In addition, a new partnership has emerged as UNITAR, UNDESA and UNDP have successfully designed and developed two training of trainer workshops on integrated policies for the SDGs for 10 African countries. The countries that took part in these workshops held from 20 to 26 June 2019 in Addis Ababa featured a diversity of contexts from LDC and/or SIDS status to countries in fragile situations.
The workshops have been an opportunity to review of the implications of policy coherence requirements in the context of national development planning processes and provide to participating government officials an overview of, and practical extracts from, the qualitative methodology already applied by UNDESA in a limited number of pilot countries. This methodology aims to help identify SDG entry points with highest systemic impact, resolve trade-offs between different policies and program areas through stakeholder engagement, as well as contribute to building joint ownership. It was complemented by an explanation of the quantitative approaches and modelling tools applied, for example, by UNDP and other UN agencies as part of the MAPS approach and of how and when the latter could complement the proposed qualitative, participatory methodology.
Based on this first experience, UNITAR and UNDESA will work together to update the ToT package and methodology and pilot-test the upgraded version in one additional region later this year. Furthermore, UNITAR, UNDESA and UNDP were requested by several countries to provide further support to their efforts to apply a combination of qualitative and quantitative tools for greater policy coherence and systemic impact across all SDGs adapted to reflect national circumstances and priorities.