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Report of the UNSDG Chair
on the Development Coordination Office

Partnerships

Innovative partnerships

Partnerships

Innovative partnerships

A full-time dedicated Resident Coordinator – and a new cadre of dedicated partnership officers— has helped improve partnerships for innovative programmatic results.

Scaling up Partnership efforts in countries and regions

More UNCTs are collectively engaging in scaled-up, ambitious, strategic partnerships.
  • kenya
    In Kenya, the Resident Coordinator, in close collaboration with the UNCT, is supporting the country’s “Silicon Savannah” – a partnership among the government, development partners, the private sector, philanthropic organizations, civil society and academia in Kenya and the Silicon Valley in the US to unlock investments for building skillsets and generating potential IT jobs.
  • brazil
    In Brazil, the UNCT has placed the SDGs at the centre of new partnerships with the Justice System and Public Prosecution Service and the National Confederation of Municipalities. The result is SDG localization in over 5,500 local governments reaching 200 million people.
  • barbados
    The Resident Coordinator and the UN multi-country team covering Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean countries have partnered with IFIs and the private sector to address the specific financing constraints of many Caribbean SIDS. A new private sector engagement strategy has galvanized support from the UN Global Compact Office, the EU and the Caribbean Development Bank.
  • benin
    In Benin, to prepare the CCA, the UNCT partnered with a mobile phone company foundation to conduct broad consultations. Using a toll-free number, over 100,000 people (including women, youth, people with disabilities and those living with HIV among others) could voice their views. One of many issues that came to light was the lack of birth certificates in certain areas and government agents stepped forward to help register more than 30,000 newborn children.

The UN-World Bank partnership is evolving around CCAs and Cooperation Frameworks.

Lebanon

In Lebanon, the two organizations are jointly conducting the CCA and the Systematic Country Diagnostic to define common understanding of strategic engagement on the 2030 Agenda. This is an initial step towards aligning the future Cooperation Framework and the first national development plan in three decades.

Coordinating a collective approach to partnership

DCO plays an important role in cultivating an environment that enables partnerships
  • Works closely with UNOP, the Global Compact and DESA
  • Supported the UNSDG in developing common minimum standards for multi-stakeholder engagement in the Cooperation Framework
  • Supported the UNSDG in shaping the first common approach to research and due diligence for business sector partnerships
  • Partnered with UN OCHA and UN PBSO to support humanitarian and peacebuilding interventions, with a focus on prevention in joint analysis, planning, and data sharing, including through information management systems of humanitarian and development partners.

Number of UNCT partnerships by type of partners

80%

Civil
society
UNCT partnerships increased with all different types of partners during 2019, especially partnerships with civil society, which grew by 80% compared to 2018

Number of Partnerships by SDG

Most adressed SDG
The thematic disaggregation of partnerships shows that partnerships increased in all SDGS. Gender Equality remains the SDG addressed by the most engagements.

In 2019, there was a 10% increase in the number of UNCTs building external partnerships for the SDGs

(109 UNCTs compared to 99 UNCTs in 2018).

  • Overall, the total number of partnerships for the SDGs jumped from 237 in 2018 to 338 in 2019, with a 43% boost.

  • 61%

    The number of UNCTs facilitating UN-led investments to support national SDG achievement surged from 61 in 2018 to 98 in 2019, a 61% increase.

  • Partnerships targeting specific goals increased for all 17 SDGs.