The COVID-19 pandemic is poised to have a devastatingly outsized impact; particularly to the seven Arab countries that remain locked in ongoing conflict or occupation.

This document presents “ESCWA's vision on the work modalities for producing, developing and implementing the Arab Information and Communication Technology Strategy (The Arab Digital Agenda)”. It proposes a new approach for joining efforts to launch a technical cooperation project by ESCWA’s Secretariat and the League of Arab States’ General Secretariat, Arab States members of the Arab working group on the Arab ICT strategy, representatives of the Arab ICT Ministers, with the participation and concerted efforts of concerned sister UN and Arab organizations.

ESCWA has launched a Climate/SDGs Debt Swap Initiative toward supporting debt relief and improving climate finance in member States of the Arab region that are facing high debt burdens. A Debt Swap Mechanism (DSM) has been developed in 2020 that aims to provide win-win-win solutions for debtors, creditors and donors/development partners that can utilize debt servicing payments for achieving climate-sensitive national development objectives in line with implementation of SDGs and Paris Agreement.

This toolkit provides a set of practical modules, skills, and tools necessary for formulating and implementing public policies and programmes based on equality. The toolkit also reviews the process of mainstreaming equality into policies and programmes and the conditions for their success.  In addition, it examines the importance, requirements and principles of a participatory based approach to policymaking and provides practical examples on how to mainstream equality in the policy evaluation process and during the reform of current social and economic policies. The toolkit also showcases a set of global experiences that have succeeded in mainstreaming equality within their socio-economic policies.