• India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the United Nations in India launched a  partnership aimed at sharing Indian development innovations with countries of the Global South based on their national priorities.

• The first tranche of four projects under the aegis of ‘India-UN Global Capacity Building Initiative’ was launched in an event in New Delhi on August 1.

India-UN Global Capacity Building Initiative

• The initiative was announced in September 2023 on the margins of 78th Session of United Nations General Assembly, following which the MEA and UN country team in India jointly worked to identify the projects and their implementation to foster south-south cooperation to accelerate SDG goals.

• Under the programme, the UN will leverage its worldwide reach to help connect Indian best practices and institutions with other countries to help accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

• Initiatives include a range of actions, from skills training and knowledge-exchanges to pilot projects in partner countries, implemented through the new ‘UN India SDG Country Fund’ as well as the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (ITEC).

• The ‘UN India SDG Country Fund’ was initiated through a foundational contribution generously made by the Gates Foundation.

• The ITEC is its flagship programme under which more than 12,000 training slots are provided to nearly 160 countries in more than 400 specialised courses every year, with more than 225,000 training slots done so far since its inception.

• The ‘India-UN Global Capacity Building Initiative’ is an extension of India’s capacity building expertise in technical and economic areas, onboarding UN agencies, to design demand-driven programmes in respective countries with an aim to support their human resources through specialised training in areas leading to make positive impact towards achieving of the SDGs.

In the first phase, four projects have been identified for implementation.

They are:

i) Rice Fortification and Supply Chain Management in Nepal with support of the World Food Programme.

ii) Digital Health Platform for Zambia and Lao PDR with support of UNDP.

iii) Census Preparedness in Belize, Barbados, St Kitts & Navies, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago with support of the UN Population Fund.

iv) Vocational Training Programme for South Sudan with support of UNESCO. 

• For these projects, ITEC training institutes have been identified and courses are expected to be implemented from September 2025.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)