UNESCWA Iraq Task Force has completed two management skills training workshops for the benefit of two groups of senior government and municipal officials from Erbil and Basrah. The two training workshops are part of the UN HABITAT project “Strengthening the Urban Sector in Iraq through Building Capacities in Municipal Planning and Management” that is funded by the UNDG Iraq Trust Fund. The participants of the two workshops will come back to follow-up modules at the end of the year.

Attending a two-week training course at UNESCWA, fourteen staff members from the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation (MoPDC) were trained on management topics that included strategic planning, change management, leadership, time management. This training formed the third and final training module implemented by UNESCWA on behalf of UNDP as part of its comprehensive support project for the benefit of the MoPDC. The training was conducted together with the International Management and Training Institute -IMTI (www.ymca-leb.org.lb).

To boost direct support for and to prepare Iraqi women for the upcoming elections, an UNESCWA workshop was held on 13 December on “Building A New Iraq: Women’s Role in the Political Process”. The workshop was organized by the UNESCWA Center for Women in cooperation with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Funding was provided by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Washington, DC.

Per request from the Iraqi Ministry, UNESCWA Iraq Task Force organized the transfer of a comprehensive collection of 1143 UNESCWA publications to the library of the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation and its associated institutions. The publications will allow Iraqi researchers and practitioners to tap on the resources published by UNESCWA, at a time access to such resources through alternative channels like the Internet is very limited in Iraq.