The Nairobi Maafikiano, the work programme agreed by UNCTAD member States at the fourteenth session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in July 2016, saw its first full year of implementation in 2017.
The Nairobi Maafikiano, together with the Nairobi Azimio, reoriented and strengthened the UNCTAD work programme on gainful integration of developing countries into the world economy in order to align it with the ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Moving “from decision to action” to meet the triple promises of 2015 has meant that we at UNCTAD must recast our long-standing approach and activities through the prism of the new holistic and interdependent development agenda. This has meant working more closely together across the wider United Nations family, as well as across our research and analysis work, our intergovernmental consensus-building and our technical cooperation activities.
The Nairobi Maafikiano orients our unique contributions to sustainable development, financing for development and climate action across a number of cross-cutting objectives, including strengthening multilateralism for trade and development, advancing structural transformation and resilience, promoting sustainable economic growth, and supporting implementation and follow-up to the 2030 Agenda.
As the new development agenda is interconnected, UNCTAD work invariably touches on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals in one way or another. However, our perspective on the Sustainable Development Goals is principally focused on the economic dimension of sustainable development, especially the Goals and targets that address prosperity for all and global partnership. The new format of the UNCTAD Annual Report 2017: So Much Done, So Much to Do aims at more clearly linking the work we do on trade, finance, investment, technology and sustainable development to the results we achieve for these specific Sustainable Development Goals.
With the entire United Nations development system engaged in a transition to more effective, combined delivery on the collective promises of the 2030 Agenda, we hope that this Annual Report 2017 can make a helpful contribution by showing where concrete UNCTAD results fit into this wider picture and deliver impact for the developing countries we serve.
