16 – 20 July 2018, Madrid, Spain – As a continuation of our long-standing collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), UNITAR delivered a five-day training workshop in Madrid on Public Diplomacy. The workshop was attended by 17 Saudi Arabian Diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The event took place as part of the numerous training workshops UNITAR will be delivering across 2018 for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Ambassadors and representatives of Permanent Missions in Geneva were invited to join our 5th Friends of UNITAR Meeting, to learn more about UNITAR, its activities and our new Strategic Framework 2018 - 2021.

11 July 2018 - The 2018 High-Level Political Forum has provided space for representatives of the Higher Education Institutes to share best practices, innovative approaches and discuss challenges as Universities embrace the 2030 Agenda and start mainstreaming the SDGs in their curricular, research activities and programmes. The last panel of the HESI Global Day was chaired by UNITAR Executive Director Nikhil Seth and included Secretary-General of the Association of the Commonwealth Universities, and representatives of the University of Geneva, Tecnologico de Monterrey, University of Pennsylvania, University of Papua New Guinea, and SDSN.

UNITAR and UNSD launched their new data tool StaTact during an official side event of the HLPF2018 on 11 July 2018 in New York. The side event featured experiences of the three pilot countries and was opened by UNITAR Executive Director Mr. Nikhil Seth and Director of UN Statistics Division Mr. Stefan Schweinfest.

Following the successful piloting of StaTact with 14 African and Asian countries using regional format, StaTact has now been rolled out at national level. Suriname became the first pilot country to have organized a national StaTact workshop to address critical data gaps and plan actions in support of SDG monitoring over the next 12 months. This is also the first pilot addressing the special needs of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean region.

For the first time, UNITAR partners with a private company to build a core set of knowledge that will help promote conservation, restoration and safeguarding of our planet, while encouraging Danone employees to take concrete action. Through UN CC:Learn, UNITAR and Danone will develop a learning program on climate change for Danone employees.

24 May 2018, Geneva, Switzerland - UNITAR has entered into a new partnership with the International Development Law Organization(IDLO), the only intergovernmental organization exclusively devoted to promoting the rule of law. The new cooperation agreement was signed by UNITAR’s Executive Director, Nikhil Seth and IDLO’s Director-General, Irene Khan and it will be a foundation for collaboration on capacity development initiatives in the justice and legal sectors.

United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) organized a workshop titled “Climate Change and the Paris Agreement: Challenges and Expectations” conducted by Professor Narinder Kakar, the Permanent Observer for the United Nations mandated University for Peace, and Mr. Santiago Villalpando, the Chief of the Treaty Section of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs. Professor Kakar also serves as Director and Adjunct Professor on UN Environmental Diplomacy Programme at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law of Pace University. The workshop began with a few opening remarks on the importance of the Paris Agreement by Mr. Pelayo Alvarez, who also thanked Professor Kakar and Mr. Villalpando for all their efforts in preparation for the workshop. He then gave participants a brief summary of what to expect from the workshop.

4 April 2018, Geneva, Switzerland - The StaTact came to Africa last week when 10 countries participated in its roll-out during dedicated regional workshops. UNITAR and UN Statistics Division teamed up with UNECA African Centre for Statistics and UNDP to deliver two two-day workshops - one in English and one in French – with a focus on the governance of data ecosystems for the SDGs. The first workshop brought together government officials from Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Sudan, and Uganda representing National Statistical Offices, Planning Ministries, selected line Ministries and non-traditional data sources. The second workshop used a similar format with participants from Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Madagascar, Mauritania, and Togo.

“While donors nowadays emphasize on sustainable development, the finance of such development is becoming scarcer and scarcer. For this reason, governments will need to shift away from traditional external donor funding and move towards more sustainable finance mechanisms that can be allocated and managed in-country.”