Around 12 least developed countries (LDC) are scheduled to leave the category in coming years, more than doubling the number which have left the category in the 47 years since it was formed. Many of these potential graduates are concerned about losing access to the international support measures (ISMs) provided by the international community. After graduation, in some cases after a transition period, countries stand to face reduced support or forego access to support measures in trade, official development assistance and other areas such as travel support and reduced budgetary contributions to the UN. The loss of these benefits disincentivizes graduating LDCs, most of which are along the Belt and Road, from leaving the category, a process which is not automatic but is ultimately the sovereign decision of governments. The drop-off in international support also risks stalling development progress after graduation. LDC graduation and assistance for LDCs are mentioned in ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ approximately 44 times, particularly with a view to ‘leaving no-one behind’. Support for LDCs after they leave the category is an important way of helping these countries meet the SDGs by 2030.
The project will work with the governments of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal and Timor Leste, as well as international specialists and UN entities, to develop a set of proposals for post-graduation assistance. Some of these will be specific to the country concerned, and some generic – ie. applicable across the board. The proposals will partly aim at mitigating the potential impact of forfeiting existing ISMs – such as the loss of duty-free, quota-free market access under the European Everything But Arms Initiative – and will partly take the form of fresh measures to assist with the new development landscape following graduation, such as new infrastructure investment to support trade diversification. The key beneficiaries are thus the populations of these countries, totaling some 269 million people, intermediated through the Ministries of Planning, Trade, the Central Banks and private sector institutions. These will also be the prime entities involved with implementation in each country, alongside teams of national and international consultants overseen by UNDESA staff.
The project will first result in a concrete list, for each country, of new proposed assistance mechanisms for the post-graduation landscape. Communications and advocacy measures built into the project will aim at incorporating these mechanisms into international processes such as the forthcoming new Programme of Action for LDCs to be launched after 2020, and ideally some of the measures will be adopted by donors and trading partners. They will also be incorporated into government planning. Secondly, beyond the development and publicity of these measures, the project will strengthen policy frameworks and institutions for the adoption and use of selected assistance mechanisms in target countries.
Analysis and recommendations will be developed and published in an in-depth analytical study. Subject to government priorities and ratification, they will be included in the government planning documents of target countries, supported by development partners, and implemented with a view to enhancing sustainable development in the post-graduation era. An anticipated secondary outcome will be to incentivize the next graduating LDCs to leave the category, given new assurances of support.

The Office of Intergovernmental Support and Coordination for Sustainable Development (OISC/DESA) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), United Nations is continuously developing its programme of capacity development related to the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) with a view to strengthen the capacities of countries presenting their VNR at the high-level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF) in 2022 and 2023.
The voluntary national reviews (VNRs) aim to facilitate the sharing of experiences, including successes, challenges and lessons learned, with a view to accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. As stipulated in paragraph 84 of the 2030 Agenda, regular reviews by the HLPF are to be voluntary, state-led, undertaken by both developed and developing countries, and involve multiple stakeholders. Participation during the actual presentations of the VNRs by various countries provides valuable opportunities when lessons, experiences and solutions from the different presenters are shared, allowing the countries’ participants to learn, bring these lessons learned/experiences/solutions back 
to their countries, try them out, and adapt them to their situation in their efforts to implement their plans. VNRs are also mandated to lead to the launching of partnerships. At the 2016 HLPF - the first HLPF since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs - 22 countries conducted voluntary reviews. Since this first VNR exercise, the number of countries conducting VNRs has steadily grown. Out of 45 countries that will be presenting their VNRs at 2022 HLPF under the auspices of ECOSOC, there are 12 first time presenters, 28 second time presenters, 3 third time presenters and 2 fourth time presenters. For the 2023 HLPF, it is expected that 30 – 40 countries will conduct their VNRs. The preparations of the VNRs thus provide the opportunity for countries to review the range of policies and efforts related to the 2030 Agenda. VNRs also provide a unique opportunity to drive institutional change towards ‘whole-of-government’ and ‘whole-of-society’ approaches and to bolster capacity-building at the national level to implement the 2030 Agenda. The workshops will provide capacity building support for countries presenting their VNRs by allowing peer learning on core issues related to adapting policies and institutions to the SDGs, and sharing lessons learned from the VNRs for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. It will provide the opportunity for VNR countries to learn from each other and facilitate future peer learning amongst government officials. The first stage of the project will focus on organizing the Second Global VNR Workshop to be held in Gaborone, Botswana (11 – 12 April 2022). At the second stage of the project, the First Global VNR Workshop for 2023 will be organized in Italy (October 2022). It is proposed that a total budget of US$ 220,000.00 be provided for this project for related contractual services, general operating and other direct costs and travel expenses.

Micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) contribute to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  MSMEs help reduce levels of poverty through job creation and economic growth, they are key drivers of employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship for women, youth and groups in vulnerable situations, and also make up the majority of the world’s food producers and ensure sustainable food production systems, they play a critical role in closing the gender gap as they ensure women’s full and effective participation in the economy and in society. Despite their noted contributions to the achievement of the SDGs, MSMEs, especially women and youth-owned enterprises, have been hit the hardest by the negative socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The urgent need to enhance MSME resilience has been prioritized in the General Assembly resolution A/RES/74/270 ‘Global Solidarity to fight the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)’ and the Secretary-General’s report ‘Shared responsibility, global solidarity: Responding to the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic’. In accordance with official expressions of interest from pilot countries, the project will support the implementation of integrated and inclusive policy measures that enhance MSME resilience, including building an enabling policy environment and improving capacity and skills among MSME entrepreneurs. It will build the capacity of policymakers to design and implement effective policy measures tailormade to demands of MSME entrepreneurs, as well as improve the capacity of MSME entrepreneurs, particularly women and youth MSME entrepreneurs, expanding their access to financial resources, high-value market opportunities and innovative techniques that enhance resilience. Capacity building workshops, policy dialogue, technical trainings and study tours will be delivered to build the capacities of policymakers to formulate and implement structural transformation initiatives that include MSMEs as well as enhance the abilities of MSME entrepreneurs to access and adopt good practices and innovations conducive for MSME resilience. The project will deliver guidelines, toolkits and knowledge products to disseminate experience and good practices on MSME resilience for building forward better among pilot countries. It will endeavor to develop and promote a community of practice (CoP), targeting policymakers, MSME entrepreneurs and other stakeholders committed to fostering MSME resilience and building forward back from both project pilot countries, as well as countries willing to contribute to the project with their expertise and resources. To ensure its long-term sustainability, the project will leverage existing partnerships with government counterparts, Resident Coordinators’ Offices, UN Country Teams and private sector partners, which DSDG/DESA has built through implementing the current MSME project from 2017. To scale up sustained impact, the project will pursue opportunities to align with inter-governmental process, global and regional initiatives, such as the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in the Asia-Pacific region, creating synergies and leveraging resources for continued implementation of project achievements beyond its lifecycle. MSME entrepreneurs, in particular women and youth MSME entrepreneurs, are the targeted beneficiaries of this project. Project stakeholders include government authorities, development partners, private sector, civil society and research institutions. Eventually, by enhancing MSME resilience, the project will expand MSME contribution to shared prosperity, sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth, sustainable patterns of production and consumption, reductions in inequality, and solidarity and cooperation among countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. 

The project aims to support developing countries in protecting and broadening their tax base by strengthening the capacity of their National Tax Administrations and Ministries of Finance to effectively negotiate, implement and administer double tax treaties, as well as by strengthening their capacity to identify, assess and implement the most suitable instruments to protect and broaden their tax base. This will help improve the investment climate and combat tax evasion, and thus increase tax revenues for investment in sustainable development.Within the context of current activities and ongoing international efforts, FfDO aims to provide continuity to the work already carried out and, at the same time, respond to the specific demands of developing countries for assistance in addressing issues related to international tax cooperation, in particular with respect to base erosion and profit shifting. The project will cover the translation into French of materials and publications developed by FfDO (available free of charge to tax officials from developing countries), including the Online Primer on Double Tax Treaties, the Online Primer on Transfer Pricing and the updated revision of the United Nations Handbook on Selected Issues in Protecting the Tax Base of Developing Countries, to ensure their wider accessibility to tax officials from Francophone countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Building on these materials, as well as through the development of ad-hoc resources, FfDO will deliver three capacity development workshops under this project, aimed to provide tax officials from developing countries with a wide range of tools to address their capacity development gaps in the area of international tax cooperation and protection of the tax base. In the area of double tax treaties, FfDO will continue cooperating with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to hold the 3rd UN-OECD Workshop on the Negotiation of Double Tax Treaties, a practical seminar with the purpose of providing participants with first-hand experience on the negotiation of bilateral tax treaties, as well as knowledge about problems commonly encountered in interpreting and applying them. This event will be followed by a UN Workshop on the Administration of Double Tax Treaties for Developing Countries, more specifically aimed at strengthening capacity in implementing the provisions contained in double tax treaties, with the ultimate goal to prevent the erosion of the tax base of developing countries due to the inefficient administration of tax treaties. To provide practical guidance on how to identify and assess the most suitable instruments to protect and broaden the tax base of developing countries, FfDO will then deliver a UN Workshop on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting for Developing Countries. This capacity development event will analyse a range of specific topics related to base erosion that are of particular relevance to developing countries, including the taxation of services, base-eroding payments of interest, royalties and other rents, general anti-avoidance rules, and the taxation of the extractive industries.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, calls for special attention be given to Small Island Developing States (SIDS), as they face unique vulnerabilities in their pursuit of sustainable development. A key request from the outcome of the 2014 Third International Conference on SIDS - the SAMOA Pathway - was the establishment of the SIDS Partnership Framework, designed to monitor progress of existing, and stimulate the launch of new, genuine and durable partnerships for the sustainable development of SIDS. Guided by a member States driven Steering Committee, the framework has since its launch ensured that SIDS partnerships have remained high on the UN’s agenda, providing a multi-stakeholder platform for reviewing progress made by SIDS partnerships, and for sharing of good practices and lessons learned among all stakeholders, on an annual basis.There is a need to ensure the monitoring process of SIDS partnerships includes all relevant stakeholders. In addition, to ensuring sustainability and longevity, it is crucial to raise the capacity of stakeholders in SIDS in developing and forging new, genuine and durable partnerships. Member states have called upon UN DESA and the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS) to enhance the necessary analytical and advocacy support for the work of the Steering Committee, and, in particular, to ensure an annual action-oriented, results-focused Global Multi-Stakeholder Small Island Developing States Partnership Dialogue.

The project is expected to result in an in-depth analysis of existing SIDS partnerships, a strengthened process for monitoring of SIDS partnerships on national, regional and global level, and an increased capacity of all relevant stakeholders in the development of durable multi-stakeholder partnerships for SIDS.

The project will be carried out by the Division for Sustainable Development Goals of UN DESA through a broad and inclusive consultation process with SIDS and relevant experts and stakeholders.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an agenda for prosperity, peace and partnership. It sets out 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which jointly constitutes a comprehensive plan of action to eradicate poverty and ensure sustainable development. The SDGs include a first-ever universal goal on energy (SDG7) that calls to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all" with targets on universal energy access, renewable energy, energy efficiency and means of implementation. The objective of this project is to enhance capacities, dialogues and South-South cooperation in support of effective review, follow-up and implementation of SDG7 in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In view of the first global review of the SDG7 at the High Level Political Forum in 2018, this project will also be designed to leverage the HLPF for enhancing partnerships and South-South cooperation, with a special attention to energy’s interlinkages with other SDGs. The project will be implemented by the Division for Sustainable Development, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), in collaboration with relevant UN organizations, for an initial period of two years.

The project aims at protecting and broadening the tax base of developing countries in Africa by strengthening the capacity of their National Tax Administrations (NTAs) and Ministries of Finance (MoFs) to effectively apply double tax treaties, drawing on the United Nations Model Double Taxation Convention between Developed and Developing Countries (UN Model). This will help improve the investment climate and combat tax evasion, and thus increase tax revenues for investment in sustainable development. During the first phase of the project, a group of international tax experts will produce a draft of an updated and expanded revision of the United Nations Handbook on Selected Issues in Protecting the Tax Base of Developing Countries (the Handbook), drawing on the latest experiences and pressing concerns of developing countries on tax base protection issues, as expressed by representatives of NTAs and MoFs in recently held meetings and workshops organized by FfDO. To operationalize the guidance contained in the Handbook and make it accessible to a broader audience of stakeholders in developing countries, the experts will complement the revised Handbook with hands-on toolkits, called Practical Portfolios, on relevant tax base protection topics. Feedback and inputs on the revision and expansion of the Handbook, as well as on the Practical Portfolios, will be sought through the capacity development Workshop on Double Tax Treaties and Base Eroding Payments for Developing Countries. This activity will take place in Nairobi in the first quarter of 2017 and benefit from additional sources of UN funding (including through the United Nations Development Account project No. 1415A). The workshop will aim at increasing awareness and understanding of the UN Model among tax officials in NTAs and MoFs of developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and offer an ideal opportunity to discuss relevant BEPS-related issues covered in the Handbook and in the Practical Portfolios.
A second Workshop on Practical Issues in Protecting the Tax Base of Developing Countries will take place in Addis Ababa in the third quarter of 2017, with a view to further strengthen the capacity of NTAs and MoFs officials from Sub-Saharan African countries. The final updated edition of the Handbook and the Practical Portfolios will be officially launched on the occasion of this workshop.

The Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) Initiative is a new partnership that seeks to accelerate existing efforts to generate comparable gender indicators on health, education, employment, entrepreneurship and asset ownership. This initiative was launched in May 2011 by the United States at the OECD Ministerial Session on Gender and Development and builds on the work of the United Nations Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Gender Statistics. 2. In 1995, the UN Beijing Platform for Action identified 12 critical areas of concern, and urged Governments to regularly collect statistics related to each of these areas, to serve as a basis for monitoring progress and evaluating the impact of policies. Despite this and other commitments in intergovernmental processes, there remain major gaps in the availability, quality and comparability of gender statistics. The EDGE initiative aims to fill some of these gaps.3. Initially, this initiative will cover the period from July 2012 to December 2015. Activities during this first phase will include three elements: (1) the development of a platform for international data and metadata compilation covering basic health, education and employment indicators; (2) the development of standards and guidelines for measuring entrepreneurship and assets indicators; and (3) piloting data collection on entrepreneurship and assets in several countries.4. This initiative contributes to implementing UN Women’s management results framework, as outlined in UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2011-2013, specifically to institutionalize a strong culture of results-based management, reporting, knowledge management and evaluation and to enhance organizational effectiveness. It also contributes to the UN Statistics Division’s global gender statistics programme, including its components of international data compilation and development of metadata, as requested by the UN Statistical Commission. 5. Consistent with these results, and the clear imperative for evidence-based policy-making, the longer-term aim of this initiative is to gradually build a cost-effective and sustainable model to integrate gender issues into regular statistical production and to build countries’ capacity to produce gender data in all policy areas. For example, while this first phase focuses initially on the aforementioned areas, the same model could be used to collect data on important yet often neglected areas such as violence against women. 6. To achieve these goals, the proposed initiative will establish a participatory mechanism that will be guided by a steering committee, composed of members of the UN Statistical Commission mandated Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Gender Statistics, regional commissions, regional development banks and key agencies that coordinate statistical work including the World Bank and the OECD. In particular, the World Bank will play a key role in helping developing countries mainstream gender statistics into national statistical systems, including strengthening data collection necessary to inform critical gender policy issues. The OECD, on the basis of their extensive work on indicators on gender equality in education, employment and entrepreneurship, will contribute to data compilation by sharing statistics and metadata, and will contribute to the methodological work related to the development of new indicators, particularly in the area of women’s entrepreneurship. The project will also benefit from strong guidance from the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). To create further leverage, this initiative will also foster a culture of dynamic knowledge sharing, by promoting networking and facilitating technical collaboration between project countries. 7. The estimated cost of the programme over three years is approximately US$ 6,000,000 which will include costs related to methodological development of international standards for measuring entrepreneurship and asset ownership, with related capacity building and pilot data collection in five countries. Once these standards are developed, we anticipate that data collection in each additional country not included during the first phase will cost on average approximately US$ 150,000 to cover training, data processing, data analysis and publication and dissemination of results. 8. Given that available funds currently consist of US$ 3.66 million, the initial budget covers five pilot countries and a reduced scope for some planned activities. However, resource mobilisation efforts are underway to generate additional funds, which will enable the full EDGE programme, including 10 pilot countries, to be implemented.

Raise awareness and strengthen capacities of major groups and other stakeholders, in particular in developing countries, to effectively participate in the review and implementation of the 2030 Agenda on sustainable Development

The objective of the project is to strengthen the capacity of Governments, civil society organizations and sport associations/federations, including Paralympic committees and national special Olympic organizations in the target countries to jointly elaborate plans for the full and effective inclusion of persons with disabilities, with a specific focus on autism, in society through sport. At the same time, the project aims at developing the skills of sport instructors in the field of running to train young people with autism and their family members and monitor their progress in sporting activities over time.