FOREWORD This is the second edition of the Trade Capacity Building Inter-agency Resource Guide, a publication that has proven to be very successful since its first printing in 2008. More than 2,500 copies have been printed and distributed since then, in addition to numerous downloads from the UNIDO website. The genesis of the Resource Guide was the decision by the High-level Committee on Programmes of the United Nations System’s Chief Executives Board (CEB) to establish a task force of its member organizations to elaborate a common framework for coordinated action in the field of economic development. This task force agreed that the first step in this process should be to identify the wide range of UN System services related to trade capacity building that are available to developing countries, and to make this information widely available in a user-friendly publication. The Resource Guide was primarily targeted at the Resident Coordinators, the members of the UN Country Teams in each developing country, and public and private sector officials in the countries that the UN works in. It has become a major tool for the development of country and regional technical assistance programmes in the One UN Coherence efforts, including the United Nations Development Assistance Framework’s joint programmes. The Resource Guide has also proven useful for the UN agencies themselves, to show clearly in which areas of trade capacity building each agency works, the specific types of services provided, and sources of additional information about those services, making it easier to coordinate activities and avoid overlap. I am most pleased to see that the Resource Guide has attracted the interest of a wide range of development partners and actors, now reaching far beyond the UN System. The success of the first edition led to demands for the inclusion of other development partners, and the 2010 edition now includes four additional UN agencies, five regional development banks, the OECD, and 24 OECD DAC bilateral development partners. The process of developing the Resource Guide has also played a catalytic role in increasing the level of UN coordination of capacity building in the trade and productive sectors at the country level. UN agencies are now routinely coordinating country-level technical assistance programming and implementation activities, including in the “Delivering as One” pilot countries, with the support of the Trade and Productive Sectors Cluster, which is a recent CEB-mandated working group led by UNCTAD. I would like to thank all the contributing organizations and development partners for their efforts in making this publication such an essential tool for supporting trade capacity building. I especially thank UNIDO, which has coordinated the preparation and editing of both editions of the Resource Guide, as well as the Government of Sweden, which generously provided the funding for the 2010 edition.
Juan Somavia Chairman High Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP)
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