UN DESA provides capacity development services to UN Member States through a broad range of modalities, including policy advisory services, the organization of training and workshops, as well as expert group meetings, among other things. 

It also hosts a variety of global knowledge platforms that provide access to analytical tools, manuals, best practices as well as a Digital Learning Center with learning resources such as self-paced courses, videos and more.  

These products, resources, and services build on the Department's extensive normative and analytical work to address a broad range of capacity development areas essential to the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda.  

These are:  

1. Policy coherence – by strengthening national capacities to formulate mutually reinforcing policies across sectors and government departments so that policies work together to achieve national development goals effectively. Assistance in this area involves training government officials in using different quantitative models and other analytical tools to analyze synergies and trade-offs across policy areas to inform policy decisions. 

2. Social Integration and inclusion of vulnerable groups – by strengthening mechanisms and policies for social inclusion to give disadvantaged social groups a voice in policy making and implementation so that no one is left behind. This includes assisting national stakeholders using tools and methodologies to produce and collect data on vulnerable social groups. 

3. Competent Institutions and integrated, inclusive approaches – by strengthening national capacities to develop effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions equipped to implement the 2030 Agenda. This includes assisting national stakeholders in employing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and e-government solutions for public service delivery as well as multi-stakeholder, “whole-of-government,” and “whole-of-society” approaches for policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. 

4. Evidence-based policy – by building regional and national capacities for data production, collection, disaggregation, and analysis, and by modernizing and strengthening national statistical systems to support evidence-based policy-making, monitoring, assessment, and reporting related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This includes developing international statistical standards and methodologies in economic, social, environmental, and demographic statistics, environmental accounting, and guidance on geospatial data infrastructure and related standards. 

5. Means of implementation – by strengthening domestic resource mobilization systems (e.g., taxation and cooperative social systems); by supporting the development of Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFFs) as well as financing mechanisms for Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) and by enhancing national capacities to effectively use multilateral trade mechanisms such as international support measures for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). 

Learn more about our work in the CD brochure.