Logistics

 

Agenda

 

Participants

 

Training material

 

Presentations

“Assessing Development Strategies to Achieve the MDGs in the Arab Region” is a project aimed at evaluating and recommending various strategic options that would ensure the timely achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the Arab region. Empirical investigations of MDG costing and financing are planned, using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling as the anchoring methodology. A combination of the latter with methods at the micro level is expected to enable proper analysis of the determinants of MDG achievement, on the one hand, and the effect of achieving goals in education, health, and water and sanitation on poverty and income inequality, on the other.

To initiate the project’s activities with a first-tier group of 5 countries (i.e., Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen) and with other countries of the region as observers, the inception and first training workshop is planned for 2-5 April, 2007 in Cairo. This first workshop is organized by the Development Policy and Analysis Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA/DPAD) and the Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) of UNDP, in close collaboration with the League of Arab States (LAS) and the World Bank.

The main objectives of the workshop are to:

• introduce the project’s objectives and methodology;
• define the milestones and timeframe of the project;
• provide country teams with training in the project’s methodology;
• identify needs for tailoring the methodology to country-specific conditions;
• identify prerequisites for the successful implementation of the project, particularly regarding country-team organization and data availability and compilation; and
• familiarise participants with the intended outcomes of the project and their potential uses, in terms of country-study results, policymaking, and sustainability of capacity-building.