Iraqi Minister for Human Rights Wijdan Mikhail said today, “UNESCWA provides major support for her Ministry and the activities it intends to undertake.” She was speaking following her visit this afternoon to the UNESCWA headquarters in Riad el Solh Square, where she met with Executive Secretary Mervat Tallawy. The meeting was also attended by Mr. Antoine Mansour, head of UNESCWA’s Unit for Conflict Related Issues (ECRI).

As frontier technologies led by Artificial Intelligence and Big Data which are enabled by connectivity and internet of everything are becoming the fashionable indicator of modernity, and are borderless crossing geographical and political boundaries, there is a normal tendency to catch the wave and capture part of the huge claimed advantages especially towards accelerating the achievement of the SDGs

Upon the invitation of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Centre, a group of Arab thinkers discussed on 17 June 2014 the flagship report produced by ESCWA and entitled “Arab Integration: A 21st Century Development Imperative” at the Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel, Beirut.

Following an introduction by Senior Associate at the Carnegie Middle East Centre Maha Yahya, the meeting opened with the statements of United Nations Under-Secretary-General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf, and former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

UNESCWA Iraq Task Force has completed two follow-up 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. These two workshops come as follow-up modules to two earlier ones organized by UNESCWA under the same partnership with UN HABITAT in August/September 2005.