The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) is supporting Afghanistan by building regional and strategic partnerships in its transition from being a conflict-affected state to being a developmental one. The main aim is to bring about real changes in the lives of its people.
Being a landlocked and least developed country, Afghanistan is facing difficulties in accessing regional and global markets. UN-ESCAP, which is the regional development arm of the United Nations, is helping Afghanistan integrate with global economy by imparting skills and training its officials.
The Delhi chapter of UN-ESCAP is facilitating capacity building programmes and also providing technical assistance to Afghanistan.
Currently, it is busy implementing the UN-sponsored Istanbul, Vienna and Almaty programmes of action for Afghanistan. The Delhi office of UN-ESCAP has been working with Afghan officials in the implementation of five programmes for the past two years.
The objective of the programmes is to help landlocked developing countries like Afghanistan overcome their inherent geographical difficulties and support their efforts to eradicate poverty, sustain economic growth and help them integrate into the world.
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"Afghanistan is very important and landlocked and least developed country of this region and ESCAP when it set up in south and south west Asia office the idea was to help and support the least developed countries of the south Asia which includes Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Of these Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan are also landlocked countries. There are special programmes in UN for assisting landlocked countries and least developed countries", said, Nagesh Kumar, UN-ESCAP Director
The main priority of UN-ESCAP is to help Afghanistan achieve inclusive and sustainable economic growth. It is also helping Afghanistan to become member of WTO which will help the war-ravaged country to increase bilateral and regional trade.
"For Afghanistan in particular we have developed a programme of capacity building which assists countries approach towards WTO (WORLD Trade Organization), you know Afghanistan has to be the part of the global economy and it has to be the member of the multilateral global system to be able to accesses the opportunities arising in the world economy so and it had applied many years ago to become the member of WTO (World Trade Organization) that process was speeded up in the last two years and Afghanistan is in the verge of becoming the member of WTO", said, Nagesh Kumar, UN-ESCAP Director.
Officials from Afghanistan keep on coming to India in batches. They are exposed to functioning of several important institutions involved in nation-building and promotion of trade and regulatory work. The Delhi arm of UN-ESCAP also organises workshops regularly for the visiting officials.
"As far as the feedback that we received from the participants when they come for capacity building programmes they have found very useful not only the materials that was given to them but also interactions and exposure to the institutions that are in India so they are learning and establishing contacts with institutions to build similar institutions through technical assistance in Afghanistan itself", said, Nagesh Kumar, UN-ESCAP Director.
India, on its part, has undertaken several developmental projects in Afghanistan for developing infrastructure and connectivity. It is also involved in exposing people of Afghanistan to higher education and better healthcare.
