Context
The Population Division’s activity in the area of Capacity Development seek to build upon the Division’s role as the organizational unit of the Secretariat with the analytical and normative mandate in the field of population.
Goals
The primary focus of the programme of Capacity Development is to build and strengthen the capacity of developing countries and countries in transition to analyze and evaluate demographic information for the formulation and implementation of strategies and policies related to population and development.
Innovative Approaches
Currently, the Division focuses on developing web-based tools and providing online access to training materials.
Demopaedia
The Population Division’s Capacity Development programme supported the development of an innovative online Wiki-based multilingual encyclopedic demographic dictionary, Demopaedia, which aims to promote international cooperation by providing a common conceptual reference framework in many different languages. Demopaedia is built around the correspondence of technical demographic terminology in different languages; fourteen language modules are under development, including those in the six official UN languages. The Division and the French National Committee of the International Union for Scientific Study of Population have co-organized a training workshop on Demopaedia.
E-platform for Demographic Analysis
An additional step in improving the accessibility of training materials is this section of the Division’s website which contains the cross-referenced collection of demographic manuals developed by the Population Division over a long period of time.
Capacity Development in National Transfer Accounts
DESA-Population Division is implementing, in partnership with the regional commissions for Latin America and the Caribbean ECLAC) Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and Western Asia (ESCWA) a project entitled: "Strengthening capacity of national policy analysts in the social and economic sectors of developing countries in the production and use of National Transfer Accounts", funded by the Development Account.
An expert meeting was held during 6-7 December of 2011 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to discuss the contents and structure of the NTA manual, an important output of the project. Also, two training workshops for professionals from developing countries have been carried out: one for 8 trainees from ESCWA countries (Jordan and Palestine) in Amman, Jordan, 23-26 July 2012, and an inter-regional workshop held in Bangkok, Thailand, 17-20 September 2012, given to 15 trainees from the 6 beneficiary countries of the project (China, Thailand, Jordan, Palestine, Argentina and El Salvador), plus three additional self-financed trainees from Egypt, Turkey and the Republic of Korea. The project will also result in the publication of the NTA manual, scheduled for June 2013.