Background
Member States have recognized that part of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is the adoption of new, transformative and innovative approaches to integrate sustainability into national development planning, policies, budgets, law, institutions and monitoring and accountability frameworks. Doing so will require considerable individual, institutional, analytical and statistical capacities to address the complexity and cross-cutting nature of the sustainable development challenges in a coherent and integrated fashion. While countries have made important strides in some of these areas, the challenges remain enormous. For this reason, capacity development is a central requirement to advancing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development.
In that regard, the regular programme of technical cooperation (RPTC), established by the General Assembly in its resolution 58 (I) in 1946, serves to support developing countries, least developed countries, countries with economies in transition and countries emerging from conflict in their capacity development efforts. Currently, those efforts are geared towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals and other internationally agreed development goals, and the outcomes of United Nations conferences and summits. DESA’s RPTC portfolio is managed by the Capacity Development Programme Management Office (CDPMO).
The broad objective of the Regular Programme of Technical Cooperation (RPTC) is to support and advance processes aimed at developing the capacity of Governments to formulate and implement policies for sustainable economic and social development. It allows a fast and flexible response to requests of Member States for short-term assistance to meet small-scale capacity development-related challenges. The RPTC enables more agile programming and often plays a catalytic role leading to longer-term formulation of assistance such as on the development and implementation of national development strategies and programmes. It complements activities under other funding portfolios, including under the Regular Budget, the Development Account, or extra-budgetary resources.
Some of the characteristics of the programme are the sharing of experiences across countries and regions, South - South cooperation, the use of national expertise from the beneficiary countries to the extent possible and the building of knowledge networks to facilitate continued exchange and assistance and promote sustainability. UNDESA’s capacity development activities draw substantively from the Department’s normative and analytical work and respond to the policy guidance and programmes of action agreed by Member States through the intergovernmental mechanisms. A defining feature of the RPTC is its demand driven nature, so as to respond to needs expressed by Member States for capacity development support. RPTC is funded with resources from the UN Regular Budget.
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