leveraging citizen science for monitoring climate impacts and achieving climate resilience. It is Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action supported by the European Commission's Science with and for Society (SwafS) programme. In addition to UNITAR, the consortium coordinated by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) includes a number of other leading European research centers and University: Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Polytechnic University of Milan (POLIMI), Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity of University of Paris (UPD) and CERN.

UNITAR together with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and in collaboration with the custodian agencies as the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Women, the World Bank and the Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Centre of the International Monetary Fund (IMF - PFTAC) conducted two regional workshops for 14 Asia – Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) on Monitoring the Tier 1 and Tier 2 SDG indicators.

21 November 2019, Geneva, Switzerland - On 21 November 2019, UNITAR hosted the first meeting of UN SDG:Learn Steering Group in Geneva, organized together with the UN System Staff College (UNSSC). The Steering Group is composed of representatives of 51 partner organizations, making up 53 UN SDG:Learn partners in total with UNITAR and UNSSC. The main objective of the meeting was to jointly discuss the ways forward in terms of leveraging UN SDG:Learn to amplify each organizations’ efforts in serving the needs of their target audiences, sharing experiences and innovative approaches on delivering effective learning, as well as promoting synergies across the work of partners on the SDGs.