On 25 February 2014, UN Undersecretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf launched from Tunis a remarkable report entitled “Arab Integration: A 21st Century Development Imperative” with the participation of Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki, former Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and a crowd of political, economic, intellectual and public figures. Media representatives who took part in the ceremony received a press kit, which we will re-publish over five parts, in view of the importance of the issues the Report addresses.

By initiative of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) on International Women’s Day, 58 Arab figures from various intellectual backgrounds today decried violence against women in an appeal that they signed, cognizant of the challenges faced by women in the process of democratic transition in the Arab region. It was circulated in member countries undergoing political transition (Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen) as well as in the ESCWA host country, Lebanon. Below is the complete text of the appeal:

Beirut, 14 May 2019 (ESCWA)--Recent studies show that youth unemployment’s rates in the Arab region are twice as high as the global average and 40% of the Arab population is suffering from multi-dimensional poverty. In this context, a 2-day expert group meeting (EGM) at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in Beirut discussed “Leaving No One Behind: Reaching the Most Marginalized in Selected Countries in the Arab Region,” namely Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia.
 

The objective of this meeting is to present to the national project task force the final results of the comprehensive baseline mapping study for the energy situation of the building sector in Jordan. Members of the task force, which include representatives of relevant public & private stakeholders for the considered branches of activities, will be solicited to help in validating these final results and identifying areas requiring final revisions. The outputs of this mapping exercise shall constitute the basis for the remaining project activities and will help in defining the main axis and players for conducting the energy efficiency actions in the building sector.
The meeting will also present for discussion a methodology for periodic surveys of energy consumption patterns in the buildings' sector, based on a series of periodic surveys that the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (STEG) has been conducting since 1989. It is proposed that the methodology will be further developed and improved, in the context of the UNDA project, to be adopted, in both Jordan and Tunisia, as a formal approach for monitoring the evolution of energy consumption in the building sector and estimating the impacts of energy efficiency programs in the sector.
This national meeting is part of the activities scheduled in the UN Development Account (UNDA) project on “Up-scaling Energy Efficiency in the residential and services sectors in the Arab Region”.