Civil servants’ capacity building and reskilling are fundamental for institutional development and for an effective public administration changes, mainly for MENA countries engaged in governance reforms. Quality and effectiveness of human resource and job competencies development is a critical determinant for viable structural and institutional changes, to the extent that governance and administrative reforms’ success are depended on the human resource policy for the Public Administration.

Brochure on the project “Promoting Food and Water Security Through Cooperation and Capacity Development in the Arab region”.

The first ESCWA Award on Advancing Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women was presented by Ms. Rima Khalaf, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCWA, to three staff members. The award is delivered for the first time and constitutes a milestone for ESCWA, which is adopting a holistic approach to mainstreaming gender perspectives in its plans, policies and programmes.

The Expert Group Meeting on Monitoring Progress on Governance amid Arab Political Transformation, organized by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in Beirut, Lebanon, on 11-12 June 2014, brought together international and regional experts, and senior government officials, who agreed that progress towards accountable, transparent and participatory governance in the region required a good monitoring tool at the national level.  Such a tool would be instrumental in enabling decision-makers to implement the policies and programmes needed to improve governance.